July has been a quiet month for us as all the animals are out and all the farmers are busy with cropping, although everyone is busy there still has been a few interesting cases
With the warmer weather this month the animals with low grade chronic pneumonia got into trouble, these are usually the ones that look perfectly fine. They usually are slightly underweight or not growing at the same rate as the rest of the herd. The moment the weather changes a bit or stress is added to them the pneumonia flares up. They respond well to treatment, but they will never be cured.
Lame cattle have been a bit of a surprise this month, we had a disproportional large number of them. This is usually a problem of the wetter months where it gets very muddy and boggy, most of the cattle seen had overgrown hooves which led to the problem, this is where targeted feet trimming becomes very important. The rest was due to penetration wounds or less frequently seen boggy fields with the animals standing in mud for too long.
We had one interesting case of a calf that dropped dead in the field with no presenting symptoms. A postmortem was performed and it turns out that he had a congenital defect of his heart. This is very rare, but the genetic line will have to be monitored to see if there will be more of them or if it is an isolated incident
Then we had a few ram vasectomies. These are done for making teaser rams designed to tighten up the lambing season and work very well when used correctly. Always an exciting procedure that we all enjoy being a part of. See attached pictures of Bruce in his glory teaching the young vets and students all about the procedure.
On the equine side it has been a bad month for COPD. The warmer weather combined with the high pollen count made it challenging for the COPD horses. There are a lot of horses that are on Ventipulmin already but still developed respiratory distress. We had to resort to steroids and inhalers to settle them. With these guys it is important to soak their hay and keep them inside or in shaded areas when it is warm. If breathing issues develop, start hosing them down immediately and keep them quiet
Finally, as it is holiday season. My family and I took a trip over to the West Coast and spent a bit of time cycling on the Isle of Lismore, which was lovely. Luckily it was dry, but unfortunately no sunshine. We were joined by some sheep running wild on the ferry terminal!
Mark