Veterinary · Pre-clinical and foundation · also MSVE LFP-211, MSVE LFP-221
The hands-on, non-credit farm course: handling, milking, feeding, identifying and recording animals, and routine procedures such as hoof trimming, dehorning and castration.
In the exams: Practical skills examined in OSCE-style licensing exams (RCVS SME OSCE, AVE clinical exam)
Livestock Farm Practices is the hands-on farm course of the veterinary degree. In the Indian Minimum Standards of Veterinary Education it runs as LFP-211 and LFP-221, a practical, non-credit course; in other countries the same skills sit inside animal husbandry practicals, extramural farm placements and the first clinical rotations. The content is the ordinary work of a farm: catching and restraining animals safely, identifying them, telling their age from their teeth, scoring their condition and estimating their weight, milking, feeding and watering, keeping records, trimming feet, and the routine procedures of disbudding, dehorning, castration and docking.
These skills matter because almost every later clinical act starts with them. A cow that cannot be restrained cannot be examined; a dose cannot be calculated without a weight; a withdrawal period cannot be respected without a treatment record; a lameness problem cannot be solved without knowing how a claw should be trimmed. A practitioner who handles stock badly loses the trust of farmers in the first visit and risks injury to people and animals. The management subjects for ruminants and for pigs and poultry cover breeds, housing standards, breeding policy and economics; this manual stays with the practical how-to and links to those subjects rather than repeating them.
Practice and law differ by country. Which procedures need anaesthesia, at what age a procedure is permitted, which identification is compulsory, which footbath chemicals are allowed and how long medicine records must be kept are all set nationally. The manual states the principle, gives the widely taught method, and flags where a reader must check local law. Any drug use is described in general terms; where a drug is named, the dose must be confirmed against the product label and your national formulary.
The course is examined by doing. Licensing bodies test it in objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs): the RCVS Statutory Membership Examination OSCE assesses handling and technical skills, the Australasian Veterinary Examination clinical step has cattle and sheep practicals, and the South African Veterinary Council registration exam has practical panels. Written papers in licensing and public-service exams ask the theory behind the skill: dentition and age, the order of steps in milking, the methods of castration and dehorning, weight formulas and record calculations.
Good handling uses the animal's own behaviour so that force is the last resort. Cattle, sheep, goats and pigs are prey species with wide-angle vision and a blind spot directly behind them; a handler who approaches from behind startles them. The flight zone is the animal's personal space: when a handler enters it the animal moves away, and when the handler steps back out of it the animal stops. The size of the flight zone depends on tameness — a hand-reared dairy cow may have almost none, while an extensively kept beef animal may have a flight zone of many metres. The point of balance is usually at the shoulder. A handler standing behind the point of balance makes the animal move forward; standing in front of it makes the animal back up or turn.
Low-stress handling follows a few rules. Move animals calmly and quietly, without shouting, dogs or electric goads where these can be avoided; many welfare codes restrict goads to adult cattle and pigs that refuse to move and forbid their use on calves and on the face or udder. Work with the herd instinct: a single isolated animal panics, so keep companions in sight. Use solid-sided races and curved chutes so animals cannot see people and moving objects outside, and remove distractions such as shadows, hanging chains, reflections and drains that cause balking. Light should be even, because cattle are reluctant to move from light into darkness. Animals handled calmly have lower cortisol, gain better and are safer to work with.
For most examinations and treatments a cow is restrained in a crush (squeeze chute, travis) with a head yoke or head gate, or tied to a fixed post with a halter. The rope halter is put on so that the lead rope comes off the left side under the jaw and the nose loop tightens only when pulled. Tying is done with a quick-release knot so that the animal can be freed at once if it goes down. Nose tongs (bull-dog clamps) grip the nasal septum and give strong control of the head for oral examination or injection in the neck; they should be used briefly. Bulls kept for breeding carry a nose ring in the nasal septum, fitted while they are young, and are led with a bull pole clipped to the ring, never by the ring and a rope alone.
To stop kicking during udder or hind-limb work, a rope or anti-kick clamp is applied around the flank in front of the udder, or the hind legs are hobbled above the hocks. Raising the tail vertically near its base (tail jack) distracts the animal and limits kicking, but it must be done gently and close to the base, since forceful bending can fracture the coccygeal vertebrae. A foot is lifted for examination with a rope over a beam or with a hydraulic or mechanical foot-lifting crush.
