Category Archive

Karin has very kindly sent me a link to a page from the Institute of Animal Health which has a selection of presentations given by several members of her group at an NFU meeting. You’ll see the presentations listed at the bottom on the left hand side– just click on them to view. (the above link is now working!)

She has also included three papers that you might find interesting

Bluetongue 1 Bluetongue 2 Bluetongue 3

Another link which you might also find informative is Farming on Sunday

If you have any questions about bluetongue the Institue of Animal Health have an email account iah.bluetongue@bbsrc.ac.uk. where your questions will be answered by one of the bluetongue group - the most appropriate person for the question.

Karin will be giving another talk in Cornwall at The Conference Hall, Duchy College, Rosewarne, Nr Camborne TR140AB on Thursday the 22nd May at 7.30pm. If it’s near enough to you I suggest to try to get there as her presentation really is superb.

I hope you find this useful. If there’s anything else you want to know I’ll see if I can help.

A few weeks ago Jennifer developed an oedema on her lower jaw known as ‘bottle jaw’. Bottle jaw or intermandibular oedema is due to protein loss from the bloodstream into the intestinal tract. The most likely cause of this is either Johne’s disease (pronounced “yo-knees”), a disease you really don’t want in your herd, or parasitism, most likely fluke, both of which damage the liver. However it could be the result of a heart condition in which case an oedema could subsequently appear on the chest.

As you can imagine, I was worried. Jennifer, if you remember, is the herd’s number one cow, the matriarch. She is also the cow, back in February, I photographed throughout the labour and birth of her massive calf. After calving I decided to supplement her feed with cereal to help her cope with the demands of a large calf and to make up for the lack of nutrients in last summer’s inferior forage. Despite this additional feeding she continued to look rather emaciated, though her character, disposition and appetite remained much as usual.

I consulted my vet when the oedema first appeared and we decided to wait twenty-four hours to see if any materialized on her chest which would indicate a heart condition. Thank heavens none did. The next stage was to try and find out what the cause was and if possible to treat it. I took a faecal sample which was sent to Starcross Laboratories to test for Johne’s disease and parasites. She was given a dose of flukicide in case the herd’s routine autumn drench for fluke had not been effective. I injected her with a multi-vitamin to boost the liver and a steroid to control the oedema.

Unfortunately Johne’s disease is incurable. Briefly it’s a serious wasting disease that affects a wide range of animals. It causes a thickening of the intestinal wall which blocks the normal absorption of food. The animal is hungry and eats but cannot absorb any nutrients. This results in wasting and finally death. Diarrhoea and bottle jaw are common signs of its presence in cattle. It’s very difficult to diagnose and often by the time any symptoms come to light the disease is well established in the herd and difficult to eradicate.

I waited nervously for the test results to come back. In the meantime Jennifer’s oedema continued to increase in size. I knew that sweet fresh grass would be the best medicine for her, indeed she was craving it, but unfortunately that wasn’t an option. One evening I found Olly in the cow palace scratching her back “I’ve a bad feeling about Jen, mum”. This was after doing some searches on the net which gleefully informed us that once the oedema appeared the animal had approximately two weeks to live!

“Well I don’t think she’s that ready to give up just yet” I replied “after all she has this year’s intake of maiden heifers to sort out and one of them’s her daughter little Jen” (her real name is Kate but she looks so like her mum that we nicknamed her little Jen). “I’m sure she’ll want to make sure that she’s putting her connections to good use and is groomed for future matriarchal succession.”

My vet phoned with the results – and joy of joy they were negative both for parasites and Johne’s! But, he warned this can sometimes be a false negative in the case of Johne’s and we should continue to monitor her. She has now been out to grass for almost a week and I think the oedema is lessening; she certainly looks to be carrying a little more weight. So hopefully this incident is due to a combination of age, her years of exceptional fertility, mothering and milk production…and the very poor quality of last summer’s haylage. Neither the herd nor I are ready to see the end of her reign. Long live Jen!

