 Shaun will be joining us today to talk about livestock disease management, prevention and intervention. Shaun is a vet with over a decade of experience specialising in production animal health. After starting an added science degree, Shaun graduated from Vet Science in 2010 from Charles Sturt University. He worked in Western Victoria and Southern Western Australia before settling back into Millicent where he and his wife purchased the family-owned Millicent Vet Clinic and more recently purchased the Kingston Vet Clinic. Shaun is predominantly a production animal vet with a growing focus on working with farmers in an advisory setting to ensure productivity is maximised through on-farm management practices such as animal health programs and feed budget assessments. Shaun has delivered a variety of farmer extension programs and workshops and enjoys working one-on-one with farmers to find solutions for production problems. Shaun's session will outline how a preventative approach to animal diseases can be helpful in your business and it will also provide a framework to help you identify if you have problems and when to intervene. Thanks very much, Shaun. Yeah, thanks everyone. Thanks to Emily and Jody and the team for having us long and everyone for having us here, so hopefully we'll get something out of the day. So Nathan talked about getting vets involved and I guess I just want to start off sort of starting to say well why shouldn't you call a vet? And that's because most things are preventable. And probably can't see the caption for this cartoon at the back but it says this always stops the scours, the trouble is I have to stay here for too long. So, you know, we get called in when things have gone wrong and the theme keeps coming up but like Nathan said before, you know, you can predict the future even though you might not think that you can. So I don't necessarily want to be involved in doing, you know, putting out fires all the time and I think that we can certainly have a role in preventing your problems and that's not just in disease outbreaks where, you know, you have a heap of dead animals that can also be in poor production and, you know, poor growth rates or poor reproductive performance. So here's a couple of examples we'll run through and these are real life problems and outbreaks. So the first one, we had some lambs that were three months old, grazing some irrigated ryegrass that are still on mum. They started to die so I think we had about 25 dead out of 450. The ones that weren't dead were moribund that couldn't get up and they were pretty skinny so they scored one out of five. So let's just have a think about what that could be. It was pretty simple. It was just worms. It wasn't anything amazing or new or weird. It was just the old fashioned worm. Egg counts of those sick ones were nearly 6,000. It wasn't just barber's pole which might be a bit unusual for some people. It was a mixture of everything. So the costs on this outbreak, if we had 25 dead, say 200 bucks a pop, there's five grand. Costs in growth rates are probably a little bit harder to put a figure on but, you know, there was a lot of skinny lambs at three months of age. There's a lot of feed that's going to go back into them to try them, get them up to some sort of weight or you sell them as a store. So there's some losses there. Our bill was probably only about $400 in the whole scheme of it all. So the question was though, was this preventable? And so we'll come back to that. Second example, there's some heifers that were bought in for a trading job on a pasture fed situation. So they're bought in from lots of farms for the sale yards. They're grazed in a mob of about 600 head on a rotational system so pretty high intensity. So they had about six dead, about up to 20% probably coughing and a big crook on it. So the diagnosis here was pneumonia or BRD, respiratory disease. Same thing if we play out the costs. We've got about $12,000 worth of dead stock. We actually decided with the farmer to give the whole mob an antibiotic treatment because we weren't sure which one was going to die next or who was going to get sick next. So there's about $6,000 or $7,000 worth of drugs. And once again, our bill was about $400 or $500. So same thing, was this preventable? So when we're talking about disease management and it doesn't necessarily matter if it's disease, it can be sitting a use up for lambing. So are we going to be preventative or are we going to be reactive? And preventative is obviously we're trying to prevent the problem and reactive is we're reacting to the problem. And so preventative measures can involve implementing vaccination programs or management changes to prevent the disease or prevent the production loss. And so that might be doing something about your poor growth rates or poor reproductive performance. Whereas if we're reactive, all we can do really is find out what caused it. And we can find out, we might be able to find out what caused the outbreak. We might be able to stop a few more losses, a few more deaths. But it's already happened. It's all in the past. And the same with the production losses. But if we're being reactive, the losses have already happened. Those dead lambs, they're not coming back to life. The growth rates, the lost kilos that you lost in terms of selling store lambs, you're not going to find them under a rock. So it's already gone. So where are the costs between the two ways of