Casting is laying the animal down with ropes when it must be recumbent and no tipping table is available. In Rueff's method a running noose round the neck or horns is followed by half-hitches round the chest and the flank; pulling the free end backwards makes the animal sink. Its drawback is pressure on the chest and, in bulls, on the penis and sheath. Burley's method avoids this: the middle of a long rope is laid over the withers, each end is passed between the forelegs, crossed under the chest, brought up over the back and then down between the hind legs, and pulling both ends backwards folds the legs. A cast animal is kept in sternal recumbency or on its side with the head slightly downhill for drainage of saliva and is not left in lateral recumbency long, because ruminal gas cannot escape (bloat) and regurgitated rumen content can be inhaled. Sedation is used where practice allows, and doses are given — confirm against the product label and your national formulary.
Sheep flock tightly and follow a leader, so they are moved as a group with a dog or by handlers walking behind and to the side, and are penned in small groups for close work. A sheep is caught by holding under the jaw with one hand and placing the other at the dock or flank; it is never caught or lifted by the fleece, which bruises the carcass and hurts the animal. For examination of the feet, belly and udder a sheep is set up or tipped onto its rump: the handler stands at its left side, holds the jaw, turns the head back over its shoulder, presses the hip down so the sheep sits, and leans it back against the handler's legs. A tipped sheep usually stops struggling. Heavily pregnant ewes and very fat sheep should not be held in this position long.
Goats are more individual and do not flock as tightly. They are restrained by a collar, or by one arm round the neck and the other round the hindquarters against a wall; they should not be held by the horns alone, because horns can break and the neck can be injured, nor by the beard. Kids and lambs are lifted with one hand under the chest and the other under the hindquarters. Small ruminants overheat easily when crowded in hot weather, so handling is done in the cool part of the day.
Pigs cannot be led and resist being held, but they move readily into a space ahead of them. They are moved with a pig board (a solid panel held at the side of the head) that blocks their view and guides them. An adult pig that must be held still for a short procedure such as a jugular blood sample is held with a snout snare, a wire or rope loop placed over the upper jaw behind the canine teeth; the pig pulls back against it and stands still. It is used for the shortest possible time. Piglets are picked up by a hind leg and then supported under the chest, and their squealing upsets the sow, so the sow is separated or penned first.
Horses are handled from the left (near) side with a headcollar and lead rope. A handler holding a horse for a procedure stands on the same side as the person working, so that if the horse jumps it moves away from both of them. Lifting a forelimb discourages kicking with the hind limb on the same side. A nose twitch, a loop tightened around the upper lip, calms many horses for short procedures; its effect is linked to release of endorphins and lasts only minutes. Never stand directly behind a horse or a cow, and never wrap a lead rope round the hand.
A few knots do most farm work. A bowline makes a loop that does not tighten and is used round the neck. A quick-release (halter) knot ties an animal so that one pull frees it. A reef (square) knot joins two ropes of equal thickness, and a sheet bend joins ropes of unequal thickness. Half-hitches are used in casting and for securing a limb. Rope should be strong, clean and inspected; a frayed rope in a casting or a calving is a hazard.
Every record, treatment, breeding decision and disease-control programme depends on knowing which animal is which. Permanent identification also supports traceability: when a residue or a notifiable disease is found, the animal can be traced back to its herd of origin and forward to its contacts. Many countries make identification and registration of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs compulsory, with a national database recording births, movements and deaths. In the European Union cattle carry an approved ear tag in each ear and a passport; in India the national programme assigns each animal a 12-digit ear-tag number recorded in a central database. The method, number of tags and deadline for tagging after birth are set by national law.
Ear tags are the commonest method. Plastic tags are applied with a matched applicator into the middle third of the ear, between the two main cartilage ribs and away from the large visible veins, after the ear and tag pin have been cleaned. A tag placed too near the tip tears out; one placed too near the head or through a rib causes infection and a thickened ear. Tags are best applied in cool weather or outside the fly season, and the site is checked a few days later. Metal tags are small and durable but hard to read. Visual tags can be lost, so a replacement is ordered with the same number and the loss is recorded.
Tattooing gives a permanent mark that cannot be lost. The inside of the ear is cleaned of wax and dirt, the tattoo pliers are checked on paper to confirm the number reads correctly, the characters are pressed through the skin between the cartilage ribs avoiding veins, and tattoo ink or paste is rubbed well into the holes. Light-skinned ears give the clearest result. Its drawbacks are that the mark must be read at close range with the animal restrained, and that it can fade or be blurred if too little ink is used. Pigs are also marked with a slap tattoo on the shoulder before slaughter, and ear notching in a coded pattern of notches is a traditional litter and piglet identification system.
