Four conditions that we rarely see appeared during the recent drought. They are as follows:

Heat stroke

This manifested itself in the form of very fast and distressed breathing in animals, which had appeared quite normal. This often commenced quite suddenly. Some developed a high temperature, with nasal discharges, etc.

Treatment consisted of putting them indoors immediately in an open shed, but out of the sunlight, together with anti-inflammatory and anti-infection injections.

They were left indoors until the heat wave passed.

Bracken fern poisoning

This occurred in fields which had virtually no grass left. The animals then started eating around the hedges where ferns were growing.

They presented with extremely high temperatures and with haemorrhages visible on all mucous membranes and, in some cases, blood-tinged urine.

Animals will only eat ferns when they have nothing else available.

The poison accumulates in their system and, when it reaches a certain level, like a glass overflowing, their system cannot tolerate any more and they are overwhelmed. They rarely survive.

Redwater

This disease was very common until a few years ago when it subsided, probably due to a combination of grassland improvement and the use of ivermectin wormers, and also pour-on preparations which killed the ticks that carry the parasite.

Again, this was caused by having little grass, with the animals having to graze the long grass around headlands where the ticks had survived.

Milk drop syndrome

We had several cases of this, where cows appeared perfectly normal, eating, chewing cud, etc, but just almost stopped producing milk.

We generally see this syndrome caused by IBR or leptospirosis, but the cows in question had been vaccinated for these.

Blood sampling later showed no high titres.

Medicines were of no value. We just advised once-a-day milking to prevent complete drying off and to continue feeding as normal.

Surprisingly, most recovered over time.