Blog
Identifying And Treating Lameness In Cattle
There are two vital points to remember when tackling lameness in a group of cattle:
Identify what the cause of lameness is
Don’t assume all cases have the same cause
Practical Steps To Reducing Lameness In Finishing Cattle
As with most things in life, when it comes to lameness, prevention is always better than cure. Lameness is recognised as a major issue in the dairy industry, with dairy producers spending a lot of time and money on treating and preventing lameness in their herds. Although not such an acute issue in most beef herds, there is still potential to make changes to reduce lameness, particularly in finishing systems.
Read More >
Handling And Stacking Silage Bales
When making silage bales it worth taking extra care around handling, wrapping and stacking of bales to avoid costly nutrient losses and some harmful moulds that can cause issues with livestock.
Read More >
Problems With Newborn Lambs and Calves Suckling
We have had more reports this year of newborn lambs and calves having problems suckling. In some cases it appears that the young themselves will not suckle and when checked and encouraged appear not to even have a suckling reflex.
Read More >Nutritional Safety For Feeding Urea
The shortage of protein feeds such as distiller’s grains and high cost of supplementing protein may make urea seem an attractive alternative for supplementing rations. Urea has been successfully used in rations for over 70 years, however when using urea some caution is required.
Read More >
Ragwort – May 2020
Ragwort is a biennial and a fresh batch of rosettes germinate each spring, particularly if there are gaps in the sward, and plants have been allowed to seed in previous…
Read More >
Potatoes: Potato Blight Update late May 2020
Potato blight (P. infestans) Population update The trend for new, highly aggressive genotypes to quickly spread across Europe, displacing less aggressive strains, has continued. The P. infestans genotypes 13_A2 and…
Read More >
Spring Oats – May 2020
Crop Growth SRUC’s monitored crop data for late May is shown in the table below. This data is generated in commercial crops in your area so is indicative of the…
Read More >
Spring Barley: Plant Growth Regulators – May 2020
With the dry conditions and some patchy germination, the last thing many spring barley crops need is a growth regulator. Crops under stress should not be treated with a growth…
Read More >
Orange Wheat blossom midge – May 2020
Orange wheat blossom midge should appear soon in Scottish crops. Midges need a warm, dry spell of weather after rain to emerge – we have just had the rain and…
Read More >Sign up to the FAS newsletter
Receive updates on news, events and publications from Scotland’s Farm Advisory Service