Webinars Bitesize Programme

We offer evening live CPD webinars that are delivered by SRUC Veterinary Investigation Officers, SRUC speakers and external experts. This CPD activity is part of the Outreach for Surveillance and Bitesize CPD programme. The live webinars, which are also recorded, are funded by the Scottish Government and are delivered to UK and overseas veterinary practitioners free of cost.

Note that the webinar recordings will be forward to CPD attendees after each talk and can be accessed through the online CPD academy/free talks section. Please contact us for any queries via the form below.

Using vaccines to prevent disease in cattle and sheep; concepts, strategies and challenges

Date: 12 June 2024
Time: 7-8pm
Location: Online - register using this link

Description:
Vaccination is one of the most cost-effective methods of disease prevention and control in livestock production. It addresses key issues in health and welfare of livestock while also helping to address some of the big challenges facing the sector today, including reduced use of antimicrobials, increased production efficiency leading to impacts on NetZero targets and reduced environmental contamination which positively impacts on biodiversity. Vaccination is not a stand-alone tool in disease control and must be seen as one element in a network of measures which include breed selection, nutrition, housing design, management and biosecurity and, if these should break down and disease occurs, accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment with chemotherapeutics. This talk will introduce the concepts of disease prevention by vaccination in cattle and sheep and discuss current options and strategies for vaccination, as well as some of the current challenges in using this strategy to control disease.

Speaker: Alasdair Nisbet
Professor Alasdair Nisbet is Deputy Director and former Head of the Vaccines and Diagnostics Department at the Moredun Research Institute near Edinburgh. He is also Chief Scientific Officer of Wormvax Australia Pty Ltd, a company which manufactures a vaccine to control H. contortus, and is an Honorary Professor within the University of Glasgow’s College of Medical, Veterinary & Life Sciences. Over the last 20 years he has been part of a team successfully developing novel vaccines to control parasites in livestock and this has been achieved through fruitful collaborations with academic, public sector and stakeholder groups worldwide (e.g. USDA, NFUS, Meat and Livestock Australia).

Past talks

To view the recordings for these and many other talks go to the SRUC elearning platform and use your login details or create a new, free account. Then select the talks you want to watch.

: We all know plenty about best practice colostrum management for dairy calves and yet a failure of passive transfer still lies behind many calf health issues we see in dairy herds and beef units. Katie Denholm and Ali Haggerty have led several research projects in recent years focussing on these problems on commercial dairy farms. This webinar took a UK perspective and focus on the extent of the issue, testing strategies and test performance as well as the critical control points for colostrum cleanliness. They also touched on low colostrum yield risk factors, extended colostrum feeding, infectious disease risk and making a difference on farm.

Speakers: Katie Denholm & Ali Haggerty

(original event date: 28 February 2024)
: Following on from our January meeting focusing on dairy calves, our next meeting just ahead of the main suckler calving period focused on late pregnancy suckler cow nutrition, maximising colostrum intake for suckled calves and the effects of early life performance on calf health to weaning. Plenty to help you advise and guide your clients in the coming weeks and months.

Speaker: Rachel Bragg BVM&S DipECBHM MRCVS Lecturer in Farm Animal Practice RDSVS

(original event date: 20 February 2024)
: This practical webinar with speaker Lorna Shaw discussed nutrition in ewes pre-lambing, looking at feeding systems and assessing the adequacy of nutrition on farm. This included troubleshooting common nutritional issues and how to identify areas for improvement.

(Original date: 31 January 2024)
: The investigation, diagnosis and control of Q fever to protect animal and human health does present vets and farmers with some challenges. This webinar set out to present some of practical points about this disease for vets to consider with their clients.

Speaker: Colin Mason Colin Mason, Veterinary Centre Manager at the SRUC Disease Surveillance Centre (DSC) in Dumfries. After qualifying he spent 5 years in farm animal practice in Cheshire before joining SAC in 2000. He obtained the RCVS Certificate in Cattle Health and Production in 1999.

(Original date: 29 November, 2023)
: This practical webinar discussed nutrition in suckler cows pre-calving, looking at feeding systems and assessing the adequacy of nutrition on farm. This will include troubleshooting common nutritional issues and how to identify areas for improvement.
: This was the final webinar in this series for vets that has explored ways of making beef and sheep health plans more effective in practice. We heard from the three farm animal vets who have tested dynamic health planning with their clients over the last year, including rounding off their clients' year and discussing the benefits and challenges of using dynamic health planning in practice.

(Original date: 12 October 2023)
: The rise of backyard poultry keeping and farm/estate diversification into small-scale gamebird shoots are two contributors to the growing presentation of avian cases to mixed and farm animal vets. In addition, the increased prevalence of avian influenza means that diagnostic investigations in poultry and game birds can be challenging. Join Alex Schock and Caroline Robinson to go "beyond the flu": Alex spoke about her experience as an avian pathologist at APHA Lasswade, concentrating on diagnosing common diseases in chickens, turkeys, waterfowl and game birds from small flocks, including when to call APHA to notify a potential notifiable disease outbreak. Caroline presented examples of recent cases investigated through the SRUC's network of postmortem examination facilities in Scotland.

(Original date: 11 October 2023)
: Scotland continues to enjoy Official TB Free Status and the benefits that that brings to the cattle industry. However, this does not mean that TB is not present in the cattle population and it remains an ever present potential biosecurity threat. We were delighted to have three expert speakers discuss TB in a Scottish context over the course of two webinars. Firstly Mick Park and Iain Bell from APHA who described trends, actions on confirmed cases and new opportunities for investigating the source and Sarah Tomlinson who is the TB Advisory Service Technical Director, veterinary lead and a key member of BCVA’s TB working group, who gave us an overview of an holistic approach to bovine TB.

(Original dates: 20 & 27 September, 2023)
: Milk drop in dairy herds is complicated! It is truly multifactorial with causes including infectious disease, nutrition, management or a combination of all three. With the advance of increased technology on dairy farms there is also an abundance of data to draw on. From a disease surveillance perspective it is also of interest as a potential way in which a new and emerging disease may start in a herd. This webinar discussed how to approach an investigation in a cost effective way, considered some of the common and more exotic differential diagnoses relevant to individual herds and tried to help navigate the complexities of what might be going on on farm.

(original date: 6 September 2023)
: This was the third in a series of webinars for vets that explored ways of making beef and sheep health plans more effective in practice.

Participants join us to catch up with Ed, Ali and Lee-Anne as they reported back on their clients' herds and flocks after the lambing / calving period and looked forward to managing health risks over summer.
: In addition to the large dairy beef rearing companies, we have seen an increase in farms taking on small numbers of dairy beef calves to rear as a sideline to other farming enterprises, outside the traditional dairying areas. This webinar aimed to highlight the important nutritional and health planning considerations for these rearing systems up to and around weaning. The management and prevention of common problem scenarios was also discussed.

(Original date: 19 April, 2023)

Online CPD Academy

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Webinars Bitesize Programme

Upcoming talks:

Past talks

Colostrum for Dairy Calves, What's New?

Suckler cow feeding, colostrum quality and improving suckler performance

Assessing Pre-lambing Nutrition

Practical advice on Q fever for vets

Assessing Pre-calving Nutrition

Health planning on beef and sheep farms: Finding new solutions Part 4

Diagnostic approaches to common diseases of backyard poultry and gamebirds in practice

Taking Control of Bovine TB

Investigating milk drop syndrome in dairy herds

Health planning on beef and sheep farms: Finding new solutions (part 3)

An Introduction to Dairy Beef Calf Systems – Nutrition and Infectious Disease

Got a question? Get in touch.