Branding marks the hide. Hot-iron branding destroys hair follicles and leaves a bald scar; it is painful and is restricted or banned in some countries. Freeze branding uses irons chilled in liquid nitrogen or a mixture of dry ice and alcohol; brief application kills the pigment cells so the hair grows back white, and on white animals a longer application is used to produce a bald mark. Both damage the hide and both are more painful than tagging, so many welfare codes require pain relief.
Electronic identification (EID) uses a radio-frequency identification (RFID) transponder carried in an ear tag, a ruminal bolus or an injectable microchip. Livestock transponders follow the international standards ISO 11784 (code structure) and ISO 11785 (technical concept), working at 134.2 kHz in full-duplex (FDX-B) or half-duplex (HDX) modes. EID allows automatic reading in a race, at a milking point or at a sale, and links directly to computerised records. Sheep and goats in the European Union are identified electronically. Natural marks — colour pattern, nose prints, muzzle images — are used for registration in some breeds and are being studied for automated recognition.
When birth records are missing, the age of a ruminant is estimated from its incisor teeth. Ruminants have no upper incisors; they bite against a hard dental pad. In the lower jaw there are eight incisor-like teeth: three pairs of true incisors and one pair of incisiform canines, often counted together as four pairs of incisors — centrals, medials (first intermediates), laterals (second intermediates) and corners. The permanent dental formula of cattle, sheep and goats is incisors 0/3, canines 0/1, premolars 3/3, molars 3/3, giving 32 teeth. The temporary (deciduous, milk) formula is incisors 0/3, canines 0/1, premolars 3/3, giving 20 teeth; there are no deciduous molars.
Temporary incisors are small, narrow and white with a distinct neck; permanent incisors are larger, broader and more yellowish. Age is read by counting pairs of permanent incisors. In cattle the commonly taught timetable is: first pair (centrals) at about one and a half to two years, second pair at about two to two and a half years, third pair at about three years, and the corners at about three and a half to four years, when the animal has a full mouth. Hence the farm terms two-tooth, four-tooth, six-tooth and full-mouth. In sheep and goats the sequence runs earlier: centrals at about one to one and a half years, medials at about one and a half to two, laterals at about two and a half to three, and corners at about three to four years. After the full mouth, age is judged roughly from wear, the gaps between teeth and loss of teeth (a broken-mouthed ewe).
These ages vary with breed, nutrition and management: early-maturing, well-fed animals erupt their teeth earlier, and buffalo erupt later than cattle. Dentition gives an age range, not an exact age, and the conclusion should be written as an estimate.
Horse dentition is examined in a different way because horses have upper and lower incisors. The temporary central, intermediate and corner incisors erupt in the first months of life and are replaced by permanent teeth at about two and a half, three and a half and four and a half years respectively, so a horse has a full permanent mouth at about five years. After that, age is estimated from the wear of the tables (occlusal surfaces), the disappearance of the cups, the shape of the tables (from oval to round to triangular), the angle of the incisors when seen from the side, and Galvayne's groove on the upper corner incisor: it appears at the gum at about ten years, reaches halfway down at about fifteen, reaches the full length at about twenty, and then grows out, being gone at about thirty. Estimates of age in older horses are imprecise and should be stated as such.
Piglets are born with eight sharp teeth — the deciduous third incisors and canines, called needle teeth or wolf teeth. In some systems they are clipped or ground to protect the sow's udder and littermates' faces, but routine clipping is restricted in the European Union and many welfare codes; where done it must be within the first days and only the tips are removed. Ageing pigs by teeth is rarely needed because records and size are usually available.
Body condition score (BCS) is a hands-on and visual estimate of the fat reserves of an animal, independent of its frame size. It is more useful than weight for judging nutrition because a large thin cow and a small fat cow can weigh the same. In dairy cattle the most widely used system is a five-point scale, from 1 (emaciated) to 5 (grossly fat), scored in quarter or half points by looking at and feeling the tail head, the pin and hook bones, the short ribs (transverse processes of the lumbar vertebrae) and the spine. Beef cattle in North America are often scored on a nine-point scale; sheep and goats are scored on a 0-5 or 1-5 scale by feeling the spine and the transverse processes of the lumbar vertebrae just behind the last rib.
Scores are used as targets at key points of the production cycle rather than as single readings. Many dairy guidelines aim for a moderate score at calving, around 3.0 to 3.5 on the five-point scale, with a loss of no more than about half to one point in early lactation; cows that are too fat at calving eat less after calving and are more prone to fatty liver and ketosis, and cows that lose condition fast have poorer fertility. Ewes are scored before mating, in mid-pregnancy and before lambing, and thin ewes are given extra feed. Targets differ by breed, system and country, so the farm's own advisers' targets should be used. Scoring the same animals regularly, by the same person, is more informative than one-off scores.
