Herd Health and Production Medicine

Herd Health and Production MedicineDr. Simon KenyonLarge Animal MedicineHow to make money in food animal practiceDrive faster so you can get more call-out fees per dayHave clients with more sick animals so you make more money on each farm call.

The answer is to have a practice model in which both you and the client make money when you visit the farmk2

Base your business success on the success of your clients business

Traditional medicine is focused upon diagnostic and therapeutics of the individual animal with the assumption that if all the sick animals are handled properly, a healthy herd will result.

Production medicine is focused upon the underlying herd management system with the assumption that if the production system that produced the problem is fixed, a healthy herd will result.

If a group of cows are examined, pregnancies recorded, abnormalities treated, heats predicted, and left at that point, the reproductive program is traditional medicine directed at correcting the problems of many individual animals.

If herd performance is summarized and charted, allowing management to make herd-based decisions, the reproductive program is production medicine.

Nomenclature (is a mess)Herd healthPreventive MedicinePopulation HealthProduction MedicineHerd Health and Production ManagementEVOLUTION OF PRODUCTION MEDICINE

Area based disease control programs1870s

CBPP interlobular septa initially filled with fibrin that become organized into fibrous connective tissue9Evolution of Production MedicineArea based disease programs1870s

Individual animal treatment1940s

Health programs for control1960sof specific diseasesSpecific Disease ControlMastitis 5 point programFeedlot Respiratory VaccinesInfertility programsBuy a TMR mixerImproved feedbunk management4X milking

Production pipelineDry matter intakeReproSome programs cost more than they returned. We are all trained in the biology of disease, but disease to our clients fundamentally an economic problem. We can treat your surgery sheep for the prevention of coccidiosis ???

Johnes Disease: - test and remove vs management changes to reduce risk of infection in calvesAny attempt at BLV control almost always uneconomic except if producing bulls for bull studs11

Fig. 3. Mean true individual animal prevalence over all Dutch dairy farms (infected and uninfected) in the first stage of the study as simulated by the JohneSSim model under strategy a-II with a standard and with an ideal test.

Groenendaal et al Preventive Veterinary Medicine 60 (2003) 69-90

Rigorous test and cull vs management changes aimed at reducing transmission to calves. Test and cull is economically uinattractive because of the cost of removing productive infected but healthy cattle12Evolution of Production MedicineArea based disease programs1870s

Individual animal treatment1940s

Health programs for control1960sof specific diseases

Integration of health maintenance1980swith production management

Integration of food safety, animalTodaywelfare and environmental managementRole of the veterinarian has changed. Used to be that the veterinarian only represented the client and the animal. Now we are all in public practice with responsibilities to the wider society food safety (antibiotic residue avoidance, inject site abscesses, welfare certification, and environmental management. E.g. how do we limit P & N excretion13

+C +N + P+C +N no P Picture taken from University of Manitoba Experimental Lakes Area Research Project, 2001Production MedicineComparison of actual performance with agreed performance targets

Importance of subclinical disease & production inefficiencies

Importance of collection and analysis of production and health data

Importance of integration of sources of advice (e.g. disease, nutrition, economics, housing

Individual Animal MedicineImproved PerformanceEpidemiology,Quantitative MethodsNutritionData AnalysisHousingEconomicsBreedingPRODUCTION MEDICINE

Schrick F.N. et al. J Dairy Sci. 84, 1407-1412, 2001ClinicalSub-clinSub-clin ClinNon-infected17Cows with sub-clinical mastitis had DFS (74 vs 67), days open (107 vs 85) higher services per-conception than non-infected cows 2.1 vs 1.6 P