August 2023
Pain relief - it's worth it
Pain reduces the animal’s performance, whether it’s milk yield or growth rate, and thereby reduces farm income. Pain relief will maintain the animal’s appetite and improve the success rate of antibiotic treatments. Every Red Tractor Assurance farm will be aware of the requirement to use pain relief for certain procedures performed on farm within the farm health plan.
Lameness
An animal is lame usually the foot or leg is painful. Animals will avoid moving further than necessary. Lame animals will eat less, lose weight and produce less milk for you, their lambs or calves.
Mastitis
Mastitis is a very painful condition (ask any woman who’s had it!) Pain relief will not only make the animal more comfortable, but will also help to take the swelling down and hopefully let the calf /lamb suck the udder empty.
Difficult Calving’s/Lambing’s
A difficult calving or lambing can create significant bruising, just like our arms or hands look and feel at times. on your arms and hands. Pain relief will reduce any swelling and maintains the animal’s appetite.
Disbudding/Dehorning Calves
It is a legal requirement that cattle of all ages are given a local anaesthetic for disbudding and dehorning. It is the safest and least stressful to disbud calves by 4 weeks of age after administering a local anaesthetic nerve block. Local anaesthetic wears off within a few hours, potentially leaving the animal in discomfort for up to a few days after the procedure. This discomfort can be minimised by the administration of pain relief such as Metacam injection or Ketofen at the time of disbudding. It is scientifically proven that calves who are not in pain eat and drink more and grow faster than calves not given pain relief after disbudding. The additional cost of pain relief will be far outweighed by improved growth rates.
Castration of Calves
Calves can legally be castrated by rubber ringing in the first week of life. Any calves castrated over the age of 2 months require an anaesthetic and the procedure should be carried out by a vet. Use of pain relief at the time of castration is recommended.
Although no pain relieving injections are licensed for the use in sheep Metacam is licensed in the UK we are able to prescribe products licenced for cattle under the cascade. Please contact us for further information.
Dog Worming
Dog tapeworm species cause tapeworm cysts to develop within the muscle and organs of sheep. You cannot see any external signs of these worms, except in the case of Gid that can cause neurological signs when cysts form in the sheep’s brain.
Once the cyst has formed in the sheep, you cannot remove it by treating the sheep. Products licensed for tapeworm treatments in sheep just treat the tapeworm which is spread by the pasture mite, and is of little disease significance.
The cysts lead to carcase rejection at slaughter which costs the industry £7-8 million annually. The carcase rejection is due to reduced meat quality and also the potential of some tapeworm species to infect humans if you eat the meat. These infections can lead to potential fatal diseases in humans.
Dogs become infected from eating fallen stock or raw feeding, so ensure farm dogs don’t have access to raw meat and fallen stock are securely stored until disposal will help reduce the risk. As well as passing out the eggs in the faeces, the eggs will also be carried on the dog’s coat.
The tapeworm species can be treated in the dog by monthly praziquantel treatments. Dog’s should also be treated for roundworms once every three months.
You can purchase dog and cat wormers from us, they are stocked at both our Leominster and Ludlow offices.