VET20070

Learning Outcomes:

On completion of this module students should be able to:
• Make current practical recommendations on how to manage, feed and produce food animal species (cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry and fish) efficiently and safely.
• Demonstrate an understanding of basic production methods for beef, sheep, poultry, fish and pig meat production.
• Describe the quality standards applied to milk production for human consumption and the management factors that contribute to mastitis and milk quality in dairy herds.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the environmental requirements of domestic species, especially their housing requirements, and how the animal's environment affects its health and production.
• Identify environmental and husbandry aspects that predispose to health problems and limit production.
• Have an understanding of the concepts of herd health and the herd health cycle.
• Advise on appropriate husbandry for the maintenance of herd or flock health.
• Discuss key animal health issues that form part of routine herd and flock health programmes.
• Have a basic understanding of fish production systems, fish husbandry and fish health plans.
• Have a basic understanding of pig and poultry systems, husbandry and health plans.
• Have a basic understanding of the importance of disease prevention and herd health and how this relates to antibiotic usage on farms and the challenge of antimicrobial resistance.
• Have a basic understanding of herd health as a concept, as well as basic understanding of important herd health topics including lameness control, mastitis management, infectious disease control in cattle and flock health management.
• Have a basic understanding of honey bee husbandry and common diseases affecting honey bees.
• Have an understanding of the important husbandry requirements of camelids, e.g. alpaca, including dietary requirements, animal handling techniques, and common diseases.
• Demonstrate competency in the safe handling and husbandry of calves, including practical aspects such as disbudding, castration, stomach tubing, colostrum management and basic clinical examination.
• Demonstrate competency in the handling of farm and companion animals in a way that reduces health and safety risk to the handler and encourages low stress scenarios for the animal.

Indicative Module Content:

LECTURES
Wednesday lectures: 10am – 12noon. Some lectures will occur on Fridays.
FS1 FM Calf rearing system / management: colostrum, nutrition of pre-ruminant calf, milk replacer, composition, whole milk, automatic feeding systems. .
FS2 FM Calf housing principals (such as orientation, relative humidity, ventilation, space allocation, feeding arrangements), individual and group housing, Patterson houses etc
Fish Lectures (2 hours) Dr. Susie Mitchell – introduction to aquaculture as well as infectious and parasitic diseases of farmed salmon.
FS 3 FM Dairy - Rearing replacement dairy heifers: factors affecting growth rates; target growth rates; nutritional strategies for optimal growth and development; choosing dairy replacement heifers.
FS4 FM Beef production - conventional calf to 18 months or calf - 24 months system, including calendar of events: nutritional factors pertinent to beef production; introduction to important nutritional and other diseases of fattening cattle.
FS5 FM Beef production - suckler beef production, including calendar of events: management to prevent dystocia; introduction to factors (feeding, parasites, trace element disease) that influence suckler calf thrive and the efficiency of suckler beef production.
FS6 FM Beef production - bull beef / cereal beef production - calf to 12/14 months, intensive / winter finishing: nutritional strategies to optimise growth rates; optimal sires and genetics for bull beef and cereal beef production.
FS7 FM Dairy cow and beef housing: housing types (slatted floor, straw bedded, sloped floor, cubicles), feeding, manure management, space allocation; introduction to diseases of importance relating to poor housing e.g. lameness.
FS8 FM Cattle housing continued: Watering arrangements, footbaths, milking parlours layout of parlour / collecting yards; Dairy cow health / husbandry problems associated with inadequate housing, housing of breeding bulls.
FS9 MAC Sheep - Management of lowland sheep: sire and dam selection; factors affecting lamb mortality; nutritional strategies to optimise lamb growth rates; introduction to important infectious and metabolic diseases of lowland sheep.
FS10 MAC Sheep - Mid season sheep production system / calendar of events: nutritional and reproductive management; feeding strategies to optimise reproduction and minimise metabolic disease pre-lambing.
FS11 ER Introduction to Herd Health: introduction to the herd health cycle; routine herd health monitoring and services; herd problem solving investigations; targets and data recording.
FS12 ER Introduction to Cattle Mastitis: contagious v environmental mastitis; source and spread of different types of mastitis; importance of the milking machine; dry cow and calving areas and the risk of environmental mastitis; selective dry cow therapy; ICBF milk recording data.
FS13 EGM Poultry husbandry; qualities of broilers and layers; production cycles, targets, records. Poultry nutrition layers and broilers.
FS14 EGM Poultry housing; deep litter, battery cages and alternative systems. Environment ventilation, temperature, humidity; lighting programmes
FS15 EGM Pig husbandry- dry sow/farming sow management: optimal feeding of the sow at different stages of lactation and pregnancy; management of the sow at parturition and prevention of piglet mortality; introduction to diseases of the sow.
FS16 EGM Pig husbandry - weaning stage: weaning nutrition to optimise growth and immunity; environmental factors of importance to piglets to prevent respiratory disease and optimise welfare; vaccination and preventative medicine; minimising the use of antimicrobials.
FS18 EGM and ER Pig husbandry: finishing management and antimicrobial resistance: housing and environmental management of fattening pigs; nutritional management and preventative medicine including vaccinations; introduction to the concept of antimicrobial resistance and how to minimise AMR in pig production and farm animal production.
FS18 ER Introduction to Cattle Lameness: infectious v non-infectious lameness – risk factors, lesion types, preventative strategies; importance of the environment and nutritional management with respect to lameness.
FS19 MAC Sheep - Early lamb production. Hill sheep - Finishing of store lambs: prevention of disease at grass; nutritional management in an extensive system.
FS20 MAC Sheep housing - types, layout, ancillary facilities, costs, and problems.
FS21 ER Introduction to infectious diseases of cattle: introduction to the concepts of challenge and immunity; source and spread; epidemiological principles of disease investigation; Animal Health Ireland; BVD.
FS22 ER Infectious diseases of cattle continued: IBR; Neosporosis; Salmonellosis; Leptospirosis; Johne’s disease; biosecurity.
FS23 ER Introduction to flock health: flock health cycle; targets for growth rates and mortality; lameness and footrot management and prevention; fertility management in sheep; nutritional management to prevent twin lamb disease and optimise fertility performance; introduction to important infectious and parasitic diseases of sheep.
Honey Bees and their Husbandry Lecture - Friday (2 hours): introduction to the life cycle of honey bees; housing of honey bees; management of hives; introduction to important diseases of honey bees.
Camelid husbandry and health - Lecture Friday (1 hour): introduction to important handling principles of camelids; problems of crias and older alpacas; failure of passive transfer and plasma transfusion; prevention of important infectious and parasitic disease in alpacas; nutritional management of alpacas.
FS24 FM Economic analysis of food producing animal husbandry: introduction to basic principles of economics including cost-benefit analysis; gross v net margin; fixed v variable costs in farming.

