Sometimes you have to leave to realise that there is no place like home!

Having just returned from a two year working holiday in England, I don’t have many NZ relevant case studies for this time of year. I do have a plethora of photos of the variety of animals I saw while working in North Yorkshire. I apologise if you were hoping for an in-depth article on cancer eyes.

Sheep were a major portion of my work, the variety of breeds within the small area where I worked was impressive. From the dale-bred Mules, local Teeswaters, and rare breed Ryedales; it seemed like every second farmer had a unique breed of sheep!

Dairy practice is quite different as most of the dairy herds are housed and on a total mixed ration. Many of the farms had milking robots to reduce staff requirements. Some farms even had robots for pushing up feed and cleaning yards. Year-round calving meant you could calve a cow and then turn around and be presented with a late lactation sick cow at the same visit. Vaccination recommendations and animal health protocols made up a large portion of the vets work, especially for the high input/high output herds.

A large proportion of beef herds (suckler cows in English lingo) meant lots of caesarians in spring! There were some calls I turned up to where the cow was clipped and prepped for surgery before I even got there. The largest was a 74kg calf that had to be delivered with the help of 2-3 other people to lift the calf out of the side of the heifer.

While in the UK, I trained and was certified to TB test cattle and buffalo. Buffalo are very similar to cattle in terms of husbandry and disease, they are just more stubborn and tend to sit down when they don’t want to move. You can imagine how annoying that is when trying to move them through a crush.

Living overseas and working with a new system of farming was an excellent learning experience. UK farmers and vets are very good at monitoring disease status and using vaccination to reduce the number of cases and severity of disease. Some of this is not directly applicable to NZ, but it has helped me to think more critically about how and why we do what we do.

As well as deepening and widening my understanding, it has also increased my appreciation for NZ! There are many benefits to being an island, biosecurity being one of the biggest. Diseases like Louping ill, Anthrax, Bluetongue and Brucella are rare or exotic and mostly we don’t have to worry about them.