Norbrook has launched an Android version of its existing free iPhone app: ‘the Veterinary Excellence Tool’ (VET).

VET offers a range of functions to assist veterinary professionals and farmers including a product dosing calculator. The Android version has been developed to meet customer demand and has the same features as the Apple version which is available for both iPhones and iPads.

Norbrook highlights the following features of the app:

• A product dosing calculator that allows product dosage to be calculated in seconds
• Full and most up-to-date product listing of UK products
• A Territory Manager locator with full contact details
• A new events section
• A fluid calculator which allows users to quickly and conveniently calculate infusion rates based on factors including a patient’s weight, reason for fluid therapy and choice of product to be infused.
• A nutrition calculator which calculates daily food intake based on animal weight, calorie density of food and nutritional requirements. It also calculates the approximate energy density of food based on fat, protein and carbohydrate requirements, where this information is not readily available.

The app can be downloaded for free by searching for “Norbrook” in either app store.

For further information please contact Laura Holmes, E-Marketing Manager, laura.holmes@norbrook.co.uk or 01536 741147.

Petplan has opened nominations for its Petplan Insurance Advisor (PIA) of the Year award.

Available for staff at veterinary practices who are an Appointed Representative (AR) of Petplan, this award recognises PIA's who are dedicated to promoting the benefits of pet insurance in their practice.

Staff can nominate themselves or their colleagues via the website www.petplanvet.co.uk  and are encouraged to provide examples of how the nominated PIA has improved practice performance.

The 2012 PIA of the Year will be crowned at the BVNA Congress on 6^th October and the winner will receive an iPad. Submissions close on 20^th September.  

Simon Masding, Petplan Head of Sales and Partnerships said: "This award celebrates the fantastic job our PIAs do communicating the importance of pet insurance to their clients. We know first hand from the time we spend in practice, just how many fun, innovative ways they find to highlight how having insurance helps keep pets healthy."

Pfizer is giving away a free equine weigh tape with every purchase of Equest & Equest Pramox (while stocks last), to help encourage accurate treatment against encysted small redworms this season.

According to the company, Equest & Equest Pramox are the only wormers in the UK that treat encysted small redworm in a single dose. Using a weigh tape to work out their horse's weight will help your clients avoid under dosing, which increases the risk of resistance development.

Pfizer says small redworms are the most common worms found in horses today. They can pose a very serious health risk to horses and it's important for owners to make sure that they are treated properly during the autumn or early winter.

Small redworms can grow up to 2.5cm in length and are thin and reddish in colour. Small redworm eggs are passed in the faeces and then hatch on pasture and continue to develop into more advanced larval stages before being ingested by the horse as it grazes. The larvae burrow deeply into the wall of the gut where they encyst and may account for up to 90% of the redworm burden in the horse¹. Encysted small redworm will not show up in a Faecal Worm Egg Count - even if the horse has shown a negative or low count it could still be harbouring several million encysted small redworms².

Encysted small redworms can remain dormant inside a horse for up to two years, but they usually 'wake-up' in late winter or early spring, developing and emerging from the gut wall all at the same time. In severe infestations mass emergence can lead to a disease syndrome known as 'larval cyathostominosis', causing diarrhoea and colic with up to a 50% mortality rate³. Young horses of less than six years of age can often be at higher risk of the disease³ but small redworm can cause life-threatening illness at any time of year and in any age of horse.

Ben Gaskell, Pfizer's veterinary adviser said: "Treating encysted small redworms successfully in the late autumn or early winter is important to avoid the risk of larval cyathostominosis. It's important to advise your customers to choose a product that is licensed to treat the worms they are targeting and that they give the correct dose, by weighing their horse beforehand, as this will help preserve the efficacy of the drug used."

Pfizer's Does your wormer measure up campaign is backed with point of sale materials and a media campaign. To receive a free weigh tape, valued at £7 your clients need to buy a tube of Equest or Equest Pramox, fill in an application form and send Pfizer the batch and expiry flap from the pack. Pfizer will then send them a FREE Weigh Tape while stocks last.

For further information contact your Pfizer Account Manager.

References

1. Bairden K. et al (2001) Veterinary Record 148, 138-141
2. Dowdall S.M.J. et al (2002) Veterinary Parasitology 106, 225‑242
3. McWilliam H. et al (2010) International Journal for Parasitology 40, 265-275

Virbac is offering its customers a discount on subscriptions to Vet Care Consult, an interactive veterinary medicine and anatomy tool designed to improve client understanding and aid compliance.

Vet Care Consult, designed by MediProductions with advice from veterinary specialists, uses more than 600 3D graphics, animations, videos and other imagery to help veterinary staff explain diagnoses and to discuss therapeutic options.

