OVC student aims to reduce pain in cows during calving
BY ANDREW VOWLES
Helping to ensure the quality of food in your supermarket's dairy case — and the well-being of the animals that produce it — is the goal of a pioneering study being conducted by Heather Putnam Dingwell, who began D.V.Sc. studies in the Department of Population Medicine in the fall.
A licensed veterinarian, Putnam Dingwell received the 2005 Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) Doctoral Scholarship to study pain management in dairy cattle during calving. She will receive $20,000 a year for three years.
Her research will include studying the efficacy of a particular medication for reducing pain and improving cows' health and performance during and after calving.
“It's exciting and a bit of pressure,” says Putnam Dingwell. “My goal is to provide a practical approach to pain management that I hope our research will show can improve productivity and reduce periparturient disease.”
She says this will be the first North American study to evaluate practices associated with calving and management of calving pain using a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID).
She expects the drug will reduce pain after calving. That may help improve milk production, reduce the incidence of diseases associated with calving, enhance reproductive performance and limit early removal of cows from herds.
Dystocia, or difficult calving, and stillbirths have become more prevalent among dairy cattle; up to 10 per cent of dairy calves may be stillborn. Putnam Dingwell says her study will provide useful information to veterinarians and producers. She notes that, although some administer an NSAID product to help ease calving, many producers have given little thought to the effects of difficult calving on herd and animal welfare.
Putnam Dingwell says her DFO award, plus funding she has received from Dairy Farmers of Canada and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, shows that picture is changing.
“They understand the value of the research. They're recognizing that animal welfare is becoming an issue.”
She adds that she expects to see changes to farm and herd practices within a decade or so. “They're going to see increased concern in food-animal production.”
It's also important for consumers who may be affected by poor milk quality or reduced yield if dairy cows suffer unwarranted stress during calving, she says.
Following a pilot study last summer by undergraduate veterinary student Laine Misch on the behaviour of cows during calving, Putnam Dingwell plans to begin a larger study involving animals at the Elora and Ponsonby research stations. She will also follow between 2,000 and 3,000 animals in Canada and the United States, using special monitoring and video recording and measuring the incidence of diseases such as mastitis and ketosis.
Her advisers are Profs. Ken Leslie, Kerry Lissemore, Todd Duffield and Suzanne Millman. Referring to their combined expertise in ruminant health management, animal welfare and dairy production, she says: “They're tremendous names in the dairy industry.”
Putnam Dingwell grew up on a farm in Nebraska and did her veterinary studies at Kansas State University. Graduating in the top five per cent of her class, she worked in a large-animal practice in Nebraska for two years before coming to Guelph.
(Her husband, Prof. Randy Dingwell, completed a D.V.Sc. at Guelph and worked at Kansas State and the Atlantic Veterinary College before returning last year as a faculty member in the Department of Population Medicine.)
On her family's farm, Putnam Dingwell nursed a variety of ailing animals, including a pet raccoon and a fox kit. Working at a vet clinic during high school and her undergraduate studies, she regularly brought home sick and orphaned animals, even a 32-pound ailing calf.
“I'm extremely passionate about food-animal productivity and welfare,” she says. “It's very important to me that when consumers go into the store, they can be 100-per-cent confident that the veterinary industry and producers have provided quality animal care and produced a safe, healthy product they don't have to question.”
Pointing to other research projects on pain management in calves with diarrhea and during such procedures as dehorning, Leslie calls Putnam Dingwell's work “a cornerstone component of an important and growing initiative to ensure that the highest standard of animal well-being is achieved in dairy production systems used in Ontario. We expect that useful new management methods will be identified.”
