The annual meeting of Fermanagh Grassland Club was addressed by Lindsey Drummond, a veterinary surgeon, who spoke about using cow signals to get to know about the herd.
Lindsey is a member of the Read family from Maguiresbridge, and is now in practice in Northern Ireland after training at the Royal Dick Veterinary School, Scotland and after spending some time abroad.
Lindsey became a qualified cow signal master in 2014.
Her message to farmers attending the meeting was; “Take a step back” from normal routine and see if there was anything to change to improve the herd management.
Lindsey reported from countries where she had spent some time, such as New Zealand, as well as Columbia in South America and Sweden where she saw a wide range of management skills.
She said it was from some of these trips that made her think about the relationships between farmers and vets.
She said happy cows were healthy cows, helping to improve farm performance and ultimately leading to happy farmers.
The principle, she said, was that farmers used their senses, what they noticed. 
As a newly qualified vet, Lindsey helped out in practices in England where she had to visit some large dairy farms where she identified potential problems but she found some farmers having difficulty recognising the problems.
“We need to be open to accept differences, “ she told farmers.
She advised farmers to know their herd.
On dairy heifer rearing, she said heifers should be 22-24 months old at calving and 85 per cent of bodyweight at calving.
She looked at the needs of a calf and said colostrum was critical especially 1-2 hours within birth as it was the first protection against disease.
 It appeared that one third of all calves did not get colostrum within this period. Answering questions later, Lindsey told farmers if using colostrum from frozen to avoid thawing it in the microwave as it ruined the proteins. It should be thawed naturally.
She referred to the BVD regulations which are due to come into place from March 2016. BVD has been costly to farmers especially where there were PIs(Persistently Infected) progeny. BVD can be carried on wellington boots and vaccinations must be carried out to protect cows.
The annual meeting of the Club also took place in December.
The new office-bearers were as follows;
Chairman - Robert Graham, Tempo; Vice-Chairman - Trevor Dunn; Secretary - William Johnston; Treasurer - Philip Clarke. 
Committee members - David Brown, John Egerton, Albert Foster, Ivan Henderson, Barry Read and Alan Warnock.
The next meeting of the Club is on Tuesday, January 12 when the speaker is Stan Lalor on soil health.