Article courtesy of Intervet/ Schering-Plough Animal Health
In the same way that everyone insures their farm bikes and tractor, it is possible to ‘insure' the investment made in our farm working dogs.
A lot of time and money is spent on breeding or purchasing, training, and then keeping farm dogs fit and healthy. Dogs are essential to the operation of a farming business and they contribute uncountable hours of labour. However, they are often taken for granted and there are several infectious diseases that can quickly devastate a team and cost a significant amount of money in treatment, lost productivity or even death. Vaccination against these diseases is an essential ‘insurance policy'.
Farm dogs have several factors which put them at higher risk of contracting infectious diseases:
- Teams often have a high proportion of young dogs, including litters of pups. Young unvaccinated dogs are at higher risk of contracting infectious diseases.
- Living and working in close contact with several other dogs. Most infectious diseases are more prevalent where groups of animals are in close contact.
- Farm dog teams are often a very mobile population. This can be as simple as introducing new dogs to the team, or travelling to other properties, or participating in dog trials or other events.
Parvovirus is of particular importance - it is prevalent in New Zealand and the majority of dogs that contract the virus will die. Treatment involves hospitalisation and intensive care and is very costly from both a financial and emotional perspective. Even then, there is no guarantee they will survive. Infected dogs shed parvovirus in their faeces for three weeks or more, and the virus can then survive for months in the environment and be spread on shoes, clothing and vehicles. Unfortunately, veterinarians and farmers around the country still regularly deal with outbreaks of parvo in unvaccinated farm dogs. This is particularly devastating when it is so simple to prevent with vaccination.
My dogs have never had these diseases - Why should this matter to me?
It is almost impossible to completely isolate farm dogs from external contact which may introduce infections onto a property. Think about the other dogs that may come onto your farm - your neighbour's dogs, the fencing contractor's Labrador, the stock truck driver's Huntaway, your relations from town with their Jack Russell ...Have these dogs been vaccinated? Could they be carrying disease that could infect your dogs? How about the people or their equipment bringing infected faeces onto the property on boots or vehicles? These are some of the many ways infection can be introduced onto your farm.
Vaccination is an easy way to protect dogs against certain life-threatening and debilitating diseases.
There are three core diseases which need regular vaccination against in all dogs: distemper, parvovirus and infectious hepatitis. In addition, vaccination against the main causes of kennel cough - Bordetella and parainfluenza virus - are important where groups of dogs are living together. In some regions of NZ, protection against leptospirosis is also necessary.
There are two key things for a successful vaccination programme for dogs - completing a primary vaccination in all pups from as early as possible; and continuing with regular revaccination. This is easy with the Nobivac range of dog vaccines.
The Nobivac range provides the only vaccines that will protect pups from 6 weeks old with only two vaccinations. They are also the only vaccines which will protect any dog with an unknown vaccination history with only a single vaccination with Nobivac DHP or DHPPi from as early as 10 weeks of age. This makes vaccination extremely simple.
Dog vaccination is simple and cost-effective. Protect your investment - talk to Totally Vets about vaccinating your dogs today.
