Vets so busy they're 'nearly diagnosing by FaceTime'

A study on the challenges facing both Irish dairy farmers and farm vets has highlighted how the current shortage of large animal vets is impacting farm callouts.

Farmers acknowledged that fewer vets and larger herd sizes in the country mean that vets are busier now than they used to be.

One farmer involved in the study said that it has reached the point where a local vet is asking clients to send on videos and pictures of what is wrong with animals and “nearly diagnosing by FaceTime” because he is so busy and cannot get to the farm.

The study highlighted this as a real area of concern for the future of veterinary practitioners and their capacity to work on Irish farms.

Ultimately, delays in vets arriving at farms will have impacts on animal health and the ability to get an early diagnosis, according to the study.

Diagnosis issues were found to be having a negative knock-on effect for farmers, resulting in feelings of frustration, delays in treatment, and increased or misuse of antibiotics.

Meanwhile, vets have said that a key barrier for them in diagnosing illnesses is the lack of information they receive at the time of a farm callout.

They say that, in a lot of cases, the farmer may not be the one milking the cows and isn’t certain of the cow’s history.

“Normally, when you walk out to a farm and it’s either [the farmer] not actually milking the cows anymore, so he just knows the cow is off and you ask is she eating? ‘I don’t know’ is the [farmer response]. Did she milk this morning? ‘I don’t know’. Did she milk yesterday? ‘I don’t know.’”

Another vet said that, in other cases, it’s often farm workers who they meet and they just know which cow is to be looked at but nothing else, while in some cases there might be no one there.

Vets are simply told where the cow is and have to work away in some cases, they said.

Vets also said that while some farmers have adopted and invested in monitoring technology such as cow collars, it does not always mean that they are being used properly.

It can take a long time to get blood results back

This technology alerts farmers to a problem at an earlier stage of disease progression, allowing for earlier action and treatment.

“Obviously, the equipment is only as good as the user. I saw two cows for a fella on Sunday morning and they were definitely sick for several days and they had collars on them and I said, ‘did you not get an alert?’ and he says, ‘you see I don’t look at that often enough’, so the technology is only as good as the user,” one vet said.

Collars

On the other hand, farmers who do not have collars are completely on the back foot.

Vets have said that farmers who do not use these tools are left “waiting for the tell-tale signs” but by then it is “too late”. When one animal is down, they expect more to follow.

Both farmers and vets alike expressed frustration over delays in getting test results back from regional veterinary labs (RVLs).

“The collars are doing their job very well, they work extremely well. Our frustration is the cow side of testing afterwards.

“We can’t get results quickly enough. By the time we get the results, that cow is dead and there’s probably 10 more sick. That’s the frustration really,” a vet said.

Another vet said that he sent away two swabs recently for testing – they then discovered that the swabs had to go to two different labs after that – one for virology, one for bacteriology.

Information

However, they argued that this information is not stated anywhere.

The time delay in getting results back means that vets are “firefighting” illnesses on farms until they get a conclusive answer.

This can then lead to deterioration of animal health, spreading of disease to other animals, and animal mortality.

“It can take a long time to get blood results back. We had a bull last year, took about a week to get them back and he died in the meantime,” one farmer said.

Delays in results can also increase antibiotic use on farms, according to the authors of the study.

They said that when vets don’t have any testing results, they will more than likely administer antibiotics anyway. Vets have said that the toughest call is to say there’s nothing wrong with them and not prescribe anything.

The study’s main objective, while delving into the challenges facing vets and farmers, was to develop an animal health testing tool in order to reduce antibiotic use on farms.

This tool would allow farmers and vets to treat a problem quicker as they wouldn’t have to wait on test results to come back from Department of Agriculture labs.

Farmers and vets expressed similar needs in respect to how an on-farm testing device should be built for best use.

Both agreed that the device should be made robust, rugged and durable, so that it is not affected by ground conditions.