If you have a dog or a cat at home, you will recognise the problem and maybe you know already you have a big influence on the disease. Around 30% of the cats and around 20% of the dogs are obese. We see that our well-loved pets become fatter and fatter, but most of the owners aren’t aware of the risks of obesity. The vets of today and we, the vets of the future, must make the people conscious of the importance of obesity.

We know that pets with obesity have a higher risk for a lot of diseases, such as some cancers, cardiovascular diseases, problems with the liver and diabetes. Our pets with obesity have also a poor immune system. The immune system is very important to protect the pet against viruses, bacteria and other pathogens, so when your dog or cat has obesity, the animal will be more sensitive to other diseases.

I think it’s very important that the vets teach the owners how to detect and prevent obesity. A very simple system of body condition scoring is useful to see if your animal is too fat. You have to feel the ribs, the waist and the spine of the pet and depending on what you feel, the animal gets a score on a scale of one to nine.  If the dog or cat has more than five out of nine, we can say that the cat is too fat and as we know, a fat pet has a higher risk of obesity and so the additional diseases.

Very important for preventing obesity is the right feed. We see that the owners give very often too much or unlimited feed. The pet eats everything and the animal gets fat by the large amount of energy in the feed. The owners also love to reward their pet with treats. These contain a lot of sugar and fat, which lead to an excess of energy. Further, the vets have to warn the owners that they can’t give the food of their own plate. The food that we eat as humans is usually not suitable for pets and therefore dangerous.

So if we all know better how to feed pets, we can avoid obesity and our animal companions can live happily ever after.

Do we have to dock the tails of the pigs or do we have to leave them intact? That’s the big question.

First of all, I have to explain to you why we sometimes dock the tail of the pigs. We very often see pigs bite each other’s tails. The pigs conduct the behaviour of tail biting because they are frustrated. This frustration comes from a lack of opportunities to perform natural behaviour such as searching for food, etc. After many studies, we can say that the piggeries of today do not meet the needs of the pigs regarding natural behaviour.

There are a lot of cons of tail biting. The most important reason for the farmers is that the pigs weigh less when they sell them. The pigs also need a few extra days to reach this weigh. As we know, the profit margin that the farmers receive per pig is very low, so every day and every kilo of meat counts. The pigs also have stress and pain when another pig bites his tail.

To avoid tail biting, we can dock the tail but this treatment also has some pros and cons. We see that the pigs have stress and pain for a long time after docking their tails. We also noticed through a study that the prevalence of tail damage by tail biting after docking is lower but not zero per cent. So the treatment doesn’t prevent all the injuries. For these reasons, the majority of us believe that docking should be prohibited. On the other hand, the farmers think tail docking is a good method because the method allows them to earn more money.

With the growing animal welfare awareness and the fear of the farmers for their future, I think the discussion on this topic is far from over and we’ll hear a lot about the discussion.

Do you know there are goats who fall on the ground every time they are excited?

Well, there is a special kind of goats with a heritable disorder that leads to a muscular disease. In Latin, we call this disease ‘Myotonia congenita’. Humans and animals have a number of channels in each muscle that provide the transport of certain substances into the muscle. These substances are useful to control the contraction and the relaxation of the muscle. In the case of ‘Myotonia congenita’, these channels are changed and their function is reduced. So, when the goats are very excited, the channels don’t work as they used to and the muscles get in a permanent contraction for about ten seconds.  As result of this contraction, the goats fall on the ground but they don’t pass out.

We can use the goats for various functions like milk production, meat production and as a pet. Typical of the goats with ‘Myotonia congenita’ is that they are very friendly, intelligent and entertaining, so the goats are ideal for the children at home or at the petting zoo. When we compare the meat production of the traditional goats with the meat production of our ‘special’ goats, we see that the traditional goats produce more meat, so we conclude that they are worth more money. Therefore the farmers use our myotonic goats less for meat production.

In some countries, the goats are very important in defending the herd. When a wolf or another predator attacks the group of goats, the myotonic goat falls down by the excitation and the predator will take this goat as a pray. The other goats of the herd can escape easily. Lots of farmers sacrifice the myotonic goat to save the normal goats because they have more value than the ‘Myotonia congenita’ goat.

A heroic but pathetic end of the life of our myotonic goat and also the end of our blog!