Last week I was on farm at animal health Ireland's (AHI) new selective dry cow therapy programme. The farm meetings are a follow up to veterinary training that has been carried out over the month of October. Over 150 vets have completed training in the delivery of selective cow therapy programmes to their clients.

With the success of cellcheck over the last number of years this is the next challenge on the horizon for AHI and industry is the uptake of selective dry cow therapy at national level in our dairy herd.

This is a process where we move away from blanket dry cow therapy (all cows receiving antibiotic treatment) to selecting cows for antibiotics at drying off on a needs basis.

At the farm training I caught up with Finola McCoy Cellcheck manager to find out about the programme and also Cork-based vet Willy Buckley who is on the technical working group. Willy explained some of the principles behind selective dry cow therapy and some of the pitfalls farmers need to watch out for.

This program is a very exciting initiative but it will be slow and need to change mind-sets and on-farm practices to enable proper implementation to the wider industry. For now it is about confidence-building slow and steady.

Over the coming weeks we will be looking at drying off cows and digging deeper into selective dry cow therapy. Watch this space for a new video series from myself and Aidan Brennan dairy specialist, on drying off challenges over the coming weeks.