Ceva launches service to highlight the cost of infertility linked to Q fever

Ceva Animal Health has launched a new service called Q Review to provide vets and farmers with insights into costs associated with fertility issues in dairy herds linked to Q fever.

The new service is free of charge to vets and can be used by Ceva representatives during practice visits to help assess an individual herd’s fertility in comparison to industry averages and targets.

Suitable for year-round dairy calving herds in the UK, the service uses a unique app solution based on what Ceva describes as “robust data sources”, including the NMR 500 Herd Report[1] and Kingshay Dairy Costings[2].

Clinical signs

The app can be used for herds that have not yet tested for Q fever but are experiencing clinical signs of the disease including increased pregnancy losses and metritis, as well as more subtle fertility issues such as increased days open.

It can also be utilised in those that have tested positive but are not yet vaccinating to review a herd’s progress.

Providing information as a benchmark to generate discussion around the cost of infertility in AYR dairy calving herds, the app collects information on herd disease status, vaccination status and fertility status to provide a traffic light colour-coded review demonstrating where the herd is against industry standards.

Financial cost

The results will show the financial cost of fertility issues to the individual farm, the industry average cost and calculate the difference between the two. It also demonstrates the specific costs of fertility split between abortion, metritis, endometritis, retained placenta, extended calving intervals per day, weak newborns/stillbirths and culling due to fertility issues.

Katherine Timms, ruminant veterinary advisor at Ceva, said: “The new Q Review app will provide vets with extensive herd-specific information to aid further discussions with the individual dairy farmer on herd selection for diagnostics and the benefits of vaccination with Coxevac. It will also encourage farmers to boost year-on-year by showing improvements post vaccination.”

References:

1. NMR 500 Herd Report 2024: Hanks et al (2024). Key performance indicators (KPIs) for the UK national dairy herd – A study of herd performance in 500 Holstein/Friesian NMR recorded herds for the year ending 31 August 2023.

2. Kingshay Dairy Costings (2024). Kingshay’s Dairy Costings reports track the financial performance of dairy farms, including factors like herd size and milk production costs.