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SPRING 2016 ISSUE
LIVESTOCK MATTERS
1 8
From dairy data to lambing courses
I’ve had no shortage of the routine cases
however, particularly caesareans, for which I
seem to be cursed for cows to be down. The
last time I broke this trend was way back in
October, when I had three caesareans in a
weekend, all in darkness, but all standing
thankfully. This was rather unfortunately
followed by a breakfast meeting at 7am
on the Monday morning – safe to say I
wasn’t overly interactive at that one!
Alongside the varied and challenging clinical
work, I have recently been getting more
involved in the client training and herd health
services we offer. I’ve just taken responsibility
for producing a monthly report from some of
our dairy clients’ milk recording data. This has
given me an insight into how each farm is
performing, and flagged up production issues
that aren’t necessarily seen on farm as sick
cows. It’s also a great opportunity for
discussion when out on farm doing other
things. We’ve recently set up an in-house
lab with some cool new bits of kit, meaning
we can rapidly turn-around worm and fluke
egg counts and do our own mastitis cultures,
which is proving really interesting.
Although a few of our clients are well into
lambing, the majority don’t start until March
or April. We have been running our lambing
courses for anybody who feels they need a
refresher or some pointers on the basics of
lambing time before it all starts. These have
been really popular this year and we’ve had
to add two extra days. At the last course, we
were lucky to time it perfectly, with a live
demonstration of a difficult lambing in the
shed next-door.
We are expecting to be busy in the next few
weeks, with lambing and our spring calving
herds getting in full swing. I’ve thoroughly
enjoyed my first few months as a farm vet,
and find myself as part of a knowledgeable
and motivated team of farm vets, who never
hesitate to offer advice and support – as a
couple have discovered at rather unsavoury
hours of the night… Sorry about that guys!
It’s hard to believe I have now been working for a little over
seven months, and I am still no closer to being prepared for
those weird and wonderful cases.
GRADUATE DIARY
Matt Raine
, BVMedSci BVM BVS MRCVS
Wright & Morten
About me
I graduated from Nottingham in July 2015,
and started work here in Cheshire just a
week later. Having grown up in a sheep
and beef farming family in the North
Pennines, I was always farm-focused
through my time at university. I was lucky
enough to get the job with Wright and
Morten, working in solely farm practice.
Our day-to-day work is largely dairy based,
however there is a good balance of sheep
and beef work mixed in, which I find
particularly interesting.
In September 2015 I started the XLVets Farm
Graduate Scheme which involved an
eight-day crash course for all aspects farm
vetting. This really spurred my interest in
how we can offer more to our beef and
sheep clients, as with the unpredictability of
the livestock industry there is increased need
for efficiency.
Outside of work I enjoy shooting, getting
back up to the family farm and working
my unruly cocker spaniel.