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STUDENT DIARY
Antonia Matthews
, South East London
Second year veterinary student, Royal Veterinary College
SPRING 2014 ISSUE
LIVESTOCK MATTERS
26
About me
I am a veterinary student in between my
second and third years at the Royal
Veterinary College, I am currently finishing
a year out to do a degree in Global
Health at King's College London. I grew
up mostly in South East London spending
every moment I could further south east
in Kent, working on farms and stable
yards. Having escaped living in London
I now enjoy the fresh air of Hertfordshire
with the husband, dogs, cats, small furries,
reptiles, horses and my own small herd
of dairy goats.
Globally goat mad
It is my ambition to become a goat vet; to this end I have spent this
academic year with medical students studying Global Health. Global
Health is a very broad topic looking at how to improve human health
throughout the world by minimising the effect of diseases such as
HIV; how to feed people; how to reduce zoonotic diseases and parasitic
burdens in a population.
There are more than 860 million goats on the
planet depended on for their milk, meat and
skin as well as the economic security they
offer. The importance of ensuring their health
has a phenomenal impact on human life.
This week on my Global Health course we
had a malnutrition lecture, learning that 780
million people are malnourished even though
there is more than enough food to feed the
human population. The importance of using
modern farm practices and agriculture
research was emphasised as a major factor
in trying to reduce the damage done to
communities due to food shortages. Hence
I want to be involved in maximising herd
health to increase food production.
The difference in cattle use globally is also
an important consideration in the desire to
be a 'global livestock vet'. The current
debates on how best to reduce transmission
of Tuberculosis into cattle from other animal
sources contrasts with my first year essay on
the Masaai. The Masaai are nomads in
Kenya and Tanzania. Traditionally, the
Masaai lived on a diet of raw meat,
unpasteurised milk and cattle blood, which
meant that members of the Masaai would
catch Tuberculosis from their own cattle!
Blood drinking practices (which do little for
the cattle's health) are disappearing due to a
move away from cattle towards producing
crops. And good news for those of us
wanting to focus on goats, as their cattle
population decreases their goat population
increases.
My small goat herd reminds me regularly
quite how different they are behaviourally
to sheep and how no fence is escape proof
(I have now invested a painful sum of money
in Heras fencing). A recent lecture from David
Harwood MRCVS, Honorary Veterinary
Surgeon to the British Goat Society, at the
RVC acted as a good reminder to vaccinate
the goats with Lambivac
TM
boosters as
regularly as possible, his suggestion of up
to every three months did come as a bit of
a surprise! Having just turned my goats out
I was surprised to learn that most goat
producers keep their goats indoors
permanently as goats, unlike sheep, don't
develop resistance with age to parasites,
and that the amount of wormer used should
also be double that used in sheep. Hopefully
my return to vet school proper in six months
will hold fewer surprises.
Example of behavioural differences between
goats and sheep; my goats wanting to meet my
then three month old Irish Wolfhound
Getting the chance to practise leg splinting on
one of my goats