If 2026 is the year of the horse, then September was the month of the scouring cow. <\/p>\n
Since the welcome end of the drought, we have come across quite a lot of issues with cows being loose with a drop in milk yield lasting a few days. <\/p>\n
Another issue reported by farmers has been high milk urea levels in the bulk tank. <\/p>\n
Normal bulk tank urea should be between 25 and 35 mg\/100ml with some farmers seeing levels significantly higher than this. <\/p>\n
There was a sudden burst in growth in September when the grass finally got some moisture which seemed to compensate for the lack of growth in July and August. <\/p>\n
This will have resulted in a high uptake of nitrogen into the grass, high water content and low dry matter or fibre. <\/p>\n
This change overwhelms the rumen\u2019s ability to process nitrogen and protein ultimately resulting in high urea in the blood that is then passed through to the milk. <\/p>\n
The rumen microbes require adequate fibre and energy to function and process protein. <\/p>\n
Some farmers have had to carry out corrective measures to buffer the rumen by maintaining silage in the diet or adding soya hulls to increase fibre intake. <\/p>\n
On another note, AHI has recently announced that a new Johne\u2019s control programme is available to dairy and beef farmers. <\/p>\n
This is a tricky disease to manage which can ultimately result in a cow with chronic scour and weight loss but has a lot of other effects at a herd level. <\/p>\n
Participation in the programme is worthwhile as it is estimated that the disease is costing the dairy industry between \u20ac11.24 million and \u20ac23.85 million annually.<\/p>\n
And then to keep us on our toes, the arrival of Shamonda virus, another virus spread by midges that can cause milk drop, scours, high temperatures and deformities in calves. <\/p>\n
There\u2019s never a dull moment!<\/p>\n
Paul Ryan, MVB, XLVets, Waterside Veterinary
\nLimerick<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If 2026 is the year of the horse, then September was the month of the scouring cow. Since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[322,9602,103,61,60,280370,43,280371,279702],"class_list":["post-661820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-disease","tag-cows","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-milk-yield","tag-news","tag-scour","tag-vet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}