managing it? So preventative, there's costs in professional advice. So engaging a vet or a consultant or an animal health advisor to try and do something preventative. There might be some additional costs in vaccines, additional costs in changing some management practices, maybe more yardings because you've got to do more vaccinations. Where's the cost in reactive management? Well, it's in mortalities and it's in loss production. And like I said, it's already gone. So you're not going to find the lost kilos or the lost animals that you've lost because we've waited for the problem to happen. So when are you going to intervene? And Deb's given us a pretty good lead-in on that with your new mortality sort of figures. The caption down on this cartoon says, maybe it's not me, you know, maybe it's the rest of the herd that's gone insane. So I guess it's a point of just of actually intervening and like Nathan said, what do the top guys do? Well, they have a bit of attention to detail and they act on things and they're proactive. So if you think something's up, do something about it. Don't just sit there and kind of go, well, maybe, you know, maybe I'm the crazy one. Get ahead and get ahead of the game and do something. And so to intervene, we need to know a bit about mortality and production losses and scale and context also has a bit to do with when we do jump in and do something. But to start with, you need to be measuring. And so Deb and Nathan are both touched on this. You need to be measuring something so you can manage it. So when not many people knew their mortality results or their mortality figures, you know, that's a starting point. You need to know some of these numbers so that you can start to do something about it. So mortality levels, so, and I guess in terms of intervening, you've got to be looking at that in the present but also in the past. So as we spoke about reviewing your numbers and sort of knowing what figures to act on and Deb's given us some probably more accurate and up-to-date numbers than I've got here. So if you've got some benchmarks to work towards and you're reviewing your numbers, then you can start to do something about it. And I guess there's also just that, you know, in the present, well, I've lost one new today or like I made over here, he said, you know, found, what, four on five in the paddock? Well, you know, that's a point to react and do something rather than just letting it dribble along and getting to the end of the year and we've lost 10% of the use. Production data, that's a little bit more in the past, so that's much more about looking at what's happened and it's always going to be in the past because when we get our production data, it's, you know, it's happened. So the scanner comes out and he scans it, scans your sheep and you've got 140% conception. Well, that's really good, but he scans and you've only got 90% conception. Well, that's too late. It's already happened. You know about it, but there's not much you can do about it for that year. It's going to the next year. Same with growth rates. Well, we're measuring growth rates. There's not much you can do about it. This year, if it's a total growth rate, it's more about looking what happens next year. And so the things to look at for repo rates, it starts to get some of these numbers down pat, landing percentages, waning percentages, pregnancy percentages, et cetera. They can go on and on and on, but having some sort of measurement and growth rates is the other thing. And so having some benchmarking, like Deb's given us some good U-mortality benchmarking, some recent, there's a recent MLA webinar from aggregate consulting in New South Wales that did some benchmarking through the Southeast in Australia a year on year. And they had a couple of little good benchmarks in there for the top 20 producers, top 20% producers were most profitable, had 120% lambing and a growth rate over 270 grams per day for prime lamb fox. So not huge numbers, but it's a starting point to know whether you're hitting benchmarks or not. So I want to talk in scale and context. It's important not only for yourself, but also for me. So, you know, to get a good diagnosis or get information that's going to be valuable for the whole farm or the flock, it needs a bit of context. So one-offs or one-offs, you know, so kill to win in the flag in 66, that looks like it's going to be a one-off. But, you know, if you can, you know, we can investigate and post-mortem every animal that dies, which it all sounds good, but until it's got a little bit of context, we don't always get a meaningful answer and, you know, I can't give you a meaningful recommendation. So we start to look at some patterns. So like our friend over here said, you know, if he finds five dead sheep in the same paddock, you know, that's a bit more meaningful because there's some context around that. If someone rings me up and says, I've got, I lost one U out of a thousand in the middle of January, there's a little bit less context to that. Probably doesn't mean quite so much. So patterns are, you know, the class of stock. So who's dying? Is it U's that are on the point of lamb? Is it weaners? Is it dry animals? What time of year is it happening? What paddocks are happening in? So if all these things are repeating or there's something common about the mortalities or the disease that's happening in, puts a bit more context around it. And so, you know, the difference between