With the autumn calving underway to varying degrees among different herds, it’s common to see outbreaks of calf scours. This is both costly and frustrating, as treatment of affected calves is time consuming at an often busy time of year.

Cows calve under shelter, generally among trees and on bare dirt. If the same paddock is used every year to calve in, over successive years there is a build up of pathogens as the bugs which cause scours live for longer than a year in damp, shaded areas. A number of cows will also harbour the scour pathogens without showing signs of the disease themselves. These cows shed high numbers of organisms into the environment due to stress and immune suppression around calving. The issue always gets worse with calving periods greater than 60 days, as the younger calves are exposed to higher pathogen loads which have accumulated over the calving period.

Useful tips for preventing an outbreak of calf scours:

1. Target a tight joining period (ideally <8 weeks)
2. Use a new calving paddock every year. This paddock should not have been used to calve cows for >18 months, and ideally has some pasture cover.
3. Avoid manure build-up in calving area. Move hay and grain feeders around, and have multiple water troughs. Do not put cows into calving paddock until two weeks before the expected start of calving.
4. Maximise colostrum intake to maximize calves' immunity. The major reason calves miss their colostrum is when they experience calving difficulty. If dystocia exceeds 10% in heifers and 2% in cows you need to correct this.

Meat & Livestock Australia have also put out 2 great resources on this topic:

• Preventing calf scours in suckler beef enterprises
• Treating calf scours

Recently, a palaeontologist working out of Florida's College of Veterinary Medicine examined preserved specimens of equine distal phalanges. In these specimens, which ranged from 11,000 to 3.5 million years old, 75% of them had chronic laminitis.

Laminitis has many causes. Previous research has focused on the role of trauma and inflammatory events like colic, infections and grain engorgement that trigger the immense inflammation within the sole of the horse. However, we are now discovering that the most common type of laminitis is associated with obesity, metabolic disease and feeding high-energy diets. Laminitis associated with these risk factors often becomes chronic and recurring, so the advantage of identifying these risks is that we can then prevent this from happening.

Metabolic diseases in horses appear in a variety of ways. One you may be familiar with is Equine Cushing’s Disease, which now flies under a new name, PPID. The most common sign of a horse with this disease is their tendency to become excessively hairy as they grow older. Another frequently occurring disease is Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS). EMS essentially describes a collection of clinical signs displayed by horses. These include obesity, laminitis, insulin resistance, infertility and increased appetite. There is actually a similar disease in humans also called metabolic syndrome, which you may know by the name "pre-diabetes".

Why are we telling you this?

Despite the facts we have been able to share with you, our current knowledge of laminitis is limited and is preventing us from developing effective treatment and prevention strategies. There is currently a lot of research underway globally to find solutions to the problem, and you could be a part of it - read on to find out how.