Management on dairy farms tends to be a recurrent theme amongst producers and veterinarians from all over the world.

For this reason, on 8th and 9th November last, HIPRA organized the second session of the HIPRA UNIVERSITY international course on the management of large dairy farms, which was attended by veterinarians and producers from Mexico and Spain.

Over the period of the course, almost 50 attendees had the opportunity of participating in the talks given by both national and international experts in the sector.

These sessions included the presentation of practical subjects for the operation and optimization of different aspects of farm management and dealt with vaccination of the animals as a tool for the prevention of the viral diseases that cause the greatest economic losses on this type of farm.

Different experiences on European markets were also presented and future trends on the milk market were analysed.

Marc Piera, Peter Edmondson and James Husband, as well as HIPRA’s own staff, were on hand to explain these subjects to the participants. There was also time for debate, when participants set out the actual situation regarding viral diseases and discussed current vaccination plans for the control of these.

One of the key aspects of the debate was the importance of using reproductive vaccines that allow pregnant animals to be vaccinated (instead of post-partum vaccination), for the enhancement of herd immunity as a basic principal of the control of viral diseases.

At the end of the session, the participants concluded that there was a real need for the prevention of infectious diseases and emphasized the importance of this type of training in order to move forward in this direction on dairy farms.