Farming at Capontree Vets

26/09/2025

Liver Fluke
While many areas of the country have had a very dry summer, this area had quite a lot of rain early on in June/July with some drier weather in August. There could be a risk of starting to see infections with Liver Fluke from September onwards if there was a lot of mud snail activity early in the summer. A key indicator of fluke cases in the autumn is May – June wet days. We mentioned Heamunchosis above, it is important that we do not confuse the two diseases as symptoms can be similar e.g. pale membranes, swollen faces/bottle jaw and weight loss. If in doubt please test or speak to a vet.

The most accurate way of monitoring when Liver Fluke becomes a problem on your farm is by blood sampling sentinel lambs. We recommend testing 10 lambs every month, the test costs £25 to do the 10 lambs.

The blood test will pick up Liver Fluke 2 weeks after infection whereas Fluke egg counts will only identify adult Liver Fluke 10-12 weeks after infection. Muck testing lambs in the autumn is not an accurate way of detecting Liver Fluke.

24/09/2025

🌟Animal Health and Welfare Review🌟

Recent updates to the AHWR means that you can now carry out sheep and cattle reviews together. Reviews for the same species still need to be carried out no less than 10 months apart. For example, you could do a sheep review (worm egg count testing) in September and a cattle review (BVD testing) in November when cattle are housed.

What do you need to do to claim?

🐮For cattle you need to BVD test 5 animals between 9-18 months that are unvaccinated to claim the funding. You can claim £522 for this part.
🐮The second part of the funding called the follow up depends on the BVD results
❗️Positive: you need to carry out a PI hunt where you can claim £837
❗️Negative: you need to carry out a biosecurity review where you can claim £215

🐑For sheep you can do a wormer treatment check for the first part which is worth £436.
🐑The second part of the sheep pathway can be tailored to the farms individual needs and is worth £639.

For each species the process can be repeated every 10 months until June 2027. You need to apply online for a reference number. When you have this number pass this on to the vet and you can get started. You can apply using the link below:
https://apply-for-an-annual-health-and-welfare-review.defra.gov.uk/apply/endemics/start

If you have any questions chat to one of our vets!🩺

22/09/2025

20% of tups are found to be sub-fertile. Pre breeding examination will identify 95% of fertile and infertile tups.

We recommend especially testing tups that will be put out on their own with ewes or any that have had issues since last season. This should be at least 6 weeks prior to when you need them so there is time to source replacements if necessary!
We can come out to you or you can bring tups to either the Longtown or Brampton surgery.
A pre-breeding examination is a full MOT, a summary of the pre breeding checks you can do yourself are below:

19/09/2025

Changes to Bluetongue restrictions (From Sunday)

There have been 23 cases of Bluetongue in the current restriction zone, the majority of these cases have been in the South of England.
We still need to be vigilant to the clinical signs of Bluetongue. We have tested a handful of suspicious cases within the practice with thankfully negative results.

From the 21st of September there will a welcome relaxation of Bluetongue restrictions for animals moving into Scotland from England.
• Non-pregnant sheep and cattle can move into Scotland without the requirement for vaccination or pre-movement testing
• Pregnant cattle and breeding bulls should be either fully vaccinated 3 weeks before movement or pre movement tested 7 days before
• Pregnant sheep and breeding males should be pre movement tested 7 days before travel

16/09/2025

We are seeing an increasing number of cases of Haemonchus contortus (Baber Pole Worm) across the practice. A short lifecycle (20 days), combined with high egg output can result in heavily contaminated pasture especially in the current warm wet weather we are having!

The worm develops in the abomasum and survives by sucking blood from the stomach lining. One adult worm takes 0.5ml of blood per day.

Clinical signs include:
• Pale mucous membranes – anaemia (eye colour)
• Thin ewes/lambs not thriving
• Bottle jaw
• Dead ewes
• Scour is not common in ewes but can be see in lambs with mixed infections with other summer worms

Unlike other worms, adult sheep do not build up a good natural immunity to Haemonchus, and so regular worm egg counts of adults must be incorporated into your regime.

We have recently upgraded our worm egg count machine to allow us to differentiate between ‘normal’ worms and haemunchus worm eggs.
During ideal weather conditions the adults will lay thousands of eggs per day and these can reinfect sheep in as little as 4 days causing a massive reinfection risk.

Treatment – all wormers should be effective, there is little resistance at present. Heamonchus can also be killed by Closantel and Nitroxynil based fluke drenches too.
Haemonchus replicates very fast and therefore it can develop resistance to wormers very quickly. Monitoring BCS, worm egg counts and eye colour of ewes in a flock where Haemonchus has been diagnosed previously is important for guiding treatment rather than blanket treatment of ewes.

