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A few years ago at a Farm Quality Assurance Scheme (FQAS) check, the inspector challenged me on the amount of antibiotics that I was using.
He doubted the amount of antibiotics that I was putting through my books. I remember him saying: “There is no way that you can get away with using so little antibiotics for the amount of cattle that you have.”
I was very offended by that, and told him so. I thought that we were supposed to be trying to reduce the amount of antibiotics that farmers use.
I explained to him that I was using a lot of vaccinations to try and reduce the amount of drugs that I use. I don’t think that he believed me, but instead thought I was hiding something from him.
I had felt proud of what I was achieving, but this guy made me feel like a fraud. But I am not a fraud and I have continued to only use antibiotics as a last resort.
Weather
This year has been very strange in lots of ways and the weather, in particular, has been very erratic. There have been some really good days and some really wet ones.
About a month ago, the weather was very changeable. During this spell, I had a batch of cows and calves that were giving me some concern. There were odd calves with a discharge from the nose and a wee bit off form. They were still sucking the cows, so I wasn’t overly concerned.
On the wet days, they were standing under the hedges with humps on them, and it was hard to get a really good look to assess what was going on. It was niggling away at me, but I did not want to be bringing them into the yard and upsetting them even more.
Then after a wet night, I was checking them one morning and about half of them had a discharge from their nose. So I decided to call in the vet and take nasal swabs and see if I could find what the problem was.
We separated the cows and calves in the yard (which caused a lot of noise and upset) and put all the calves up the crush and took all of their temperatures.
There were 21 calves in the batch and 17 had a high temperature. The vet treated them and took swabs from the ones with the highest readings.
Apart
We have another batch of cows and calves of a similar size, and I was worried about them as well.
The vet told me to keep them apart and use different yards if I was bringing them in.
I actually went one step further and got one of my sons to keep checking them while I kept an eye on the first batch.
So they were in a different part of the farm with no contact, and surely no chance of cross-spreading.
This did not work. The other batch took the discharge from the nose about a week later.
This time I brought them all in and took their temperatures, and treated them myself. About 15 out of 24 had high temperatures.
Everything recovered within a few days and nothing required a second injection.
As for the swabs, full results were not back for three weeks (which isn’t satisfactory), but everything came back clear.
Some people will say that I wasted my time taking swabs and I must admit, I did think that myself. But after speaking with the vet, she pointed out that it was good to rule out any serious problems. I’m glad I now know that it was just a weather-related problem.
Book
Unfortunately, I now have a FQA medicine record book with lots of antibiotic usage in it. It’s not what I want to see, but it had to be done and maybe it will satisfy an inspector at a future check.
However, I will still try to keep my antibiotic usage under control. Everyone in the industry must recognise this as a good thing.
Responsible usage of antibiotics means keeping drugs to a minimum but, equally, using them when required.
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