The veterinary surgeon or nurse selects the target species, then the relevant organ or system. A range of animations and videos are then offered to help explain their recommendation. The tool includes the option to email owners a link to a specific animation or video so that they can discuss the recommended treatment with family later. It can be used on a PC or tablet and is also available as an iPhone app.

A single user subscription normally costs £41 per month or £410 per annum.

Chris Geddes MRCVS, Senior Product Manager at Virbac, said: "Gone are the days of scribbling diagrams on scraps of paper and whiteboards or pointing to a model of a stifle that has seen better days!

"Vet Care Consult harnesses the latest technology to help the veterinary team communicate more effectively with clients, helping them to understand their pets' health and wellness issues. Better communication leads to improved compliance which, in turn, helps to strengthen the vital bond between a practice and its clients."

For more information, contact your Virbac Territory Manager.

Cats Protection is urgently calling for compulsory microchipping of all pet cats.

The feline welfare charity says that two in three cats taken into its care are not microchipped, costing the organisation over £190,000 to microchip them. In addition, the charity says it ends up dealing with around 40 ownership disputes per year - the majority of which involve cats handed in as strays that are not microchipped.  

The charity says unchipped animals are a major drain on its resources, which are already stretched looking after over 7,000 unwanted cats at any one time.

Peter Hepburn, Cats Protection's Chief Executive said: "I cannot stress enough how important it is for cats to be microchipped. The heartache and upset that a lost cat can cause is immense, as is the suffering to the cat. It could be so easily solved by a tiny 'chip that is no bigger than a grain of rice.  

"When a cat comes into our care, the first thing we do is look for some sort of identification, including scanning for a 'chip. In a lot of cases, there is no 'chip so then we have no option but to trawl lost and found registers and to advertise the cat as missing. However, this is a very time consuming process with no guarantee that we will ever locate the owner, despite the best efforts of our volunteers and staff.

"It is a heartbreaking experience when an owner loses their beloved pet and is never reunited with them. Making sure a cat is easily identifiable is vital to increase the chances of a happy reunion so, if compulsory microchipping was brought in, many of these problems would be solved."

The industry-led Cattle Health and Welfare Group of Great Britain (CHAWG) has published a review which identifies a practical approach to gathering antibiotic usage data on UK cattle farms.

The review outcomes, announced today at a joint conference held by the Responsible Use of Medicines in Agriculture Alliance (RUMA) and the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD), highlight the significant benefits better data could deliver, such as improving the way antibiotics are administered strategically to tackle disease.

But CHAWG’s chair Tim Brigstocke says it’s also important that the industry is able to accurately report usage levels because of the rising levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria which threaten human health. 

"We found that while data is already stored at every vet practice and in every farm medicine book, it currently exists in many different forms. It’s also not collected or collated, and is further complicated by multi-species approvals for many of the antibiotics.

"This means we can’t always be sure in which type of animal a medicine has been used. For example, out of 420 tonnes of animal-authorised antibiotic active substance sold in the UK in 2013, only 14 tonnes was authorised solely for use in cattle. However, 63 tonnes was authorised for multi-species use in food producing animals and within the 217 products included in this, 201 are authorised for use in cattle."

Tim says that with the support of the VMD, which requested the review and will now act as secretariat, CHAWG will set up a working group to implement the report’s recommendations.

The starting point is likely to be the survey of vets carried out by the British Cattle Veterinary Association (BCVA), which formed part of the review. This suggested vets could be using as many as 15 different software programmes to log data, so CHAWG will be working with the BCVA and individual practices to look at how standard sets of data can be anonymised and exported.

"Then we will almost certainly look at how cattle farmers can be supported in migrating records from the physical ‘medicine book’ on the farm, into a spreadsheet or existing cattle management software for anonymous aggregation on a national level.

"There are undoubtedly areas where we can improve the effectiveness of how we use these powerful medicines to improve welfare. But the antibiotic resistance debate is an emotive one and we must also demonstrate accountability to ensure the preservation of antibiotics for future use in humans and animals; any future curbs on usage should be proportionate and informed, and not compromise animal wellbeing."

Mandatory reporting in Europe could be just over the horizon and the European Medicines Agency has focused in the past year on developing a method for data collection on the usage of antibiotics in the EU pig sector. In the UK, the VMD is encouraging the livestock sectors to develop systems appropriate to their own unique circumstances and industry characteristics.

Tim said: "It’s therefore in cattle farmers’ own interests to anticipate the kind of figures it might be asked to supply in the future, and develop a way of collecting that data which suits the way the UK industry works.

"Then we can retain control over the data and the methodology, and ensure the reporting is accurate – and this in turn will help the VMD represent our case better in Europe as this debate continues.

