Congratulations

Two weddings in the practice to report, first one being the marriage of Iain Gillespie to Clare Fillingham on the 9th May at Dryburgh Abbey. It was a great day, strong sunshine with the odd rain shower; everyone had a great time and was wonderful to see Clare and Iain looking so happy. We wish them a long and happy marriage in the future. On Saturday 13th June David Allen from the Kelso surgery is to marry Kate Ferguson at Cornhill. Kate was a vet student with us at Galashiels, and now works as a vet in Berwick. Excitement is building in the surgery this week, super cool Dave seems to be feeling the tension just a little!! We all wish them a fantastic day on Saturday and a super future together.

Practice Standards

At the beginning of July all the 3 Merlin surgeries are being inspected to check that the standards required by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons for inclusion in the Practice Standards Scheme are being met over all the different categories. This is a very important inspection, and will cover all aspects of what we do, and in some ways the attainment of the standards is the clients re-assurance that Merlin are operating to the agreed standards, have been inspected and can give the examiners confidence that moving forward we have plans to improve services and are fully committed to all areas of customer and patient care.

Niki Kinghorn has been working pretty tirelessly on this for several months, and we are very grateful for all her efforts. Areas to be examined include vet training and clinical standards, staff training, safe medicine control and storage, health and safety, record keeping, safe dispensing of medicines, practice protocols, set procedures for in-patient care - quite simply good clinical practice. It is likely that some areas of medicine dispensing will have to change, we will keep you posted.

Bull Semen Testing

We are pretty much thru' the testing season, in general bulls have tested well, they don't seem to be carrying as much condition as previous years, particularly the more mature continental bulls. When grass is plentiful this may not be too much of an issue, but watch out for younger (usually first mating season) bulls - they quite often can lose a surprising amount of condition in the first month of mating. Often this is due to over-mating on their part, being too protective towards in-season cows, covering too much ground and also very commonly running into problems with worm burdens. They seem to reach this age with little natural immunity to worms, and can suffer quite badly. If in doubt it is best to worm with an extended action pour-on wormer. If they do shed weight rapidly it is almost certain they will fail to get cows pregnant and will need replacing.

We do have some bulls to check before putting out to cows. They will be bulls with high levels of abnormal semen of first test. Often the only way to clear them up is to let them mate cows for 7-10 days, then check that semen quality has improved. If so, then they stay with the cows. If not, then they can be swapped with a fertile bull. If you want bulls tested, have a word with Robert or David at Kelso, or David at Gala.

Target Bulling Weights

Basil Lowman has a very good article in the May Beef Notes - we all accept that maiden heifers need to be about 65% of mature liveweight at bulling. Bear in mind that mature cow weights have been gradually increasing so target heifer bulling weights should also be increased. In general it is not too difficult to get maiden heifers pregnant - they tend to be an even size group, usually of the same health status, they don't have the same issues of lactation and recovering from calving that the older cows have = better pregnancy rates. Unless you are running groups big enough to keep on their own for the next year, and even better two years, then these are the difficult groups to get pregnant subsequently. First and second calvers do need preferential treatment from calving to housing. Depending on grass supply you may have to consider preferential feeding at grass to these groups to help achieve and maintain pregnancies, or indeed to creep feed the calves early to take some of the pressure off the mothers. Waiting until weaning is too late, we can't backdate pregnancies and these young cows are a huge investment for the future. Have a read at the article, it is a very important topic and well covered.