Weight is needed to calculate drug doses, feed allowances and growth rates. A calibrated weighbridge or scale is the most accurate method. When no scale is available, weight is estimated from body measurements taken with the animal standing square on level ground. Heart girth is the circumference of the chest just behind the forelegs; body length is commonly measured from the point of the shoulder to the pin bone (tuber ischii).
Schaeffer's formula estimates cattle weight as W = L x G squared / 300, with length L and girth G in inches and weight W in pounds. Converting the same formula to metric units gives W (kg) = L (cm) x G (cm) squared / 10,838, often rounded to 10,840. A common error is to put centimetres into the inch formula, which gives a weight many times too large. For pigs, a widely quoted farm formula is weight (lb) = heart girth squared x length / 400, with both measurements in inches. Weight tapes, which convert girth directly to weight, are sold for cattle, pigs, sheep and horses; they are calibrated for a particular type of animal and are less reliable for animals of very different breed, condition or pregnancy status.
All these methods are estimates, and errors of several per cent to more than ten per cent are common, especially in very young, very fat, very thin or heavily pregnant animals. For drugs with a narrow safety margin, and for animals near the limits of a weight band, the animal should be weighed. Recording weights over time gives the average daily gain, the key measure of growth in young stock.
A well-run farm works to a fixed daily timetable, because animals are creatures of habit: milk let-down, feed intake and rumination are best when milking and feeding happen at the same times each day. On a dairy farm milked twice a day the day typically begins with an early check of all animals, followed by milking, cleaning of the milking area and equipment, feeding, cleaning of sheds and removal of dung, and calf feeding. The middle of the day is used for heat detection, treatments, hoof care, vaccination, weighing, record entry and repairs. The evening milking and feeding follow at an interval as close to twelve hours as the farm can manage, and a late check of calving cows, sick animals and water supply ends the day.
Observation is the most important routine. Every animal is looked at daily for appetite, rumination, dung consistency, posture, gait, udder and any discharge. Heat detection is done by watching the herd for at least twenty to thirty minutes two or three times a day, at times when the animals are not being fed or milked; standing to be mounted is the key sign of oestrus in cattle. Animals due to calve, lamb or farrow are checked more often, and the time of first straining is noted so that a delayed birth is recognised. Water troughs are checked for flow and cleanliness every day, since a blocked supply cuts milk yield within hours and can kill animals in heat.
A farm calendar spreads the year's work so that nothing is forgotten. Its content depends on climate and production system, so each farm's calendar is local, but common elements recur. Vaccinations are timed ahead of the season of risk: in monsoon regions of South Asia, for example, vaccination against haemorrhagic septicaemia and black quarter is given before the rains, and foot-and-mouth disease vaccination is repeated at the interval set by the national programme. Deworming is timed to the parasite calendar of the region, guided where possible by faecal egg counts rather than by date alone, to slow anthelmintic resistance.
Hot seasons call for shade, ventilation, fans and sprinklers, extra water points and feeding in the cooler hours; buffalo need wallowing or showers because they have few sweat glands. Cold seasons call for draught-free housing, dry bedding and extra energy for young stock. In temperate pasture systems the turnout of cattle to lush spring grass is the period of risk for grass tetany (hypomagnesaemia), and magnesium supplementation is planned ahead. Sheep are seasonal breeders that come into heat as day length shortens, so in temperate regions the year runs from flushing and mating in autumn, through scanning and pre-lambing care, to lambing in spring, followed by shearing, and fly-strike prevention in the warm months. Surgical procedures such as castration and dehorning are best scheduled for cool, dry, low-fly periods. Fodder conservation as hay or silage, cleaning and disinfection of sheds, and maintenance of fences and equipment are also seasonal tasks. Biosecurity routines — footbaths at entry, a visitor log, quarantine of bought-in animals — run all year.
Milk is let down by a neuro-hormonal reflex. Stimulation of the teats by the calf, by the milker's hands or by the pre-milking routine sends nerve impulses to the hypothalamus, and the posterior pituitary releases oxytocin into the blood. Oxytocin makes the myoepithelial cells around the alveoli contract, pushing alveolar milk into the ducts and cistern. The milk ejection begins within about a minute of stimulation and the effect of oxytocin lasts only a few minutes, so milking must start promptly after preparation and be completed without interruption. Fear, pain, unfamiliar people or noise release adrenaline, which blocks let-down; this is why a quiet, consistent routine yields more milk. Buffalo generally need longer pre-stimulation than cattle before let-down.
