Dexter Cattle For Sale Discussion Board

Don’t vaccinate myself so was not aware of the following until I received my newsletter for the bTB scheme to which I subscribe. The TB test as you know comprises two injections – one for avian and the other for bovine and a comparison made. Leaving aside the explanation for brevity it would seem that animals vaccinated for Johne’s have immunity to avian and are likely to develop a swelling larger than the bovine so animals with TB can remain undetected in the herd infecting the rest or other cattle when they come into contact with them. Advice now appears to be to speak to your vet before using the vaccine. Does this effect your confidence regarding the validity of the pre-movement test whether for shows or sales? Should there be a requirement to declare your vaccination status as well?

Johnes vaccine is not used normally unless there is a real problem. There is quite a drive on to make sure more dairy herds are addressing any Johnes problems at the moment, so we may hear of more herds having some sort of recognised Johnes disease status. This is usually listed as "risk level" rather than being certified free. See http://www.biobest.co.uk/hi-health-herd ... ase-2.html If you are already doing something to keep your johnes risk low you should be asking the status of any herd you are buying from. If you are not doing anything about it, maybe you should be, though I do realise it gets complicated for a small herd and the benefits are not always too obvious.

Duncan

It isn't really cost effective in monetary terms to keep up the health scheme membership with a small herd but government intervention in disease prevention/elimination in livestock seems to be of increasing importance and having got there, it seems a bit pointless to give it up. Perhaps you can negotiate a better price for DCS members?

It may be hard to do any sums to show the benefit, but the benefit is not all going to show as higher prices at sales etc. There is a lot of peace of mind in knowing that you are keeping a lot of infectious problems out, and being able to show that to others.I have subscribed to the Hi Health scheme since it began, though with rented grazings on 3,4 and sometimes more holdings it is not always easy to comply with all the requirements - but it does focus the mind on biosecurity. I would be more than willing to try to get special rates for DCS members with either Hi Health of with the Premium Cattle Health Scheme. As some will know I tried during my last spell on DCS council to get a health scheme for members going but it was scoffed at by some councillors and by our breed secretary, who declared emphatically, "If we have a health scheme people with think we have problems" Time to give it a go again perhaps, but I would need to see some support.

Duncan

Midland Dexter Group holds a bi-annual herd competition. Last year the judge was from another breed society and he commented that he was surprised to find that none of the herds he visited had signed up to a herd health scheme. In his breed society, the majority operate under one or other of these schemes. I've discussed it - briefly - with my vet who seems to be of the opinion that the costs outweigh the rewards, but I'd be interested if a block scheme could be negotiated. Once again, the low values that some breeders put on their stock tend to work against us.

I think the last sentence of davidw's post above is spot on. Dexters are often undervalued and/or not bred for high quality in the first place. If an animal is expendable ...why worry about Hi health?