CHAWG says that throughout this project, it will be liaising with others – such as the pig sector – to ensure learnings are shared, duplication avoided and efficiencies realised where possible. 

The CHAWG review report is available to download at www.chawg.org.uk.

The Royal Veterinary College has published new data from its VetCompass programme which shed new light on the epidemiology, risk factors and outcomes for cats diagnosed with diabetes mellitus in the UK, and which researchers say could help reduce the high early mortality rates associated with the disease.

The researchers say that previous research suggests that approximately 10% of diabetic cats are euthanised at the time of diagnosis, making it a significant cat welfare issue.

However, this figure was largely based on questionnaire-based research from several global locations.

This new study followed the survival of 1,053 cats with confirmed diabetes mellitus under UK primary-care practices in 2019, providing the most up-to-date baseline data on early death among diabetic cats in the UK, as well as examining risk factors for the development of diabetes among UK pet cats.

The study found:  

• Approximately one in every 250 cats in the UK live with diabetes mellitus each year.
• In agreement with previous estimates, 10% of cats diagnosed with diabetes mellitus were euthanased within just three days of diagnosis, usually without receiving treatment.
• Burmese cats were confirmed to be at increased risk of diabetes mellitus development, as identified in previous studies.
• For the first time, the Burmilla breed, which descends from the Burmese, was shown to be at increased risk of diabetes mellitus.
• Bengal and Ragdoll breeds were found to be protected from diabetes mellitusdevelopment compared to crossbred cats.

Based on these findings, the researchers encourage veterinarians to more actively discuss diabetes mellitus risk with cat owners, particularly those with Burmilla and Burmese breeds, in the hope that raising awareness of the disease might improve outcomes through earlier diagnosis, and by taking actions that might prevent diabetes mellitus development in the first instance, such as preventing cats becoming obese.   

Dr Oliver Waite, Senior Lecturer in Small Animal Medicine at Murdoch University, and primary author of the paper, said: “We hope that this new, large scale epidemiological study, investigating the second most common endocrine disease in cats, will help to highlight current as well as future areas to improve cat welfare.

"This is an exciting time for the management of diabetic cats but more work is still needed!”

Dr Dan O’Neill, Associate Professor in Companion Animal Epidemiology at the RVC, and co-author of the paper, said: “This new VetCompass study shows the value of everyone working in primary care practice sharing their anonymised clinical data to get a better understanding of real-world animal health.

"Awareness of the scale of the diabetes mellitus issue revealed here can empower veterinary professionals to engage in more conversations with owners about diabetes mellitus prevention in predisposed cats.”

Reference

1. Waite, R. Gostelow, E. Wright, R. E. Jepson, D. C. Brodbelt, and D. G. O'Neill, “ Frequency, Risk Factors, and Mortality for Diabetes Mellitus in 1 225 130 Cats Under Primary Veterinary Care in the United Kingdom in 2019,” Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine 39, no. 4 (2025): e70161, https://doi.org/10.1111/jvim.70161.

With Christmas just around the corner, Petplan is giving practices the chance to win £1,000 towards a Christmas party. 

Any member of a practice can enter the competition by visiting www.petplanvet.co.uk.

Petplan Marketing Manager Alison Andrew said, "It's been another busy year for vet practices and we want to thank them for their tireless efforts to keep the nations pets full of health. The £1000 will allow them to really celebrate the festive season in style."

Veterinary staff can also enter the competition at the Petplan stand at the British Veterinary Nursing Association (BVNA) from 8^th-10^th October and at the London Vet Show on 22^nd-23^rd October 2010.

Burgess Excel and the PDSA are urging veterinary surgeons and nurses to get their clients to sign up to the free PDSA Rabbit Wellbeing Challenge by the closing date of Friday 22 November.

According to the organisers, the PDSA Rabbit Wellbeing Challenge is designed to help all rabbit owners understand and meet their pets' five welfare needs - the five things that all pet rabbits' need to be healthy and happy. Since the campaign was launched in June, more than 1,000 rabbit owners have signed up to take the challenge, and veterinary practices are now being urged to ensure their clients take advantage of this free resource by visiting www.rabbitneeds.org.uk to register.

The Challenge website allows owners to take a monthly quiz to find out how well they are currently meeting their rabbits' needs, with advice on how to further improve their health and wellbeing. At the end of the challenge, owners will be presented with a Rabbit Wellbeing Challenge certificate and receive monthly vouchers together with money-off coupons for the Excel Feeding Plan. They will also be entered into a prize draw to win a 16gb iPad.

The Challenge is being featured on stickers on every pack of Burgess Excel Rabbit Nuggets. One million packs will have been sold by the final date for sign ups on the 22 November.

