In The News

UW veterinarian Sandi Sawchuk has seen vaccine recommendations change over the years. "Since I was in vet school 30-plus years ago, we just used to just vaccinate everything, every year, " says Sawchuk.  She adds, "we're now recognizing that for most dogs, that's not required, we can get by on a less frequent interval."

In the late 1970s, he helped Norden Labs of Lincoln, Nebraska, demonstrate a protocol designed to prevent E. coli infection and rotavirus in calves, a method that involves no stressful catching or needle pricking. “We administered this to the beef cows two weeks prepartum to generate maternal antibodies for the mom to pass on to the newborn calf,” Weiss says. “Our calf scour [diarrhea] incidence dropped to zero and has remained at zero since our working with this vaccine.” “That vaccine … which originally goes back to the Norden product, is one of the most, if not the most, commonly used methods to prevent E. coli and rotavirus diarrhea in calves,” says Simon Peek, a clinical professor of large animal internal medicine at the UW–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. “It’s something pertinent, relevant to the state, and it’s definitely made a big contribution.”

If your veterinarian has an ultrasound machine, it has tremendous value to your herd beyond diagnosing pregnancies. Theresa Ollivett, Assistant Professor in the Food Animal Production Medicine Section, School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has become a pioneer in using thoracic (lung) ultrasounds to manage the healthy development of dairy calves.

The Wisconsin Badgers football team will hold its annual Spring Game on Friday, April 13 beginning at 6 p.m. at Camp Randall Stadium. The game will be televised live by BTN. The Badger Sports Kids’ Fair will start at 4:30 p.m. in the McClain Center, adjacent to Camp Randall. The UW Athletic Department is pleased to partner once again with a campus department on the Spring Game. This year’s partner is the UW School of Veterinary Medicine.

In this week's Blue Sky Science episode, Erin Clawson of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin asks, "How many species of snakes are there?" The response comes from Dr. Christoph Mans, exotic animal specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Veterinary Care Hospital. He says: There are more than 3,400 snake species worldwide, and they exist on every continent except Antarctica. There are about 50 snake species in the United States. Some are venomous, such as the timber rattlesnake and the massasauga rattlesnake.

Officials in Green Bay are considering adding staff to help address a rat problem on the city’s west side. We get an update on the situation from Patty Murray, WPR’s reporter in Green Bay. Then, we discuss people’s uneasy relationship with rats and learn about how cities manage them. Lastly, we focus on how to care for pet rats and why our guest says the rodent actually has a lot to offer.

The new study is "a remarkably detailed review of quite an obscure thing," notes Tony Goldberg, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Veterinary Medicine. All blood-sucking organisms, not only ticks but leeches and mosquitoes, must "run a gauntlet of defenses by the animal it's feeding on," he notes.

If Sarge's survival on that roadside was a "miracle," his progress since has been nothing short of amazing, Erickson said. He was soon able to stand and walk with his temporary cast. On Wednesday, Sarge was taken to the UW veterinary center. He'll stay there for a few days while doctors use a plate and screws to set his fractured elbow.

You don’t hear about many humans dying from the “common cold” anymore, but a healthy community of wild chimpanzees in Uganda’s Kibale National Park contracted the respiratory disease, which led to 5 deaths. A research team from the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine investigated the outbreak, which occurred in February 2013, and recently published their findings in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.