This time of year we are seeing some problems with redwater in the practice.

Typically this presents as an animal not eating/empty and may have a high temperature, sometimes a pipe stem scour or constipation.

As the name suggests, the blood breakdown products in the urine cause it to be dark red in colour.

One such case recently occurred on a dairy farm. However, the disease was associated with some recurrent cases of redwater in the same animals on the farm. Further investigation showed that this farm also has another tick-borne disease. The name of this disease is tick-borne fever. In this particular case, the tick-borne fever was complicating the cases of redwater.

Tick-borne fever can occur on its own, often presenting as milk-drop and high temperature. The disease can be easily confirmed by carrying out a blood test on one or more of the animals in the group. Treatment involves antibiotics and anti-inflammatories.

Prevention of both of these tick-borne diseases is aided by removing rough grazing from pasture, moving out electric fences from the ditch to help keep cattle away from tick habitats and the regular application of pour-on tick preventatives.

Keeping replacement cattle from the farm is also very helpful as these animals will have some immunity against these tick-borne diseases, whereas purchased replacements will not have immunity.

This is often seen on dairy farms when replacement heifers are purchased and suffer bouts of milk drop in their first grazing season.

Many people think that ticks are mostly from the west of Ireland. However, many samples from throughout the country test positive for tick-borne fever.

  • John Gilmore is a practising vet and managing director at Farmlab Diagnostics, an animal health testing laboratory. www.farmlab.ie.