Prevention - Quarantine dosing animals brought onto your farm with a suitable quarantine dose – Zolvix or Startect – is the only way to prevent bringing Haemonchus and other resistant worms in.
Animals should be treated on arrival and housed for 24-48 hours to ensure any eggs are excreted before being turned out to pasture.

09/09/2025

🐏Pre Breeding Examination for Tups🐏

Sarah has been out checking tups before breeding this week.
🌟Did you know…. 20% of tups are found to be sub-fertile🌟
We recommend especially testing tups that will be put out on their own with ewes or any that have had issues since last season. This should be at least 6 weeks prior to when you need them so there is time to source replacements if necessary!

A pre-breeding examination is a full MOT and looks at the 5 T's!🩺

❗️Toes - check for any signs of CODD/Footrot
❗️Teeth - look for a broken mouth or any swellings along the jawline
❗️Testicles - both testicles should be the same size without any noticeable swellings/abnormalities
❗️Tone - check BCS should be 3.5-4 at the start of tupping
❗️Treat - think about quarantine treatments for any bought in tups (worms/fluke/scab etc)

We will also carry out a semen examination as part of this. We grade tups on a 1-5 scale. They need to be a 3/5 or more to be suitable for breeding. The video attached to this post is an example of a 5/5!

We can come out to you or you can bring tups to either the Longtown or Brampton surgery.

01/09/2025

💉BLUE TONGUE VACCINATION 💉
❗️It’s not too late to secure a slot TOMORROW❗️

We have arranged vaccination days where we will travel to your farm to vaccinate small groups of flocks

Call the practice if you’re interested!

27/08/2025

Haemonchus🐑🪱

We have been seeing an increasing number of cases of Haemonchus contortus across the practice in the last month.

Brian recently found the worm on a post mortem, and also on speciation after a suspiciously high worm egg count.
The pictures show its distinctive appearance.

We have seen Haemonchus presenting as both sudden death and as ill thrift in lambs, with many in the group looking pale and not thriving. Alongside this we often see worm egg counts in the thousands.

This worm, more commonly known as the barber’s pole worm, can be fatal with as few as 500 worms causing severe disease. A short lifecycle (20 days), combined with high egg output, means there can be a very rapid build up of parasites on pasture given suitable weather conditions – warm and wet!
The worm develops in the abomasum and survives by sucking blood from the stomach lining.
This results in a severe anaemia and often death shortly after. A bottle jaw is seen in more chronic infections and can present very similarly to acute fluke with sudden death.

Treating Haemonchus is relatively simple as the worm has little known resistance to wormers in the UK. It is also treated with the Fluke drench Solantel.

If you are concerned about your lambs, why not drop a faecal sample in for us to test.🐑

20/08/2025

💉Blue Tongue Vaccination Day💉

We have arranged another Vaccination day for us to travel to your farm to vaccinate small flocks, group of tups or Bulls.

❗️The next date is Tuesday 2nd September❗️

Please contact the surgery to book a place
Brampton 016977 2318
Longtown 01228 791245

11/08/2025

⚠️Lungworm Alert⚠️

‼️Graphic content‼️

We are beginning to see cases of Lungworm in cattle across the practice.

Mark found lungworm in a calf on post mortem a few weeks ago, you can see the adult lungworm in the calf's windpipe on the photo below.

❗️Calves in their first grazing season are most at risk because they have no immunity to the lungworm larvae on pasture.

❗️Lungworm thrives in the warm wet weather we've had through the summer so be vigilant for signs of Lungworm in your youngstock especially.

❗️The first sign of Lungworm is coughing among the group, as well as other respiratory signs and ill thrift.

Lungworm larvae found by Brian can be seen in the photo below.
The larvae are coughed up from the lungs then passed out in the dung onto pasture.
We can diagnose lungworm by testing dung samples for these larvae.

If you are wondering whether to treat or not bring us in some samples, for the most accurate result try to sample animals that are coughing!

07/08/2025

💚Today is and it's all about recognizing the work that is put in by our farmers and all members of the agricultural community.

We are very lucky to work alongside the dedicated farmers who help produce quality food for everyone to enjoy!💚

Our Vet Sarah has been doing a regular fertility visit this morning, checking cows which are pregnant or needing a little more TLC🧡

We've also had a little Visitor at the practice this morning and Student Nurse Lucy couldn't resist a cuddle! 💜

This week we have our DIY Al course which our Vet David is running, teaching future farmers the best practice to Al cattle. 🐮

03/08/2025