I would imagine that many Irish vets have never seen an iceberg, but we are well able to talk about them. It all started many years ago with BVD.

The sick PI animal that wasn’t thriving, had diarrhoea and eventually died was the part of the iceberg that we could see.

The unseen portion of BVD was the PI that went unnoticed causing enormous damage to fertility and immune status of the herd.

While there is some way to go with BVD, at least we are now more than aware of the potential disaster of the virus and there are plans in place to deal with it.

It started to gather pace from there – the next iceberg was coccidiosis in calves. The obvious cases are easy to pick out with the bloody diarrhoea, wet tail and the straining.

Once again, we warn about what we can’t see – the calves that have a low burden of coccidia that look OK, but are not thriving as they should.

Farmers who address coccidiosis before clinical signs appear mention how much better their animals thrive.

We also have the iodine deficiency iceberg causing retained placentas and weak calves at birth. We have the pneumonia iceberg and, this week, I saw a new product for the prevention of milk fever in cows using the iceberg analogy.

I think it is fair to say that, so far in 2019, low calcium levels in dairy cows is an iceberg; the bit we can see is the cow down, the part that we don’t see is compromised health of the high-producing dairy cow causing mastitis, metritis and LDAs.

Intensification is the cause of many icebergs. Farms have more animals, less labour and less space. Cows are eating diets that are dictated by our ever-changing climate and fertiliser use.

As we continue down this intensification route, we must be aware of the obvious financial cost and stress on farmers of dealing with these issues. But farmers must decide how much is too much.

Seán Coffey works at Mulcair Vet Clinic, Newport, Co Tipperary. Mulcair Vet Clinic is 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, go to www.xlvets.ie.