Prevention of disease is important to both big and small flocks. As well as our local clients, Dr. Crawford provides Flock Health consulting services throughout the province. We enjoy working as part of a team with nutritionists and other service providers to improve the health and productivity of both meat and milk producing flocks. We also offer Flock Health Clubs that allow producers to learn more about health and productivity topics and compare health and production information with other similar producers.
In addition to core vaccines, there are a number of vaccines available for farms with certain diseases present or at high risk in their flock. We can help with the decision to add additional vaccines and the appropriate schedule for each vaccine.
As resistance has become more common to available dewormers, having a Parasite Control Plan including reducing reliance on mass treatment, monitoring treatment effectiveness, deciding when and who to treat and managing your farm to reduce parasite pressure is very important. We understand the biology of the worms and the challenges of modifying perfect textbook plans to work on your farm. We offer in house Fecal Egg Counts and teach courses on the McMaster technique along with other tools to monitor parasites on your farm.
Flocks that do not pasture sheep still have challenges with coccidia and external parasites – and we can help make prevention and treatment decisions for these parasites as well.
Reproductive performance of the flock is paramount to the success of an operation – whether lambing once annually or with multiple lambing groups. We are experienced in the subtle changes that can be made to breeding programs to increase success. We also offer Breeding Soundness Evaluations on rams – as well as freezing Owner’s Use Only semen. We also perform vasectomy surgeries to make Teaser Rams.
We offer ultrasound pregnancy diagnosis starting about 40 days after the last breeding. Pregnancy diagnosis allows producers to make decisions about open ewes such as exposing them in the next breeding group quickly or culling poor performers. Knowing conception rates sooner also allows us to make changes to our breeding programs and plans as required.
We work with producers to reduce disease through good nutrition, facility management, vaccination and other measures. We work with producers to record disease events for future monitoring and are here when disease outbreaks occur to develop the best treatment plan in real time. We also enjoy teaching producers to properly diagnose disease early, and have treatment plans ready for routine illnesses.
There are a number of chronic diseases of sheep that can have severe economic impacts. We are actively involved in the OSF Maedi Visna Program, the CSF Scrapie Program and can tailor other disease monitoring programs to your flock as needed.
We recognize that for many of our producers, treatment of individual sick sheep requires our input – both by telephone and farm visits. While we like to teach producers to manage many of their own cases, we are available to examine and treat individual animals as needed. We offer the same diagnostic services for individual sheep that we do for cattle and horses. We also recognize the growing number of sheep that are kept as individual pets and are happy to treat them as the loved animals they are.
Emergencies
We provide 24/7 care for our patients. We know emergencies happen, and are here to provide assistance when required.