Farm Tested
In order to discuss and educate others, there’s nothing better than to be hands-on in real life situations in real time. Having been an in-the-trenches dairy veterinarian for 20 years has afforded me great insight into commonly encountered problems, their presentations, the therapeutic options, and seeing the results of treatment decisions. Having been on hundreds of dairies both as a practitioner and invited consultant, problems and their solutions using natural, non-antibiotic and non-hormonal treatment solutions has been the center of my entire veterinary career.
What’s even better now is that having my own herd of cows, I can continue to tinker and fine-tune treatment protocols because I’m on our farm daily. I love milking cows and seeing the slightest details and changes about individual cows, noting changes between days and jotting them down in my pocket notebook while monitoring a cow or calf’s condition. Whether it be culturing cows prior to dry-off with PhytoMast and re-culturing them when fresh to see the results, or using GetWell mixed in a bottle of dextrose and running it in IV along with Bovi-Sera and AmpliMune for one of my cows with a fever of unknown origin then redosing her daily by mouth and observing first-hand how her condition improves (or not, and then switching to antibiotics), or some calves that are starting to cough and giving them oral BreatheWell and GetWell and *closely* monitoring them a couple times each day to see if anything else is needed (potentially Inforce 3, BoviSera and MultiMin)
For example, I wish I had a video of the time an older cow, Iris, hadn’t shown heat in about 5 months and she was starting to get fat (never good when trying to get a cow bred back). We put her on oral HeatSeek and on the 6th day of daily treatment, she in one split second, raised her head to look around to see where the yard bull was and marched herself right over to the pipe gate to get close to him and after we opened the gate she walked to the bull and stood as the bull bred her. She settled on that heat, calved a robust bull calf and is now back in the milking string producing a lot of milk. I’ll always remember her behavioral estrus being turned on after nothing happening for many months.
Experiences like that and many more around our farm help me to help you better with problems you’re facing as chances are I have experience with the same problem and stay fresh both as a dairy farmer and veterinarian.