Health checks

Importance of health checks

Health checks are important for the general wellbeing of livestock because it is a preventative
measure which allows potential problems to be flagged and stopped and current problems to be
treated before they get to bad.
Frequency of health checks
Health checks are done daily this is done by sight checking the livestock for any obvious visual or
behavioural signs, for instance a cow with mastitis may have hungry looking calves or be swinging
its legs wide of the affected teat. These checks consist of wondering round the animals preferably
on foot to make it less likely to miss anything. Trying to get all the animals to move is also good as
it allows you to tell if the animals are lame or not.
Different animals require different things to look out for:
Cows
Ailment
Mastitis
Lameness
Grass staggers
Milk fever

Things to look for

Avoiding teat contact, hungry looking calves and
teats looking swollen or irritated.
Refusal to move, limping and lying down a lot.
Drunken like movement and weakness
Downer cow, cant stand.

Pigs
Ailment
Need for tooth clipping
Anaemia
Lameness
Tail docking

Things to look for

Bleeding irritated teats
Red eyes and pale ears
Refusal to move, limping and lying down a lot.
Fight marks and damaged bleeding tails

Sheep
Ailment
Fly strike
Lameness

Things to look for

Dirty rears flys
Refusal to move, limping and lying down a lot

Main causes of disease

Parasites, bacteria, viruses, microbes and fungi are all major causes of disease in animals. Viruses
and parasites are usually transmitted to livestock from different farms through staff and new
animals that interact with those animals.
Ways to prevent this can be vaccinations boot dipping and new animal isolation, also not
interacting with a different farm until at least 3 days from previous farm visit. Personal hygiene
also goes a long way
Treating disease
Tb and other serious diseases such as foot and mouth cant really be treated and have to lead to
the animal being culled
If a disease is caused by bacteria, then antibiotics can be used to treat it under the supervision of
a vet. Deficiency diseases will be treated by giving them a dose of what they are deficient from
e.g. calcium ,glucose ,sodium...

http://www.nda.agric.za/docs/Infopaks/Causedisinanimebook.pdf

common predisposing factors are;

animals and workers having poor hygiene , having damp living areas for the animals ,
young animals having poor colostrom intake after birth, poor diet and high stress.
Preventing disease
there are many ways to help prevent disease in animals notable ways are;
vaccinations, clean living conditions, closed herd/flocks buying animals from a single
reliable source, early colostrom intakes, all in all out systems, and a good diet can all
help.