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August 9, 2024 4 mins

Great to catch up with Dairy NZ's Senior Technical & Policy Adviser (Veterinary), Mitch Cooper to talk heard health and the latest  Dairy NZ Talking Dairy podcast!

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Country Sport Breakfast with Brian Kelly on Gold Sport.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Time on the show. Now to talk about caring for
down cows. Catching up with Mitch Cooper, who is the
technical the senior technical and policy Advisor veterinary at Darien Zed. Mitch,
good morning, Good morning, very well, thank you. So let's
talk about herd health. When it comes to herd health,
prevention obviously is better than cure. What can farmers do

(00:27):
to prevent down cows?

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yes, so they can go right back to the previous season,
basically starting with good ball selection and making sure that
the calf size is going to be good, especially for
heifers and first carvers. They can make good draft decisions.
As far as body condition score, making sure they're carving
down the right body condition score is pretty handy. Big

(00:52):
focus on transition feed and making sure the energy bounce
is right and the feed makeups right so that they're
eating enough and they've got good room and phil. You
can muck around with the decad of their diet and
that's normally something you should get the nutritionness involved with
and it helps them mobilize the calcium a bit better
and good mineral supplementation is pretty good. So ideally working

(01:15):
with the consultant vet nutritionis to get a wide range
of input to really nail the management is the best
way to go forward.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
So much, what are some early signs took out for
before a cow goes down?

Speaker 1 (01:29):
So they normally in the padet, they'll be separated from
the mob, they might not be eating. When you're moving
them anywhere, they might be a bit slow and sort
of lagging behind. Heard typically on the yards, they're a
little bit wobbling and sometimes they'll sit down really at
the core. Calcium deficiency in particular reduces the ability of

(01:50):
muscles to contract effectively, so they're basically just a bit
weak and wobbly. And normally, as your older high producing cows,
that'll be the ones to really look out for.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
And importantly, obviously the farmer needs to consider treatment and recovery.
So what are the key things to think about here?

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yes, I mean most cows you give them a bag
or two of calcium and maybe a bit of man
needsium and they get up and walk away. But I
guess when we're talking about cows that don't fit that description,
then the general consensus so I've got is throw everything
at her, particularly if you've worked with a vent or
nutrishness and farm consultant, you know the mineral issues you've got,

(02:29):
then you can target your treatment pretty well. You know.
For example, some farms need a bit more phosphorous than others.
Following up with any oral calcium supplementation is also a
great idea to keep the calcium flowing for an extended periods.
Anti inflammatories are always a big thing. That an event
we see people miss carvings a pretty inflammatory episode for

(02:51):
the body. So and when you've been down for a
while a muscle damage or nerve damage can start happening.
So they be pretty handy otherwise, really, you know, it's
a it's important to just look after them. Lots of
good TLC, lots of food and I met lots. You know,
you've got to be able to bring their full daily
intake to them, ideally, lots of water, nice soft, clean

(03:13):
space to lie down, you know. Ideally if you can
move her to a shared with plenty of Haye's bedding
so that she can be nice and warm, that's even better.
If not a cow cover in the panic and a
dry part of the paddock is better than nothing. Got
to roll them, you know at least three or four
times a day, ideally more a little bit of lifting

(03:34):
now and then as long as she's supported to try
and get her to take her own weight is pretty handy.
But yeah, lots of TLC and if you've got any issues,
you've got to get involved earlier rather than later, just
from a sort of prognosis point of view, and then
sort of picking up anything else that might be going on.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Mitch Coople with some great words advising your technical and
policy advisor veteran. You can hear more of that the
Dairy Insaid, Talking Dairy podcast. This week, Mitch takes a
deeper dive into the topic for those who want to
hear more. Mitch, great of you to chat and pass
on that advice. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
You're no problem.
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