Video highlights problematic dairy cow disease

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

A University of Guelph PhD student has come up with a unique way to make farmers and others aware of how to detect, manage and control the spread of Johne’s disease.

Steven Roche, who is doing research for his degree as part of the university’s population medicine department at the Ontario Veterinary College, launched an animated video.

The video is an offshoot of his work towards his PhD degree, which involves research on dairy farmers’ perceptions of Johne’s disease and their attitudes toward it “as a potential indicator of why we’re not seeing more compliance with respect to veterinary recommendations to make changes on the farm,” he says. Roche is working to implement and evaluate a different knowledge transfer program on Johne’s for Ontario farmers.

Roche says part of his work shows that farmers are questioning the recommendations they’re being given. He has been working on and assessing new methods for knowledge translation and transfer in the industry. “A lot of my PhD is focused on doing peer-to-peer learning where we’re facilitating learning.”

The video and his work are “about getting away from a top-down approach” where industry representatives or researchers tell farmers what they need to do, says Roche. “We need to start working with producers. We need to hear them and understand their farm-specific perspective.”

Roche wrote the information for the video, did the initial drawings and worked with a production company, Tivoli Films of Fergus, on the finished product.

Roche says he will finish his degree by the spring of 2014.

Johne’s is an incurable but preventable bacterial infection that affects the intestines of ruminants. Cows infected by the disease produce less milk even if they don’t show signs of sickness. BF