Farming Diary by Emma Stuart, farm animal veterinary surgeon, Yan Farm Health, Old Hutton:

AS I SIT here writing this, it’s blowing a gale outside and I can see the horizontal rain - the type that cuts into your face like a knife.

I’ve already been out in it this morning, but at least I was in a shed, so it wasn’t too painful!

Temperatures are cooling rapidly and conditions are becoming wetter, so most cattle are now inside, settling down on their winter rations. However, the weather is really changeable, which usually triggers issues with pneumonia.

Outbreaks can be caused by a huge number of different bugs, so we like to carry out diagnostics to identify the culprit. We have lots of different tools available, but the best is to carry out polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing on nasal swabs or bronchoalveolar lavage. These tests are very similar to coronavirus testing, except the swabs are quite a bit bigger!

We also need to remember that young dairy calves on milk are very susceptible to cold stress, so we encourage calf rearers to monitor temperatures in the sheds and to put on calf jackets to keep them nice and cosy once the temperatures drop below 15C.

On the sheep side, tups are busy with the ewes, but we have been seeing a few that maybe haven’t been performing as well as expected. We are often asked to examine them and can look at the semen under the microscope to see if they are fertile or not. Farmers want to keep the lambing period as short as possible, so tups really need to be on top of their game and, if they’re not, a replacement needs to be sourced very quickly!

With the recent COP26 summit in Glasgow highlighting the need for everyone to do their part to mitigate climate change, we have also been thinking about how we can encourage both our vets and farmers to engage in sustainable practices which will ultimately improve farm resiliency, productivity and profitability while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions. We held a very successful meeting in early October to get some views and opinions and we have some more interesting sessions lined up over the coming months. Some of our vets are really interested in climate-friendly farming so, if you want to find out more about what we (or our clients) are doing to reduce our environmental footprint, give us a bell and we’ll be happy to have a chat.