A quick update on the bluetongue information. Unfortunately there has been a technical hitch with converting the two Dutch power point presentations into pdfs. Andrew, who is very kindly doing this for me, is away on holiday this week, but as soon as he is back I’m sure that the problem will be resolved and we’ll be able to either upload the pdfs or give a link to them.

The good news is that I’m in contact with Karin from Pirbright who is keen to help and is willing put some information together for the blog. Though due to the warmer weather over the past week she has been extremely busy and won’t be able to do much before the weekend.

But, with a bit of luck, by next week I should have pulled together some useful sources of information that you will hopefully find helpful.

“So you think it’s going to be bad? Well, you’re wrong…

We shuffle in our seats, steal surreptitious glances at one another, clear our throats and half smile. A rustle of whispers stirs through the listeners.

…it’s going to be devastating! Don’t underestimate for a second what effect this disease will have on your stock, you and your business.”

Jaws drop. We sit stock still. He has everyone’s undivided attention: Marco Zerhoef, the vet from Holland who has hands-on experience of dealing with Bluetongue, the disease that’s decimated the livestock industry in much of Northern Europe.

He continues “In Holland we were unprepared. We’d heard of it yes, but we thought the handful of cases that bubbled up in 2006 and then died down was the end of it. A one off, nothing to get excited about. How wrong we were! In 2007 the first cases in Holland occurred in July, but we misdiagnosed them as sunburn – it had been an unusually hot spring – and photosensitisation. We correctly identified the disease too late and by August nearly every farm in our practice had contracted Bluetongue. The disease continued to snowball with unprecedented effects.”

He went on to explain what we could expect. Showed us images of cows and sheep; oedematous, encrusted with lesions, lame and unable to drink or walk; and calves, malformed, mummified, suffering severe encephalitis and other unusual deformities. Youngsters that failed to thrive. Depressing graphs, facts and figures.

The only thing they could do was nurse the sick and dying, helping to relieve the excruciating symptoms. It’s an awful disease, killing 40% of sheep and causing long-term damage to those that survive and to cattle.

“You” he carried on “have a chance. Have a chance to be a little more prepared. And a chance, maybe, to get in front of it with the vaccine.”

A Dutch dairy farmer gave his first hand experiences of coping with Bluetongue in his well kept milking cows, calves and heifers and the ongoing effects the disease is continuing to have on his stock and business. Needless to say, milk production has been severely reduced; his followers lack growth and are giving just a small percentage of their expected yield, his cows are difficult to get in calf, calves die in utero, and so on.

Karin Darple, a vet from Pirbright and a Bluetongue expert who has been working on the disease and vaccine, gave her presentation next – and it was superb. What she doesn’t know about Bluetongue isn’t worth knowing. She had very practical advice on how to cope with the disease, whether and when insecticides would be appropriate, housing versus the outdoors and much, much, more.

Karin would like to see 100% take up of the vaccine as soon as it hits the shelves, but EU legislation prevents this! Vaccine can only be given in Protection Zones where the disease has already struck, not in the surrounding Surveillance Zones. Karin couldn’t stress enough that speed is of the essence: to stand a chance of avoiding the devastating effects of the disease we must vaccinate ahead of it – we must prevent the virus from getting established.

There was far too much useful information to put in this post. I have asked my vet for pdf copies of all three presentations. Those that I’m able to, I’ll link to from my blog. If they are too large I’d be willing to email you a copy if you are interested. Leave me some contact detail in the comment section and I’ll get back to you. Please also look at the Warmwell site and the link Jane Barribal left for more information.

bluetongue 4

The infuriating niggle-niggle that keeps irritating and scratching persistently away in my mind’s eye is ‘you!-you-ostrich-head-in-the-sand’ and ‘maybe-if-I-look-from-behind-my-hands-it-won’t-happen’ as well as the ‘if-I-squint-I-might-not-really-see-what-I’m-looking-at’. I don’t know if you experience them…those irksome posters that march across your field of vision making sure you are perpetually aware of a subject you really don’t want to think about. This particular no-no is, of course, Bluetongue. And no, it won’t go away however much I will it.