one U out of a thousand dying in January when, you know, they're dry and they're just ticking along versus five U's in a paddock, two eggs out from lambing, much different ramifications. And then we come to the concept of, I suppose, a coincidence. So who knows what a coincidence is or thinks they know? So coincidence is just a random event happening. So if we look around the room, everyone's rolled up here today in a pair of boots probably. A lot of people. A pair of moleskins. Probably a lot of moleskins to drop shirts. Is that coincidence? So we've all sort of dressed pretty similarly? Not really. Like, we're all here for the same reason. We've all got shared interests. We're all in the same industry. If two people had rocked up today in a tie-died T-shirt, that would be a coincidence. It would be pretty unusual. So don't think... Don't just put things off to coincidence. Don't say I had five U's dying the same paddock, two eggs from lambing. That's not a coincidence. Don't just write things off. So how to intervene? So I guess there's private vets, obviously. We can do postmortems, disease investigations, blood tests, whatever that is. Obviously, it's not always postmortems. If it's production losses, we can try and work out why your conception rates weren't so good or growth rates weren't so good. There's pairs of vets. I think they're probably a little bit underutilised. So we do a lot of this stuff because there's a lot of us down in the southeast, but where the vets are a bit more scarce up in these sorts of areas, I know Jeremy in here at Murray Bridge is pretty active and pretty good, so definitely utilise the pairs of guys. And there's definitely a lot of subsidies for investigating diseases, so they will pay for lab fees. There's situations where if we submit brains, they will pay for vets' time and direct rebates as well. So there is assistance out there. And I guess if you haven't got access to vets close by or consultants, start to think about doing it remotely. So as Deb sort of mentioned, if we're starting to get some measurements and it's going to take a bit of data analysis, but if you're getting some measurements, then you can sit down and either remotely or make a special trip to the farm or wherever it is, and we can sit down and start to unscramble the egg. I've got 10% U-mortality right over where is it. Let's sort of start to try and pull this apart a bit. So if you haven't got those services at your back doorstep, you can get around it. And these words keep coming up, so measuring, recording and reviewing. So that's what it keeps coming up, whether it's diseases or whether it's nutrition or a whole farm sort of performance. It's still the same concepts. So what's going to go into a preventative plan? And we might do this really formally or we might just do it on the fly and these questions go through my head pretty quickly sometimes. But first of all, we've got to identify the disease risk to the business. And that can be broken down into, say, the risk to the animal. So is the disease we're talking about, is it going to kill them or is it just going to knock their growth rate back a little bit? But then there's also the financial risk to the business. So I think the classic one would be lice to a wool grower. So if Chad here gets lice in his wool that he cherishes so much, not only is it going to break his heart, but it's going to have a big financial burden on him. And so working out for different diseases, what's going to be the financial impact, financial impact if that disease really takes a hold in the flock or the herd. And then we would identify the cause of the problem. So that's where we start to look at patterns. You know, who's affected, where are they affected? Is it, you know, is our immortality mainly comprised of perinatal loss? So is it used around lambing? Well, let's do some focus on that and that might just be nutritional changes but it's still part of the whole process. And if the specific pathogens, you know, we look at actual, you know, which virus or bacteria or whatever it is that's causing it. We're going to do a bit of cost benefit. So will the spend relate to the profit? You know, I could tell you, and I'm sure a lot of the resellers could tell you, you know, you could, you know, could make a case to vaccinate every, you know, for every disease under the sun but is it going to pay off? And I sort of think of these not necessarily on return of investment but more sort of like along a partial budget line where, you know, if I do something that's different to what I would have otherwise done, how much is that going to pay, you know, how much is that going to get me? Not necessarily if I spend five grand on a vaccine. Is it going to give me, you know, seven grand return? And a lot of the cost on prevention is a bit of insurance and goes for an example at the end to sort of show but it does give a bit of peace of mind to people and sometimes it's just insurance that they do get out of it. So we've got to continually review it. So some of these cost-benefit equations do change with commodity prices. And the last bit of the preventive plan is going to be, you know, what vaccination changes do we do or what management changes do we do but we've still got to bear in mind the practicalities of these. So is it practical to do an extra yarding for an extra vaccination or make sure they're targeted so that we're doing the right class of stock in terms of