Herd Health: A Textbook of Health and Production Management of Agricultural Animals

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About Herd Health: A Textbook Of Health And Production

Any doubts about the sagacity of the authors are dispelled by a single sentence in the Preface: "We are quite sure that... it will be very different in its second edition from this early tentative presentation". Preventive veterinary medicine began about 100 years ago when governments began to eradicate diseases such as tuberculosis. Herd health schemes operated by the farmer and his veterinarian are a recent development and, at their best, these schemes aim to increase production, not merely to prevent disease. A chapter on General Principles sets out in fair detail how to develop such schemes. Production in dairy cattle occupies much of the book but there are smaller sections on beef cattle, pigs and sheep, and a section on computers in animal health management. The dairy cattle section includes comprehensive accounts of interactions between health and production, general approach to a programme, maintenance of reproductive efficiency, mastitis control, calf rearing, nutrition and housing, genetics, breeding programmes and culling-all this in 166 pages. The authors hope that future editions will be written by specialists on the various species; such specialists would have a hard time producing a text which will beat this one. The book is written especially for undergraduates but all farm practices should own a copy.