More about Bluetongue

The Bluetongue story for this year has by no means ended with the arrival of the cold weather, in many ways the situation in northern Europe has  deteriorated as the months have passed. France has had a huge number of Bluetongue cases this year 17,257 BTV8 cases were recorded by the middle of October, it will be more now. This has occurred in spite of the vigorous vaccination programme there that started in April. As well as that there have been 2,750 cases of the BTV1 strain of the disease reported through out the country. Fourteen holdings have recorded both strains of the virus.

Moving North

It has just been pure chance that this year the wind has not blown infected midges towards us. Our summer was either not noticed or best forgotten, we cannot rely on a repeat of the same weather patterns next year. It is now known that the virus can spread in cooler conditions, six cattle were diagnosed with the disease in the Halland region of Sweden in September. It is still not clear how the virus got established there, both farms involved are near a sea port where five consignments of cattle from the UK had entered the country during the summer. It is not clear if this has been the source of the outbreak.

Importing Disease

We cannot rely on DEFRA’s statement in its contingency plan to control Bluetongue that we will ban the import of animals from restricted areas of Europe. We have been fortunate that a relatively small number of animals were found to be infected and that the temperatures were low at the time they were discovered. This is of no comfort if it is your neighbour who is the next the import infected stock.

New Strain

The latest Bluetongue headline is that on October 24^th three cattle in the Netherlands were found to be infected with BTV6. This has triggered an immediate ban on the export of cattle and sheep from Holland until it is established where this infection has come from. There is a live vaccine for this bluetongue serotype, but normally the disease is only seen in Africa. The live vaccine is used in Africa and Israel. It has been suggested that animals illegally vaccinated with the  live vaccine have been responsible for the outbreak in the Netherlands.

Another New Strain

You may have heard that a group of goats were blood tested in Switzerland prior to export and that they have been shown to be carrying a Bluetongue virus that has not been identified before. The animals have not been showing any signs of disease, so it is not clear how significant these findings are or whether sheep of cattle would react differently to this new strain. There are twenty five known serotypes of the Bluetongue virus now.

Vaccinating in Scotland

From November 3^rd until 30^th April there will be a compulsory vaccination programme for all of the cattle and sheep in Scotland. They are also encouraging goat and camelid owners to inoculate their stock. This will mean that there will be free movement of ruminant animals throughout the UK again as the last Protection Zone is declared. The Scottish Assembly is supporting this project with £2.6m. It is a shame that the UK Government has not been able to fund part of the vaccinations in England to improve the up take of the vaccine and our protection against the disease.

National Scrapie Plan

Last year there were eight two cases of Scrapie diagnosed in the UK. The chance are that there were others that have not been noticed. There has been a steady decline in the number of infected farms each year, but it has not been eradicated yet. I was very disappointed to hear that as of effectively now DEFRA will no longer fund the Ram Genotyping Scheme and that the Scheme will be officially closed in March next year. The National Scrapie Plan has been running since 2001 and we should be proud of the progress we have made to identify and eliminate rams that were in the high risk groups from contacting and transmitting Scrapie. The scheme has also involved the storage of semen from rare breed rams so that their characteristics would not be lost in the register of breeding rams were to fall below a safe level.

No more Testing

All this has come to an end now and it is difficult to see how we will ever be able to eradicate Scrapie when there will be no monitoring of the pedigree flocks. After a period of time we will not know the genetics of  rams that are working in our national flock and Scrapie will be given the chance to increase once more.

New Disease Monitoring in Wales

It has been known for some time that llamas and Alpacas are susceptible to bovine tuberculosis. It is one of the recognised causes of unexpected death in these animals as they have little resistance to the infection. Although there are not huge numbers of camelids in the country they do seem to be a mobile population that will travel a long distance for breeding purposes. The Welsh Assembly has concerns about this and has decided to monitor these animals for tuberculosis as they have got the potential to spread the disease to new areas. They will also have the powers to restrict the movements of animals in Wales until their health status is known.

Sheep Meeting

Those of you who keep sheep are invited to a meeting organised by the Moredun Research Institute at the Shrewsbury Auction Centre on Wednesday 12^th  November at 7.30 pm. Dr David Buxton will give a talk on the control of sheep abortion. He will discuss the main causes of pregnancy loss and offer practical advice about control strategies. This meeting has been sponsored by Intervet and is free to all sheep farmers.

Cattle Meeting

ADAS and the British Cattle Veterinary Association  have organised a series of meeting on cattle lameness. This continues to be a concern on many farms as herd size increase. The meetings are designed to highlight the benefits of lameness scoring and working out a mobility index for your herd so that you will be more aware of the impact of lameness on your farm.

Practical Sessions

It is thought that lameness is often under estimated on dairy farms and the hope is that using an agreed consensus nationally of how to define and measure lameness we will be better able to monitor and reduce the incidence of the problem.

The meeting are taking place through out the country and there are both morning and afternoon sessions. The closest one to us is at Walford College on Tuesday 25^th November starting at either 10.15 am or 1.15 pm. These meetings are also free, but you will need to book in advance on 01522 521302 or use the booking forms that we have at the Surgery

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