More and more farmers are interested in selective dry cow therapy (SDCT). This process involves selecting the cows that need to be treated with an antibiotic at drying off, and only teat-sealing the cows that don’t.

The Irish Farmers Journal came across Meadow Farm Vets promoting its new SDCT service at the DairyTech event in Coventry in January. Richard Aylett is the practice manager.

“We established the service in response to demand from our clients and we are rolling it out as a stand-alone service to non-clients. Basically, we go on to the farm, the farmer has a bunch of cows picked out for drying off and we do the rest,” Richard said.

The vets have their own trailer that they bring on to farm. Cows walk up a ramp at the back of the trailer and line up in a herringbone crush, like they would in a milking parlour. The operators can work on the cows while standing on the ground and the cows come off the trailer by walking down a ramp at the side.

Richard said he saw the idea of the trailer in New Zealand and got the crush part imported and put on a UK-built chassis. He said the idea of the portable crush is that the cows being dried off can be done anywhere on the farm and that they are not clogging up yard space. Many of their clients are large farms with many hundreds of cows.

The vets charge £60/hour (€67/hour) per operator, with a minimum of two operators on each farm, but up to four operators for larger herds. The vet will assess the milk recording data for the cows being dried off and decide whether cows need to be given antibiotics or not.

A technician accompanies the vet to help with the procedure. Heifers can be teat-sealed on the mobile trailer also. The per-hour rate excludes the cost of the tubes and sealers.

I asked Richard if it was difficult to get the cows to walk up on the trailer, but he said that cows took to it remarkably well. He has got interest from right across the UK and already has a job lined up in Northern Ireland.