Cattle PD scanning training for farmers - this December

vetimagesolutions

New Member
Location
Kent
Hello everyone,

We are running our biannual DEFRA-approved cattle scan training course on the 8th - 11th of December at Harper Adams University in Shropshire. This course is designed for farmers and farm workers, who want to be able to scan their own cows and/or those of others around, keeping more processes in-house and vet bills down.

It is not legally permitted to scan cows in the UK without DEFRA exemption, which can only be obtained by attending a course such as the one that we run. The four days are split into practical and classroom-based sessions. All practical sessions are supervised by a veterinarian as well as the course tutors, and we limit the course to a maximum of 6 attendees, so you will have plenty of attention!

You will learn to scan throughout the entire reproductive cycle of the cow, from before oestrus through to ovulation and potential pregnancy. You will be taught how to gauge the age of the calf and can also be taught the principles of foetal sexing (bear in mind that this is an advanced technique and will take some further practice back on the farm).

If you are interested in attending, please contact us (Vet Image Solutions) on 0208 432 9802 or email [email protected] . Thank you!
 

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vetimagesolutions

New Member
Location
Kent
It's £1200 + VAT for the four days. We do our best to keep the pricing as reasonable as we can (bearing in mind farm rental, classroom hire, providing enough machines for everybody to use, teachers, vet bills... all divided by quite a small number of students!).

Lunch is also provided each day, but dinner isn't, so budget for this also (we tend to all go together to a local pub).

Equipment can range from £2000 right up to £5000 (quite a lot of people go through finance/leasing for their scanner), but we have a variety of ultrasound machines at the course for you to try so you can get an idea of what type of system would suit you best. We do sell equipment so we provide a £200 discount off any machine for course attendees, if you do decide to buy one from us.
 

vetimagesolutions

New Member
Location
Kent
I believe multi power is right. It's the whole arm inside the cow part that is the objection, which is why AI is fine but scanning isn't.

We find that people who can PD manually have a bit of a head start on our courses because they already have in their minds where everything is.
 

multi power

Member
Location
pembrokeshire
I believe multi power is right. It's the whole arm inside the cow part that is the objection, which is why AI is fine but scanning isn't.

We find that people who can PD manually have a bit of a head start on our courses because they already have in their minds where everything is.
My manual P D is is basically just on a few cows that had been scanned pregnant but still look empty when they should be springing. Really I'm just confirming that they are empty before they go. I would like to think I have a fairly good knowledge of a cows reproductive organs
I can do diy AI but don't do it often
 

vetimagesolutions

New Member
Location
Kent
Hi buffalo_soldier. The running costs for ultrasound are lubrication and gloves, which you may already be getting in if you do AI. All of our scanners come with 2 year warranties (parts and labour), so unless there was a major disaster like the scanner falling from height onto concrete, there should not be any repair costs within this period. It's very rare that we get a scanner back for repair within this time or indeed any time within the first 4 years. The most common problem over time is where the cable starts to detach from the probe head after a lot of use (thousands of scans). Our engineer can fix general wear and tear issues like this within 48 hours for under £40.

Yes, detecting a 35 day pregnancy would be easily achievable. You will be able to see the embryo at this stage. In fact, you'll find that detecting the earlier pregnancies is often easier than the later ones, where the calf might be beyond sight of the probe (particularly if you don't have the longest arms!) and you're looking for other clues like placentomes and the status of the ovaries.
 
I believe multi power is right. It's the whole arm inside the cow part that is the objection, which is why AI is fine but scanning isn't.

We find that people who can PD manually have a bit of a head start on our courses because they already have in their minds where everything is.
So you can put your hand inside a cow and AI with out a license, but you can't scan a cow, which doesn't involve putting you hand in side a cow, unless you have a license?
 

vetimagesolutions

New Member
Location
Kent
You don't really need to put your arm right inside the cow to AI, which is why it's fine to just do a course to learn the AI technique, as opposed to needing legal exemption to perform it.

jimmer, those introducers are a bit of a grey area, but personally I can't see how you'd ever be able to get to everywhere you wanted to be when you can't feel where you are going. It also makes you less sensitive to what is going on inside your cow and it could be easier to injure the animal using something like this.

Experienced scanners will use a combination of touch and the 'vision' they get from their probe. For example, Peter (the vet that teaches on our courses) explains how you can gently lift and spread out the uterine horns to help you to scan all the way along them, or find the ovaries by touch and scan them to look for dominant follicles, corpus luteum, corpus hemorrhagicum etc. I don't think you can get this quality of information from an introducer.
 

vetimagesolutions

New Member
Location
Kent
jimmer, you’re right, you still wouldn’t be able to jab the cows but if you can separate off all the ones which are pregnant and fine then like buffalo says, you’re making huge reductions in the amount of time the vet needs to spend on your farm. He or she will only need to check the cows you’ve identified as needing attention. It also means you can keep your pregnant cows well away from anybody coming onto your farm from elsewhere.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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