FarmLab Diagnostics were presented with the prize of Food/Agricultural Laboratory of the year at the Irish Laboratory Awards 2014, which was held in Dublin at the Double Tree by Hilton Hotel on December 6th. You can read more about the awards in the following newspaper article.

All of the finalists may be seen in the following article which was published in The Irish Independent on 18/12/14

For more information on the Irish Laboratory Awards click here

Farmlab Diagnostics won the category of  Food or Agricultural Laboratory of the Year at the Irish Laboratory Awards, held in Dublin in December 2014. Details of the award are detailed in this month’s issue of the Veterinary Ireland Journal

FarmLab Diagnostics is now designated by Animal Health Ireland to provide BVD tests on blood samples for veterinary practitioners. The test method used is real time PCR, meaning that blood from adult animals may be pooled to reduce the cost of testing. For more information on this test feel free to contact us

FarmLab Diagnostics were designated by Animal Health Ireland in March 2013 to carry out BVD testing on cattle ear notches. This means that Farmlab Diagnostics is the only lab in the west and north-west of Ireland to be accredited for provision of BVD testing under the national BVD eradication programme.

The national BVD eradication programme has shown that slightly less than 1% of Irish calves are born persistently infected with the BVD virus. Use of ear notch testing allows rapid identification of these persistently infected calves, so that they can be removed from cattle herds. Evidence from other countries shows that the numbers of BVD infected calves decreases rapidly once a national BVD programme is put in place

Farmlab Diagnostics now have BVD collection points in counties Donegal, Galway, Roscommon, Meath and Offaly. This means that farmers can save money on BVD sampling by not having to pay for postage on their BVD ear notches. The minimum postage required on BVD samples is €1.05, this can be avoided by simply drop your samples into one of our designated collection points for collection on the day shown on our collection. For more details see our list of BVD collection points.

Anthelmintic Resistance in sheep seems to be becoming a big problem. What this means is that certain groups of wormers may be ineffective on certain farms. We have been testing a lot of dung samples for Sheep discussion groups to find out whether resistance to wormers is present on farms. What this involves is taking samples of dung randomly from 10 sheep before/at dosing and then taking 10 samples in 7- 14 days time depending on which wormer is used. There should be virtually no worms visible on the second examination after dosing. This however often is not the case. If you are worried that the dose you use on your sheep is not working feel free to come in and get some sample kits. FarmLab Diagnostics have put together special kits for checking worm samples on sheep, and we will be happy to provide you with some.

The cost of testing 10 samples twice is €30 . This test is quick to perform, and provides a lot of useful information to farmers on:

• The types/ amounts of worms on farms
• Prescence of coccidia/ other parasites
• Is your dosing regime effective

For more information on Anthelmintic Resistance see STAP on www.farmlab.ie