A good routine follows the same order for every cow. The milker washes and dries hands or wears clean gloves. The first two or three squirts from each quarter are drawn into a strip cup or onto a dark surface (fore-stripping) to detect clinical mastitis — clots, flakes or watery milk — and to give stimulation. The teats are cleaned, a pre-milking teat disinfectant is applied where used and left for the contact time on its label, and each teat is dried with a separate cloth or paper towel. The cluster is attached, or hand milking begins, within about one to one and a half minutes of the start of preparation. After milking, every teat is dipped or sprayed with a post-milking disinfectant to kill bacteria on the teat skin while the teat canal is still open. Cows are then offered fresh feed so they stay standing while the teat canal closes. Clean, healthy first-lactation animals are milked first and cows with mastitis or under treatment last, with their milk kept out of the bulk tank for the full withdrawal period.
Three hand-milking methods are taught. In full-hand milking the teat is held in the whole hand; the thumb and forefinger close the top of the teat to trap milk, and the other fingers squeeze in turn to push it out. It is the preferred method for cows and buffalo because it is quick and does not stretch or injure the teat. Stripping, drawing the teat between thumb and forefinger from top to bottom, is used for very short teats and for the final milk, but used throughout it elongates and irritates the teat. Knuckling, bending the thumb against the teat, damages the teat tissue and should not be used. Milking is done from the left side, with dry hands, quickly and completely.
A milking machine removes milk by a steady vacuum at the teat end while a pulsator alternately opens and closes the liner around the teat. In the milk phase the liner is open and milk flows; in the rest (massage) phase the liner collapses around the teat, relieving congestion. The pulsation rate is the number of cycles per minute, commonly in the range of about 50 to 65, and the pulsation ratio is the proportion of each cycle spent in the milk phase, commonly 60:40 to 70:30. The working vacuum depends on whether the milk line is low or high and is set by the installer to the relevant standard, such as ISO 5707. Faults in vacuum, pulsation or liner condition damage teat ends and raise mastitis rates, so machines are tested at least yearly and liners replaced on schedule.
After milking, milk is filtered and cooled quickly, because bacteria multiply fast in warm milk; the required temperature and time limits are set by national dairy hygiene law. Equipment is cleaned immediately after use: a lukewarm pre-rinse, a hot detergent wash, an acid rinse at intervals to remove milkstone, and a sanitising step.
The ruminant and pig management subjects deal with nutrient requirements and ration formulation; the practical skill here is delivering the ration correctly every day. Feeding is done at fixed times, and feed is weighed, not guessed, at least whenever the ration changes. Feed allowances are calculated on a dry-matter (DM) basis because feeds differ greatly in water content: as-fed weight equals the DM required divided by the DM fraction of the feed. Green fodder may contain only 15-25 per cent DM, while hay, straw and concentrates contain about 85-90 per cent, so one kilogram of DM from green fodder means several kilograms of fresh feed. Dairy cattle eat roughly 2.5 to 3 per cent of body weight as DM a day, with high-yielding cows eating more.
In many South Asian smallholder systems a simple thumb rule is taught for concentrate feeding: a maintenance allowance of concentrate plus about 1 kg of concentrate for every 2.5 kg of milk produced by a cow, or for every 2 kg of milk produced by a buffalo, whose milk is richer in fat. It is a starting point, to be corrected by body condition and yield, and not a substitute for a formulated ration. Roughage is chaffed to reduce waste; straw may be enriched or soaked; mineral mixture and salt are given daily.
Any change of diet is made gradually over about two to three weeks, so that the rumen microbes can adapt; a sudden increase of grain causes ruminal acidosis. Mouldy or spoiled feed is discarded. Feed troughs are cleaned of refusals daily, and refusals are recorded, because a fall in intake is often the first sign of disease. Enough trough space is provided for all animals to eat together, otherwise timid animals and heifers eat less.
The new-born calf has no circulating antibodies and depends on absorbing them from colostrum. The intestine can absorb whole antibody molecules for only the first day of life, and the efficiency falls steadily from birth, so colostrum is fed as soon as possible, ideally within the first one to two hours. A widely used guideline is to give colostrum equal to about 10 per cent of birth weight within the first hours of life; for a 40 kg calf that is about 4 litres. Colostrum quality can be checked on farm with a colostrometer or a Brix refractometer. Calves are then fed milk or milk replacer, commonly around 10 per cent of body weight per day or more in accelerated systems, together with fresh water, calf starter and good hay from the first week to develop the rumen. Weaning is gradual and is based on adequate starter intake.
