18 Aug 2023
Cheshire vet Matt Haslam to cover the subject for students and new vet graduates as latest in the Carpool Cases series from the Farm Animal Veterinary Society, in partnership with VetPartners.
Paul Imrie
Job Title
Matt Haslam, clinical director at Willows Vet Group, Cheshire and executive farm board member at VetPartners.
Downer cows will be the focus of the next interactive podcast in a series aimed at students and new vet graduates.
Matt Haslam, clinical director at Willows Vet Group, Cheshire and executive farm board member at VetPartners, is running the podcast, the next in the Carpool Cases series created by the Farm Animal Veterinary Society (FAVS) in partnership with VetPartners, at 7:30pm on 23 August.
Mr Haslam, who is also a director at Farmcare North, said downer cows was an important area to cover in the series, details of which are online.
He said: “It’s one of the most frequent issues for dairy farmers and vets to tackle, but because it’s one that can be caused by so many variables, getting the right solution is often not straight forward.
“Because dairy farmers are now very skilled in treating cows for regularly seen problems like this, as a vet you may not get called out to the cow until the farmer has already tried a routine treatment, such as several doses of calcium and pain relief.
“This is where it gets tricky for a young vet who arrives on-farm to help; their first port of call in terms of treatment has already been used.”
Mr Haslam added: “Because I’ve dealt with many downer cows over the past 15 years, I’ve experienced a huge range of causes; whether the cow is down because of metabolic or liver issues, injury or milk fever, I’ve learned to recognise the cues to look for in order to start narrowing down the cause.
“Getting the chance to learn from experts as part of a farm animal internship really accelerated my career development when I was a newly qualified vet.
“I was lucky enough to push for a weekly session with a senior partner and grill them on various topics. This brought my learning on more quickly than anything else could have.
“The concept of learning practical skills from others’ experiences was what we wanted to emulate in an accessible way through the Carpool Cases series.”
Details of future Carpool Cases podcasts include:
