Around our part of the country, it has been a really good farming year in terms of volume and quality of grass growth.

The warm temperatures and adequate rainfall have led to most farms having plenty of high-quality grass cover all summer and into autumn. However, heat and moisture combined provide a great environment for the many disease bugs on Irish farms to grow and multiply.

In the last couple of months, we have seen a lot of respiratory problems in all ages of stock. Most of these were fairly easily resolved. However, we did see a couple of unusual incidents.

A client rang recently with a two-year-old heifer in distress, suddenly grunting and gasping to breathe. She had shown some signs a couple of weeks earlier. He had treated her himself and all appeared well. When she died a couple of hours later, he took her to the regional laboratory in Limerick.

The post-mortem revealed a large amount of lungworm in her airways and she had died of hoose pneumonia. This was a big surprise considering her age, plus routine worm dosing on the farm would be very good.

Did some of the dosing fail to do its job? Is there a resistance problem with anthelmintics in this country? Is there overuse resulting in some animals simply not developing the usual resistance to this disease?

Having a chat with your vet would be very worthwhile when considering your dosing programme for the year.

I think it is wise to alternate between the different families of anthelmintics and to get the frequency of dosing right so as to allow animals to build their own natural resistance.

The choice of product will dictate how often you should dose. Good pasture management is of equal importance and is an integral part of any dosing strategy.

We also saw an outbreak of hoose in a 50-cow suckler herd. Over the course of a week, all the cows began coughing, with a handful developing into clinical pneumonia.

Post-mortem examination on the one that died again revealed a high dose of lungworm and the herd responded well to a simple worm dose.

Nowadays, while there are many complex viruses and bacteria that cause pneumonia, our old friend hoose should never be discounted when making a diagnosis.

Edwin Murphy works at Adare Veterinary Surgery, Adare, Co Limerick, part of XLVets. XLVets is a group of progressive practices who are working together to achieve a better future for agriculture and veterinary in Ireland. For further information, see www.xlvets.ie.