Water is the nutrient needed in the largest amount. A lactating cow's drinking increases with milk yield, dry-matter intake and air temperature, and a high-yielding cow in hot weather can drink well over a hundred litres a day; milk is almost 87 per cent water, so restricted water cuts yield at once. Animals should have free access to clean water, from troughs that are cleaned regularly and placed where dominant animals cannot block them. Water quality — salinity, nitrate, algae and microbial contamination — is checked when animals drink less than expected. Pigs and poultry drink from nipples or cups whose flow rate is checked routinely, because a blocked drinker is easy to miss.
Records turn observation into decisions. The basic farm records are an animal inventory (each animal's identity, sex, date of birth, breed, parents, date of entry and exit, and cause of exit); breeding records (heats, inseminations or services with sire, pregnancy diagnoses, calving, lambing or farrowing dates and outcomes); production records (daily or test-day milk yield, fat and protein, weights of young stock, litter size and weaning weight); health records (each disease event, diagnosis, treatment, the medicine, dose, route, batch, the person who gave it, and the date when the withdrawal period ends); feed records (purchases, stocks and daily allowances); and financial records. Medicine records are a legal requirement in many countries, which also set how long they must be kept; the farmer must be able to show that no animal or its milk entered the food chain inside a withdrawal period.
Records may be kept in registers, on cards hung in the shed, on a farm calendar or breeding wheel, or in herd-management software linked to electronic identification and milk meters. Whatever the medium, entries are made the same day, by a named person, in a fixed format. The breeding calendar is the most used working record: from a service date it gives the expected return to heat, the pregnancy check date, the drying-off date and the expected calving date. Expected calving is the service date plus the average gestation length — roughly 280-285 days in cattle, about 305-320 days in buffalo, about 150 days in sheep and goats, and about 114 days (three months, three weeks and three days) in pigs.
A few calculations from records tell a manager how the herd is doing. The calving interval is the number of days between two successive calvings; it equals the gestation length plus the days open (calving to conception). In a seasonal or tight dairy system a target of about 365 days means a cow must conceive within about 85 days of calving. Lactation yield is often standardised to 305 days so that cows with long and short lactations can be compared. The heat detection rate is the number of heats detected divided by the number of heats expected among eligible cows over the period, the conception rate is the number of pregnancies divided by the number of inseminations, and the pregnancy rate in a 21-day period is roughly their product. Culling rate is the number of animals culled in a year divided by the average number of animals in the herd. Mortality and disease incidence are calculated in the same way, as events divided by the population at risk over a stated period.
Records are also the basis for withdrawal decisions. If a cow is treated with a product whose milk withdrawal period is 72 hours, milk from all milkings until 72 hours after the last dose must be discarded, and the date and time of release are written in the treatment record and marked on the cow, for instance with a coloured leg band. A record that cannot answer a simple question — when was this cow last treated, when is she due, which bull was used — is not doing its job.
Each foot of a cow has two weight-bearing claws, lateral (outer) and medial (inner), with two dew claws behind. The horny capsule consists of the wall, the sole and the heel (bulb), and the wall joins the sole at the white line, a weak zone where infection can enter. Horn grows continuously, at around half a centimetre a month, and on soft bedding or with too little wear the toes lengthen and the heels drop, so weight shifts to the back of the sole. In the hind feet the lateral claw carries more weight than the medial claw and overgrows more; in the front feet the medial claw is the larger. This unequal loading explains why sole ulcers occur most often on the lateral hind claw.
Functional trimming restores correct shape and balance between the claws. It is done on a tilting table or in a crush with a foot-lifting system, with hoof knives, hoof nippers and, in skilled hands, a powered disc grinder. In many dairy herds every cow is trimmed once or twice a year, often at drying-off and in mid-lactation, with lame cows treated promptly whenever they are seen. Lameness is detected by locomotion scoring, in which cows are watched walking on a flat surface and scored on a five-point scale from sound (1) to severely lame (5); a higher score means a worse gait.
The five-step Dutch method is the standard approach for cattle. Step 1: the inner claw of the hind foot (or the claw that is less overgrown) is trimmed to the correct length — for a mature Holstein-sized cow the dorsal wall is commonly left at about 7.5 cm from the hairline to the toe, scaled down for smaller breeds — and the sole is pared from the toe so that a firm sole thickness remains, about 5-7 mm. Step 2: the outer claw is trimmed to the same length and height so that both claws bear weight equally. Step 3: the inner part of the sole of each claw is gently dished (modelled) towards the space between the claws, which relieves the typical ulcer site and stops dirt being trapped. Steps 4 and 5 are therapeutic: the affected claw is lowered to relieve weight, loose and under-run horn is removed, and a block may be glued to the healthy claw. Over-trimming the sole to a thin, flexible layer causes pain and new lesions and is a common error. Footbaths with disinfectant solutions are used to control infectious foot disease such as digital dermatitis; the chemicals allowed, and their concentrations, differ between countries and products.
