Last week I was on the road with our workmate Miss Lisa King, who covers the Maritimes. Not a place I go very often but it is always a pleasure to visit New Brunswick, especially since I was told at the airport that it is the “only fully bilingual province” of the country! A perfect place when you speak “franglich”!!!
Usually when I go there, it’s because a seminar was scheduled! This one was done in partnership with the New Brunswick kennel club and held in the area of St John. We discussed 4 different topics (Basics in genetics in the canine species/Advances in canine reproduction/Estrus induction in the bitch/Nutrition and reproduction in canines), starting at 9am and wrapping up at 5pm. Busy day then, but great discussions around these different topics, many thanks again to the attendees, copies of the slides are available for download here in our breeding subsection! I truly think education is something key if we want our breeder community to move forward and I am glad to have these opportunities. I hope there will be more in the future, we have still plenty of other topics!
But that’s not the only thing we did during this trip, I also learned interesting things! When we started to discuss me coming to New Brunswick, I said to Lisa it would be great to visit some of our professional partners. Why are those so important to me? We have a talk called “hygiene in breeding facilities”, and one of the first slides asks the following question: what is THE thing breeders should focus on in their facility? The answer is SANITATION! In this field, it is sometimes important to “innovate”. And during this trip, I saw two “innovations” I thought I might share with the rest of our PRO community.
When we speak about materials that should be used in kennels and catteries, we always say “they should be easy to clean and disinfect”. Here is a nice alternative I saw in New Brunswick, with the use of FPR (which stands for Fiber glass reinforced wall panels). You’ll find a complete description here but this completely fits for what we are looking for in this kind of facility. Because they are non-porous, the efficiency of the cleaning/disinfecting process will definitely be increased!
Another problem we often have to face in these facilities is related to humidity. Where we usually recommend humidity levels around 65% in breeding facilities, most of the time they are around 80%! Why is it problematic? Because an excess of humidity favors growth of germs in the environment (respiratory diseases, especially in catteries, can be more often found in environment with very high humidity). So why not using a dehumidifier for the rooms which are the more at risk? On the picture this is the device I saw last week, in the facility there was no sign at all (like water drops on the windows) of excess of humidity! This is for sure an investment, but the health of your dogs/cats will definitely benefit from it !
DR. EMMANUEL FONTAINE 