vaccination or management change? So here's a bit of an example of a disease outbreak and what we did about it. So this client had, it happened two years in a row for them. So they had deaths of wiener cattle in a bit of time after weaning. There was a lot of factors that went into it as there often is. There was a bit of nutritional problems. There was the stress around wiening. There was these couple of viruses involved, so Pestivirus and IBR, which is a respiratory virus. Essentially what was happening though was that they were dying and so they had, you know, significant mortalities. So this happened two years in a row. So like I said, the costs were in mortalities. We ended up doing the same thing, a blanket antibiotic treatment. So there was some costs in antibiotics and there was some probably reduced growth rates. So I guess what did we do to sort of prevent this from happening? So we identified the risks. So we worked out that, you know, it's obvious the wieners were the ones affected, but it was high mortality. It wasn't just a bit of reduced growth rate. They were dying. So what was the financial loss? Well, they lost years for sale. So they lost revenue at some reduced growth rates. What were the causes? So it was multifactorial. They often are. So we, you know, there was nutritional stress. There's the association of stress around weaning and then with the specific viruses that were respiratory virus and this immune suppressor virus of Pestee. And these are all things that we can do something about. So like Nathan said, you know, it's about trying to control what you can control. So with, you know, that we worked out what are we going to do to change this? So we implemented a vaccination management changes. So we targeted to the wieners specifically, vaccinations specific to those viruses that were involved. And we know there's vaccines available for them, so we could use them. But it might, it meant that it means that this producer every year runs all these cattle through two weeks before weaning to vaccinate those wieners or those animals pre-weaning so that they're covered while it's on the get to weaning. And we also looked at some winter nutrition. So this is really important is to get these management and these vaccination timings right because we've identified that the wieners are affected and they need to be covered with those vaccines before they hit the weaning yards. What was the cost benefit to this? So like we said, the big loss was in mortalities. I think roughly the, might have been the second year it happened. I think he quoted about 40 grand's worth of stock that he lost. Just last year, I think the vaccination alone, the vaccination bill for doing that program was about 25 grand. So he could make that pay. Was that outbreak and that disease going to happen every year, year in, year out? I don't know. Might not. Probably not. But he didn't really want to go through all that again. He didn't want to risk it. He saw that as a risk to his business. And so there is a sense of insurance and going down that pathway. So if we go back to our examples at the start, could they have been prevented? Well, the answer is yes. So the worm case, you know, they could have had a bit better strategic drenching. They could have done a bit better monitoring. They've done some fecal egg counts. And they could make sure they're using some effective drenches that they know are going to work. In the pneumonia case, the answer is yes again. It could have been prevented. But if we'd have sat down before we'd traded all those animals, we could have said, well, the risk is pneumonia. We've got lots of animals coming from different sources, high stress. And we can do a vaccination on induction for all those animals before they hit the main mob. So how are we going to prevent these problems? So engage someone like myself or a consultant or an animal health officer and get an animal health plan going. Have some attention to detail. Have monitoring. Have some sort of concept what your mortality is, what your growth rates are, what your reproductive rates are. Don't be reactive. Try and be proactive. And don't make excuses. Don't just walk past the five dead in the paddock and go, oh, well, that was a coincidence. Do something about it. And yeah, so the pathway to success, the easy roads, you know, it's easy because for a reason, the hard road will give you a bit better reward. So, you know, not walking past the five dead in the paddock pre-lamming, you know, it means you've got to do something about it and you've got to get off your backside and get into it. So, yeah, don't be afraid of the hard road. I just sort of highlight a couple of key resources that are under development at the moment, sort of tacking onto Sean's talk. We currently have a risk calendar which is under development which will be available via our website. Things to be aware of at different times of the year and how to put your preventative procedures in place for management. That will be an interactive calendar that can be accessed through the PERSA website. We're also in the process of doing a reprint of the Sheep Disease Guide, which some of you may be aware of, really popular document. And we are in the process of developing a cattle disease guide. So, if you're interested in any of those resources, I've just popped a piece of paper up the back there. Please leave your details and we'll get onto you when they're available.