In sheep, routine trimming of healthy feet is no longer recommended in many guidelines, and trimming feet affected by footrot spreads the infection and slows healing. Footrot control relies on prompt treatment of lame sheep, culling repeat cases, quarantine of bought-in sheep, avoiding spread at gathering points and vaccination. Goats on soft ground need trimming more often because their horn grows fast. Horses' feet are trimmed, and shod where needed, by a farrier every few weeks.
Horned cattle and goats injure one another and their handlers, damage hides and carcasses and need more trough and space allowance, so many farms remove horns. The preferred alternatives are breeding polled animals — polledness is dominant in cattle — and, where horns are removed, removing them early as horn buds (disbudding) rather than as grown horns (dehorning). Until about two months of age the horn bud is free-floating in the skin; after that it attaches to the skull and the frontal sinus extends into the horn core as the cornual diverticulum. Dehorning an older animal therefore opens the sinus, causes heavier bleeding and leaves a larger wound. The legal requirements — the age limits, the methods allowed, whether a veterinarian must perform the procedure and whether anaesthesia and analgesia are compulsory — differ widely between countries, and the reader must follow national law. Good practice everywhere is to use local anaesthesia and a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, with doses — confirm against the product label and your national formulary.
Local anaesthesia of the horn in cattle is given by cornual nerve block. The cornual nerve, a branch of the zygomaticotemporal nerve, runs along the lateral edge of the frontal bone (the temporal line) below the ridge, roughly midway between the lateral canthus of the eye and the base of the horn, where the needle is inserted just under the ridge. In goats both the cornual branch of the lacrimal nerve and the cornual branch of the infratrochlear nerve must be blocked. Goat kids are small and more sensitive to the toxicity of lidocaine, so the total amount is calculated for the kid's weight — confirm against the product label and your national formulary.
Hot-iron disbudding uses a heated iron with a cup-shaped tip pressed over the bud and rotated until a complete copper-coloured ring is burnt through the skin around it; the bud is then scooped or allowed to slough. It is the commonest method for calves. In kids the skull is thin and the brain lies close, so the iron is applied only briefly, and with rests, to avoid thermal brain injury; kid horn buds also regrow as scurs if the ring is incomplete. Caustic paste or sticks (strong alkalis) destroy the bud chemically; they must be used only on very young calves, kept off the eyes and skin, and the calf kept from rain and from its dam licking it. Where caustic paste is permitted, law often limits it to the first week of life.
Grown horns are removed with a dehorning wire saw (embryotomy-type wire), a guillotine dehorner, a scoop (gouge) dehorner for young stock, or a dehorning saw. The cut is made about 1 cm below the hairline so a ring of skin is removed and horn does not regrow. Bleeding comes mainly from the cornual artery, which is pulled out with forceps or controlled by pressure or cautery. The open sinus is protected from flies and dirt; sinusitis, myiasis and tetanus are the main complications. Rubber-band and other slow methods of removing grown horns are prohibited or discouraged in many codes because they cause prolonged pain. Tipping — cutting off the insensitive tip only — reduces injury but is not dehorning. Dehorning is done in cool, dry, low-fly weather, and animals are watched for bleeding and infection for several days.
Castration of male farm animals prevents unwanted breeding, reduces aggression and mounting, and in pigs prevents boar taint in the meat. Its disadvantages include pain, the risk of complications, and the loss of the faster, leaner growth of entire males, which is why some systems rear entire bulls, rams and boars for early slaughter, or use immunocastration — vaccination against gonadotrophin-releasing hormone — in pigs and other species where it is authorised. Before any method, both testes are palpated in the scrotum; a cryptorchid or a scrotal or inguinal hernia changes the plan, because cutting into a hernia can let the intestines out.