CALF HUSBANDRY PRACTICALS (1/6 class) Lyons Estate
FP1 FM, ER, EK: Thursday Lyons Estate Calf husbandry, colostrum feeding, housing, Calf disbudding, castration, stomach tubing, clinical examination of the calf.
• Repeated on 6 occasions between February and April with one sixth of the class at a time.

FARM AND COMPANION ANIMAL HANDLING PRACTICALS
Wednesday afternoons in Semester 2, Lyons farm or Belfield
Horse handling: building on previous programme content, and including more advanced animal handling techniques and tasks such as lunging and loading/unloading for transport, emphasizing health and safety and low stress animal handling
Cattle handling: building on previous programme content, and including more advanced animal handling techniques and tasks, e.g. casting of dairy cows, lifting of fore and hindlimbs and an introduction to foot trimming; practicals will continue to emphasize health and safety and low stress animal handling
Sheep handling: building on previous programme content, and including more advanced animal handling techniques and tasks, emphasizing health and safety and low stress animal handling
Small animal handling (dogs and cats): building on previous programme content, and including more advanced animal handling techniques and tasks, emphasizing health and safety and low stress animal handling

TUTORIALS
FT1 ER: Beef Cattle Health and Production Tutorial: case based learning (CBL) approach to important diseases and husbandry principles of beef/suckler cattle including grass tetany; bovine respiratory disease; summer mastitis and AI v use of a stock bull. Additionally, students are introduced to the techniques of disbudding, dehorning, burdizzo castration and surgical castration and the importance of multimodal analgesia when carrying out all of these techniques on farm.
FP2 EGM: Pigs / Pig records Tutorial: discussion of the importance of housing and stocking density management to prevent disease and minimise stress and immunosuppression on pig farms.
FT2 MAC: Sheep Tutorials:
Sheep problem solving - Evaluation of sheep production systems - economics, reproduction, genetics, nutrition, welfare. (2h x2)

Student Effort Hours:

Approaches to Teaching and Learning:

The approaches to teaching and learning in this module VET20070 include traditional didactic lectures as well as face-to-face interactive tutorials. These tutorials on beef health and production, pig records and sheep disease involve group work where students will be divided up into small groups and given problem based learning exercises to work on - these PBL exercises will increase their knowledge of key aspects of animal husbandry, herd health and disease as well as promoting teamwork and communication skills through presentation to their peers and discussion with their mentors. Students will also be introduced, using real-life clinical videos, to the principle of multimodal analgesia and pain relief to optimise safety and welfare when performing common farm animal procedures such as disbudding, dehorning an castration.

In addition, the module involves hands-on practical animal handling in farm and companion animals. Specifically in Lyons Estate, where students will be exposed to common calf and cow housing and feeding practices and will learn how to perform common husbandry procedures including calf clinical examination, handling, disbudding and burdizzo castration for example.

Real-life videos of important husbandry, housing and disease scenarios will be available and students will be exposed to these in order to stimulate learning in an immersive T&L environment. It is hoped this blended approach will enhance deep learning.

Animal handling will be taught in a way that recognises risks to handler health and safety with the emphasis being on preventing accidents or negative outcomes. The animal handling content is built around typical handling techniques or tasks required in veterinary clinics for different animal species. Animal handling will be taught in a way that seeks to optimize animal well-being through the use of low stress animal handling where possible.

Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.

Module Requisites and Incompatibles

Pre-requisite:
VET10180 - Animal Husbandry and Practical

Co-requisite:
VET20050 - Genetics & Animal Breeding, VET30350 - Practical animal nutrition, VET30390 - Reproductive biology

Additional Information:
Pre-requisite: VET10040 Practical Animal Husbandry Co-requisites: VET20050 OR VET30350 and VET30390


 

Assessment Strategy

 

Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 

Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Group/class feedback, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Following the MCQ assessment students will be given formative feedback on their progress if their performance has been below par. If students are progressing well this will be provided if requested. For individual students that do not appear to be progressing satisfactorily, face-to-face feedback and help will be given. In addition, the students will be informed that I will be available to discuss any matters of relevance to the module or otherwise throughout the trimester and my email will be available to all students on Brightspace. For the practical animal handling examination, failing students will be provided with feedback on their failing attempt with the relevant species after their written exams have ended. Students will then be offered an in-module repeat in the coming weeks (normally before the end of May).

Animal Health Ireland guide documents for vets, farmers and farm advisors - Calf Care, Cellcheck, Infectious Disease, Parasitic Disease, Biosecurity.

Timetabling information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current Academic Year only and is subject to change.