To help prevent these problems, farm manager Peter Grace of Windovers Farms, Stockbridge, prefers to buy his 500 weaned Continental bull calves for finishing from farms with a known health status.

Although he would prefer to have an isolation period for each batch of calves, building space doesn't allow. "But a strict vaccination programme is carried out consisting of vaccines for IBR, pneumonia and clostridial diseases," he says.

"A wormer treatment is also administered."

Those producers following all-in, all-out policies will effectively be isolating stock, but it's not necessarily the norm, reckons Salisbury-based vet Keith Cutler.

Source: fwi.co.uk