Bovine

How to Make the Most of Your Cattle Veterinarian

In veterinary school we are taught both reactive and preventive medicine. Reactive medicine, or fire engine medicine as some call it, is the classical image of the vet driving through the countryside “putting out fires” like treating milk fevers, pulling calves, and treating pneumonias. Although treating sick or injured animals keeps our days different and exciting, our aim as veterinarians now is to prevent many of these problems from happening. Preventive medicine is so much more than vaccines. It can include optimizing fertility and calving interval, ensuring nutrition is adequate and appropriate for each stage of production, monitoring records to pick up on trends and changes to the herd, and optimizing barn design.

We hope to work with all of our producers to maximize the efficiencies, health, and subsequent profits on their farms. Our intention is for producers to see the cost of the veterinarian and our products as a value-added service that is mutually beneficial and collaborative, instead of as a necessary evil. Even small changes like implementing targeted and appropriate vaccine protocols can lead to substantial gains by decreasing the costs associated with treating sick animals, increasing average daily gains, increasing milk production, and producing more live calves. We are happy to sit down with our producers at our office or on-farm to discuss a dairy or beef herd health plan, whereby we talk about what is currently happening on the farm, where we hope the farm goes into the future, and how we can achieve these goals as a cohesive team. These discussions, even when informal, often lead to ideas or suggestions for the farm that may have never been explored or even thought of before. We are lucky as veterinarians to have an arsenal of experts at our disposal in the form of other veterinarians with specialized skill sets, nutritionists, professors, and other producers that we draw on frequently.

We are also in an ever-changing society driven by consumers. At Central Ontario Veterinary Services, we are fortunate to have vets and staff with a wide variety of experience, including Christie Ryan, DVM, who worked in the UK from April 2017 to June 2018 where laws, quality assurance programs, and biosecurity measures are increasingly more stringent than what we are currently experiencing in Canada. This recent experience will be a great asset to our producers as they have to navigate new laws and government programs being implemented in Canada, and we can assure you that these things are achievable and manageable.

Please do not hesitate to contact any of us at the practice to discuss your herd, an individual animal, or any of the other daily occurrences on the farm. We all believe in a collaborative team approach to ensure all of our producers are meeting their goals as efficiently and productively as possible, and we very excited to be working with the beef and dairy producers of Simcoe County for many years to come.