As I breathe deeply, sigh and marvel at the fabulous weather of the last few days, another part of me is scanning for midges and hoping that the cold, frosty mornings and chilly Easterly wind might give us a few more weeks grace. Might, miracles of miracles, allow us to evade the next month of certain infestation and infection. At least, get us a little bit nearer the promised vaccination.

I’m itching – operative word here – to get the cows out. But if cold wet rain, sleet and snow – in fact a ‘fimble-winter’ - is the recipe for that miracle, well, bring it on!

The day before yesterday the midges were biting…and hard. The cows were careering about, bellowing and kicking; a heavily fleeced sheep cast herself itching; and the rams decided that the persistent irritation obviously originated from one of the others which resulted in a bloody battle. I also frenziedly scratched and pulled at my hair. It hasn’t been too bad since then.

This evening I’m attending a talk arranged by my vets on Bluetongue. The speakers will be a Dutch vet who has first hand experience, Intervet, the vaccine manufactures and possibly a vet from Animal Health. I wait to see what, if anything, I can do.

On Saturday the rain hurled rods and sleet flung stinging shot; the wind whipped and howled, crashing and banging anything and everything with vandalistic glee; the fields ran and sighed with cold clay water – and I lost a lamb. She died from pasteurella. She was bonny, big and strong; she and her sister were some of the first lambs to be born.

I’d been up in the top yard checking the buildings were holding out, and the ewes and lambs hadn’t succumbed to drowning or hypothermia. Surprisingly everyone was okay though a mite wet and bedraggled; the ewes had sensibly brought most of the youngest lambs into shelter. Returning back down to the farmhouse Robert made some remark about the water supply and so couple of hours later I went back up to check all was well. And there she was, dead. Pasteurella is that sudden. It’s a bacterium, p. heamolytica, which leads to severe pneumonia. I’ve never had a case before on this farm. They say if you’ve had one probably more will follow so I’ve been keeping an ever watchful eye on the flock and…I dare say no more.

But what a difference a day makes.  It was time to move Dot, her offspring and a couple of other ewes and lambs up to rejoin the main flock.  Walking them slowly up the hill to the Rutleighs I felt and smelt a balmier air.  A definite stirring. The verges along the lane had erupted with the crumpled unfurling of cow parsley and hog weed.  Down in the dip the pungent cat’s pee smell of wild currant mixed with earthy watery dampness. Primroses cover the hedge banks and nestled in a sheltered mossy hollow I found the first shy violet. Promise…

bluetongue’s winter warmer

Now here’s a thing. I had a fit of the giggles. Actually it was probably a touch of mini-hysteria; the uncontrolled, raucous, thigh-slapping, tears-pouring-down-face kind, coloured by total disbelief. Wishful thinking there – what I would hope to be total disbelief.

In this week’s New Scientist under the heading ‘Bluetongue’s Winter Warmer‘ we were told about the distinct possibility of bluetongue virus overwintering in the unborn calf cosseted and protected by the cosy bubble of bovine uterine warmth.

And as those hungry veracious biting midges reappear (the end of the non-vector period was the 15th March) these bonny babies would become a delicious fresh source of the bluetounge virus. Hey-presto! Yup, you have it in one.

Pirbright suggest there should be additional controls targeted at newborn animals. Now, me-wonders, what on earth have they in mind? No vaccine around yet. Could only be one other thing.

And if that’s not sinister enough – listen to this…the only bluetongue virus ever seen to cross the placenta of infected mothers to infect their foetuses was a laboratory-adapted strain used in experiments with sheep in the 70s.

Ring any bells? Shades of last summer’s FMD fiasco? Afterall the great and the good have been wondering how the BTV8 strain gained such an unshakable foothold in northern Europe.

Maybe they now have their answer.

bluetongue 2

My fears have been confirmed. We are in the bluetongue surveillance zone. I arrived home this evening checked the answer phone and there was the man from DEFRA with his recorded message – in a dead-pan voice he stated ‘some, part, or all of my holding now came within the bluetongue surveillance zone and…’

Below is an excerpt from an email sent to me by a fellow farmer in Norfolk. I won’t add anything. The words tell their own story - poignant and thought provoking.

‘Our stock are our livelihood, such as it is, we run an organic beef suckler herd and 700 laying hens, and work long hours trying to make a living, but that’s life: farmings’ shit at the moment, but what else do we do?’

Last year they were hit by restrictions from both FMD and Avian flu (twice), having just, in the very nick of time, saved their entire suckler herd from drowning during the floods they heard the news about bluetounge. In her own words…

‘Just after that Bluetongue was detected, and we thought Now What!!? how do we deal with this? what are the symptoms? is it contagious? does it cross species? and the media had a field day; yet again; (They virtually camped in the area during the first Avian Flu outbreak- 9 miles from us) and there was no clear information, later on the farmers that had cows with the disease said there were few symptoms to tell they were affected, but since then our vet has been trying to keep abreast of the disease, and how it will affect cows in the future, and it seems as though some of the affects of the disease is to cause infertility in some and may cause calves to be born with abnormalities. I can only liken that to thalidomide in pregnant women. Follow that up again with Liver Fluke and a blasted fox getting my five 12 week old chicks from off the lawn, and traumatising their mother half to death. (she spent hours in the pond to avoid getting caught), and one might wonder why we carry on!’

She ends…

‘Yes, you bet we’re worried, but we can’t allow it to take over our lives. We just take heart that life here, at the moment, goes on in the age old tradition, and we are thankful that at least this year we have some beautiful calves to see bounding and gambolling about, and we will worry when the time comes (and hopefully it won’t). I’ve got enough grey hairs, and F has none, he has pulled all his out over the years!!’

So how will farms and good, caring people like this cope? Beef animal are already making a loss of £139 per animal. Not to mention the heartache caused from tending sick and dying stock. We will loose those very farms and farmers that are trying their best to produce high quality food from healthy, happy, animals whilst caring as best they can for the environment.

midges flying over hanaborough moor 7th february 2008

Bluetongue. Twenty-four different BT strains identified so far each needing a strain-specific vaccine. This disease is expected to become endemic in Britain. There will be no compensation. Vaccination will be the only way of protecting livestock. Our native and indigenous breeds of cattle and sheep will be more susceptible to the disease having never encountered it before.

Bluetongue. The BTV-8 strain is now affecting the Eastern and South-eastern counties of the UK with the surveillance zone having been extended into some parts of Dorset. DEFRA are expecting different strains of the disease to arrive along the South West coast from France this spring and spread northwards.
In the UK midges have not been killed off during the mild winter and are already flying. They travel two kilometres a day in normal weather conditions and much further in strong headwinds. It doesn’t take a mathematician to work out how long it will take to reach Devon.

Bluetongue. It is hoped, according to DEFRA, there will be enough BTV-8 vaccine ready to carry out vaccination in the South East during May. There is no indication of a more comprehensive vaccination programme this year, next year or ever. The costs of developing vaccines for the 24 various strains and for implementing a countrywide vaccination programme will be staggering. Will DEFRA or the government be willing to help with the costs? I’m not so sure.

I’m shit scared and worried. It seems extraordinary to me that some people appear to be acting as if it’s a mild inconvenience. This disease is potentially devastating; especially to an already beleaguered livestock industry. And I don’t know if I have the heart or energy left to cope with a farm of sick and dying animals. This could be the death-knoll for Locks Park Farm.

Twinkling fairies? Or the harbinger of devastation?