Burgess Pet Care Veterinary Surgeon, Suzanne Moyes, said: "With help from the veterinary community we really can make a difference by raising awareness about important rabbit welfare issues and in turn change rabbit owner behaviour. Working together, we are can improve the health and wellbeing of the UK's third most popular pet by educating pet owners, especially in relation to diet and regular veterinary check-ups."

Sean Wensley, Senior Veterinary Surgeon at PDSA, added: "Sadly, the welfare needs of pet rabbits  are often not met. Common problems include a poor diet, living alone in a small hutch with no exercise run, and a lack of preventive healthcare. The PDSA Rabbit Wellbeing Challenge is a great tool for owners to assess how well they are currently meeting their rabbit's five welfare needs and to get advice on making practical, positive improvements. Most owners want their pets to be healthy and happy, and we hope this Challenge will help tackle some of the preventable health and welfare problems commonly seen in pet rabbits."

For further information on The PDSA Rabbit Wellbeing Challenge visit www.rabbitneeds.org.uk or for further details on the Burgess Excel Feeding Plan visit www.excelfedingplan.co.uk  

Public Health England has released figures showing that the number of people testing positive for Lyme disease was up over 30% in the period July to September 2015, from 300 lab confirmed cases to 421.

The figures are being highlighted by MSD Animal Health, organisers of the Bravecto 'Big Tick Project', a campaign to raise awareness of tick-borne disease amongst vets and pet owners.

The TV presenter and naturalist Chris Packham said: "The rise in the number of confirmed cases of Lyme disease in the UK reported by Public Health England suggests the need for greater awareness of this damaging illness. Vets have a huge part to play in educating pet owners.

"As well as highlighting the risks that ticks present to both human and companion animal health we need to be more alert to the signs and symptoms of tick-borne disease and the sensible steps we can all take to protect ourselves and our animals.”

Professor Richard Wall who has led Bristol University’s Big Tick Project team said: "Given the reported increase in cases of Lyme disease, the results of the Big Tick Project study will help us to understand these changes both in terms of the longer seasonal activity of ticks and their increasingly widespread geographic location and could have important implications for both human and animal health by quantifying the diversity and prevalence of the pathogens they may be carrying."

According to the NHS around 2,000 to 3,000 people in the UK are affected by Lyme Disease each year but charities campaigning for greater awareness of the disease suggest this could be as many as 15,000.

Growing concern over the rise in the tick-borne infection has prompted Government ministers to set up a network of regional experts to help diagnose and treat the problem.

Last autumn, Health Minister Lord Prior told a House of Lords debate: "Some patients suffer debilitating illness with symptoms that persist after treatment for several months or longer."

Lord Prior revealed that the Department of Health is to set up a network of experts around the country to support GPs and hospital staff, most of whom have never seen cases of the disease. The increase in the disease is being blamed on rising numbers of tick populations which are active for longer due to climate change, a rise in numbers of wild mammals such as deer that host them.

The clinical signs of Lyme disease in dogs include recurrent lameness due to inflammation of the joints. Sometimes the lameness lasts for only three to four days either in the same leg or in other legs and the joints may be swollen, warm, and painful. In some cases, kidney failure may occur and the dog may exhibit such signs as vomiting, diarrhoea, lack of appetite, weight loss, increased urination and thirst.

IVC Evidensia has reported great success using a more conversational style of online CPD session, following a trend started by VetSurgeon.org earlier this year. 

Rather than offering 'death by Powerpoint', where large numbers of delegates are invited to sit and stare at a Powerpoint screen for an hour, followed by a few questions at the end, IVC and VetSurgeon.org invited a smaller, more intimate group to come and discuss a subject on Zoom, a recording of which was then made available for everyone else to watch later.

In the case of VetSurgeon.org, the first such meeting was 'Let's Talk About Small Animal Surgery' with Alasdair Hotston-Moore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1rD3zfcUZE

Meanwhile, IVC has based its recent CPD sessions about equine emergencies on a very similar model. During the event, short case studies were presented in a format which allowed for discussion all the way through.

IVC Evidensia Equine Clinical Board Vice Chair, Mark Tabachnik said: "We decided on a reflective, case-based approach rather than the usual monologue, where so much information is thrown at you, you’re lucky to catch a couple of snippets. I wanted something that was a little more relaxed and more collaborative, like a group of colleagues chatting about the cases from their night on call over a drink or two at the pub.”

It's a format which seems to be proving popular. Chessie Greenham of Fyrnwy Vets in Shropshire said: "Interesting cases that reflected on call life, worked through in an approachable style that is easily applied to real life scenarios."