Published by Farmers Guide, April 2007.

Shropshire farmer Tim Downes is convinced
of the merits of homoeopathy in his dairy herd.
(Photo by Gabriel Prince)

Treating livestock the homoeopathic way

Homoeopathic treatments may still be treated with suspicion by many, but for Shropshire farmer Tim Downes they are a way of life for both his dairy herd and his family.

Tim, who farms in partnership with his parents, John and Chris, and wife Louise, has good reason to take an interest in alternative treatments because the family's 160-strong dairy herd enjoys organic status and sells its milk to the Bristol-based Organic Milk Suppliers Cooperative (Omsco).

"We use vaccines for issues in the herd that the Soil Association recommends should be treated, but we keep the use of pharmaceuticals as a last resort, and then only if prescribed by a vet," Tim told Farmers Guide. "Wherever possible we use a homoeopathic treatment."

Based a few miles south of Shrewsbury, the farm regularly used homoeopathy on its stock as long ago as 20 years ago, when the family had a lot of success with a nosode (treatment) to treat ringworm, but its use fell away until 2001 when - prompted by the move to organic milk production - Tim went on a three-day homoeopathy at welly level (Hawl) course.

"The main driver for attending the course was to find alternatives to dry-cow treatments as we had been having problems with the cows after completely withdrawing the use of antibiotic tubes," Tim said. "Homoeopathy works hand-in-hand with other management techniques such as nutrition and cleanliness and since I started using the techniques I learned, we have seen a real improvement in herd health.

"We haven't used a milking-cow tube for the past two years and only need to use dry-cow tubes on about 3% of the cows. This helped us to really cut down on our vet bills and we have been able to cut veterinary costs down to just 0.35p/litre, which compares very favourably with conventional milk production."

Tim's early successes allowed him to build up his confidence in homoeopathic treatments and he has now amassed about 70 individual remedies for treating different conditions.

Arnica is regularly used for bruising - in both the cattle and Tim and Louise's young family - while Aconite has proved useful to prevent stress during TB testing. Stress related problems with fertility that have no equivalent treatment in conventional medicine can also be treated with homoeopathy.

One of the most impressive treatments that Tim uses is a spray called BBU (it contains Belladonna, Brionica and Urtica) that is used to treat mastitis in the milkers.

"If a hard, hot quarter is picked up at milking time, a spray of BBU normally means that the quarter will be soft and back to normal the next day," Tim said. "I don't believe in the placebo effect in animals, so it must be the treatment that's working.

"Just about everything can be treated if you can pinpoint the remedy, and it's not expensive to use. A little spray bottle costs only £12.50 and can be delivered overnight if we don't have the remedy we need. Each bottle will treat a good number of livestock and it will keep for years.

"Actually treating the animals is much easier too. While you can add some treatments to the cows' water supply, most are administered by spraying the remedy onto any mucous membrane," Tim added. "While in many cases we'll spray the animal's nose, in the parlour it's easier to spray the vulva."

Tim believes that to get the most out of homoeopathy you have to study the origins of the treatments and the principles of using them.

While quite proficient himself, he looks up to the farmers that have been using homoeopathy for a long time and have moved on from just treating symptoms.

"At an advanced level, you move away from treating signs of disease and administer treatments based on the constitution of the whole animal," Tim said. "Every animal - and human for that matter - can be sorted into a particular constitutional state. When it is ill, you don't treat the illness, but provide a remedy to bring it back to its original state.

Tim likens the principle to a group of schoolchildren in a classroom that are exposed to the common cold.

"The virus will have a different effect on different children in the group because they have different constitutions," he said. "Rather than treat the cold, you give them a treatment aimed at restoring their normal constitution."

While not quite at that level yet, Tim is continuing to learn about homoeopathy and is aware that the obvious symptoms may not reveal the root cause of the problem.

"You have to look back and try and identify any events that may have caused the symptoms too," he said. "You have to work out if they were exposed to a particular stress or problem in the past and treat that issue rather than the current symptoms.

"If you pinpoint the problem correctly, you will see the symptoms recede from the current situation to the older complaint, and quite often the animal you are treating may appear to get worse before it gets better."

Omsco has recently started subsidising the Hawl course that Tim attended and will pay 50% of the £325 cost if its members or their staff want to attend.

The Downes family's herdsman, Andy Farrow, attended a course held at the Prince of Wales' Broadfield Farm, in Gloucestershire, at the end of March and Tim hopes he will be equally impressed by the possibilities that homoeopathy brings.

"Andy has only been with us for a couple of months, but he's pretty laid back and has the right temperament for alternative treatments," he said. "It's all about taking a much more hands-on approach and getting to know your stock to identify problems sooner rather than later.

"You get rewarded many times over by being able to treat your own stock in a safe, ethical way that not only saves money, but leads to healthy productive animals."