Farm Newsletter September 2025
With harvest completed in record times for most, the livestock work is picking up again. A few adopters of early scanning have had spring calving herds scanned with good results so far. Early PDing gives us the best chance to accurately age foetuses, pick up any twins and crucially, get cull cows away whilst they’re still worth a handsome sum.
We have seen a continued number of cases of lungworm. Worryingly we have also seen a case of ivermectin resistant lungworm on a post mortem case, where the worms were still active despite three separate treatments. This perhaps is a timely warning that we should not become reliant on the ivermectins for all parasitic treatment in cattle, as resistance will soon catch up with us, as well as the negative ecological impacts these drugs have when compared to others. Alternatives include vaccination, alternative wormer classes and grazing managment, please speak to us to discuss.
We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at our BBQ social later this month on the evening of Saturday 27th, there’s a few more details below and an RSVP link, please do let us know if you hope to make it.
Summer Social BBQ – All Welcome!
We are delighted to invite all our farming friends and clients to a Farmers social BBQ at Strathmore Rugby Club in Forfar on Saturday 27th September, from 5pm til late.
Please let Jennifer know how many will be coming along by phoning either Kirrie or Blair.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Is Your Tup Stud Fit To Go?
September is the time to start thinking about fertility testing tups. Ensuring you have a fully functional stud of boys is one key step to a successful scan next year. Each year we identify about 15-20% of tups that are not fit for purpose and could have a detrimental effect on farm profits.
Obviously, they stand to make the biggest impact if working in a single sire mating system, but even when multiple tups are run together, we see the subfertile ones making a negative impact if they are one of the more dominant ones within a group. We recently heard from one farmer who did some DNA testing following multi sire mating, to find that one tup covered 80% of the group – imagine the damage he would have done if he was the subfertile one!
Please give us a shout to discuss fertility testing tups this year.
Biodiversity on beef farms study
We have been asked to share the opportunity for beef farmers in NE Scotland to be involved in a study on biodiversity. As part of the study carbon and biodiversity will be baselined and then monitored.
If you would like to be involved or find out any more, please speak to Ed.
It’s never too early to start thinking about pneumonia prevention in weaned calves
Whilst weaning and housing may be someway off, it may be worth starting to think about pneumonia prevention for the winter ahead, which will still be one of the leading causes of antibiotic usage and production losses in suckler systems.
Vaccination works far better if given in advance of housing and separately from any other stressful task, especailly weaning. Ideally vaccination would be the only task carried out on the day you do it.
Its also worth thinking about any adaptations to housing that may be beneficial. Inadequate housing often underlies a pneumonia outbreak and a small change now could yield benefits for years to come. We’re happy to discuss housing, and all things pneumonia related, just let us know.
Biosecurity this breeding sale season
Sheep breeding sales are well underway as farms bring in new genetics for the years ahead, but be careful not to bring in crippling diseases for the years ahead too! Resistant worms, scab and “iceberg” diseases such as MV or OPA are most commonly spread at this time.
A biosecurity plan is very much farm specific as it will be influenced by what diseases you already have on farm and what ones pose the greater risk to your flock, so there is no one size fits all. Below are a few things to consider, and ideally quarantine all stock for at least a month before mixing with the home flock and monitor for signs of ill health including lameness.
As a minimum, all stock should receive two wormers, one of which should be one of the newer products – Zolvix or Startect. They should be yarded for 24 hours before being turned out to a worm “dirty” field.
A scab treatment should be considered, but we can test for it also to avoid unnecessary treatments, depending on how risky the incoming stock are.
Remember fluke. We are coming into the time of year where sheep may need to be treated for their health with a triclabendazole product, but TCBZ resistance is widespread, especially in the wetter parts of the country. To take care of TCBZ resistant fluke treat with closantel twice separated by 8 weeks and turn out to drier fields.
The iceberg diseases – OPA, MV, Johne’s, CLA and Borders disease all pose a major risk. All can be tested for by various means, but can run up a significant bill if doing so, so should be carried out very much on a risk based approach.
Also be wary of Bluetongue this year as movement restrictions from down south relax. Avoid purchasing from higher risk areas, and ideally buy stock that have already been vaccinated.