Castration methods fall into three groups. Open (surgical) methods remove the testes through an incision in the scrotum: the bottom of the scrotum is removed or each side is incised, the testes are pulled out, and the cords are severed by traction, scraping, ligation or an emasculator, a tool that crushes and cuts in one action. The emasculator is applied with its crushing jaw on the body side and the cutting blade towards the testis (in horse practice, 'nut to nut', the wing nut facing the testis). Closed bloodless crushing uses an emasculatome, a heavy clamp that crushes each spermatic cord through the intact skin; each cord is crushed separately, and the scrotum is not crushed across its whole width, so that its blood supply is preserved. A rubber ring placed above the testes with a special applicator cuts off blood supply, and the scrotum and testes slough over several weeks; it is limited to very young animals in many countries and carries a risk of tetanus, so the dam's or the young animal's tetanus protection should be ensured.
Complications include haemorrhage, swelling, infection, tetanus, scirrhous cord (a chronic infection of the cord stump), and in horses and pigs, evisceration through the inguinal canal. Horses are castrated by a veterinarian under sedation and local anaesthesia standing, or under general anaesthesia. Law sets which methods may be used at which age, and whether anaesthesia and analgesia are required — confirm against the product label and your national formulary.
Tail docking of lambs is done to reduce faecal soiling and fly strike. It is done with a rubber ring or a hot docking iron, and many codes require that enough tail is left to cover the vulva of females and the anus of males. Tail docking of cattle is prohibited or discouraged in many countries because it gives no proven health benefit. In pigs, tail biting is a sign of a poor environment, and European Union rules forbid routine tail docking and routine reduction of piglets' teeth; where these are permitted as a last resort they must be done in the first days of life, and the EU allows castration of piglets without anaesthesia only up to seven days of age, by means other than tearing of tissue — other countries set their own rules. Mulesing of Merino sheep, the removal of breech skin to prevent fly strike, is contested and is being replaced by breeding and by pain relief or alternative methods in its main producing country.
Other routine practical procedures include trimming of overgrown teeth in rabbits and some ruminants, removal of supernumerary teats in heifer calves, clipping and crutching (dagging) of wool around the breech and udder before lambing, and navel dipping of new-born animals with an antiseptic to prevent navel ill. Every such procedure is recorded with the date, the method, any medicine given and the person who did it, and is done with clean instruments, good restraint, and pain relief wherever the law and good practice require.
On farm placements the student is expected to catch, halter and tie a cow, tip a sheep, fore-strip a quarter and read a strip cup, tag and tattoo an animal, age a ruminant by its incisors, condition-score a cow and estimate its weight with a tape, and help on a hoof-trimming day. In OSCEs these tasks are scored against a checklist that rewards safety, calm handling, correct sequence and clear communication with the farmer as much as the end result. Keeping a placement diary that records each task done builds the evidence that schools and accrediting bodies ask for.
A practitioner five years out uses these skills in every farm visit: choosing the safest restraint for a fractious bull, weighing or tape-estimating calves before dosing, checking that a farm's milking routine is not driving mastitis, reading treatment records to confirm withdrawal periods were respected, performing disbudding with nerve blocks and pain relief to the standard the law requires, and castrating calves, lambs, piglets or colts with the right method for the age. Teaching farm staff a good milking or footbath routine often prevents more disease than any drug the vet sells.
A senior clinician or herd-health adviser with twenty-five years of experience designs farm routines rather than performing them: writing standard operating procedures for milking, calf feeding and footbathing; setting up record systems and key performance indicators such as calving interval, heat detection rate and culling rate; auditing welfare on behalf of retailers or certification schemes; training lay staff in handling, locomotion scoring and condition scoring; and advising on the move from routine mutilations to polled genetics, immunocastration and environment-based control of tail biting.
A researcher with twenty-five years of field work studies the evidence behind farm routines: the validity and repeatability of locomotion and condition scores, automated identification and image-based recognition, sensor-based heat and lameness detection, pain assessment and the efficacy of analgesia for disbudding and castration, alternatives to mutilations, and the economics of routines on smallholder and commercial farms. Such work informs national welfare codes and the WOAH animal welfare standards, and requires careful study design, since many traditional farm practices rest on habit rather than trials.
This manual gives no drug doses for sedation, local anaesthesia or analgesia, because they vary by product and country; readers must use the product label and national formulary. Age limits and anaesthesia requirements for castration, disbudding and docking are given only as examples (the EU pig directive, common first-week limits), not as a full country-by-country table. Camelids, poultry handling, deer and equine farriery are covered only in passing. Dentition ages are the commonly taught ranges and do not cover every breed; buffalo eruption ages are not tabulated. Machine-milking settings are described in principle, not as installation specifications.
Original practice questions written to the syllabus and pattern of the exams named in each question's examTags. They are not past papers and do not reproduce any board's questions.
These notes are free to read here, with no account.
What the Laisha app adds:
Free for ten days, then a subscription. We would rather write that here than have you find it later.