There have been further changes to the Tuberculosis testing Policy that DEFRA has announced it will implement next year. Instead of deciding the testing interval on a parish by parish basis which has been the case since as far back as I can remember testing intervals will now be decided for each county. This will mean little change for most of us as cattle in the whole of Shropshire will be tested each year, at least and more frequently if there is a herd breakdown or you are close to a herd breakdown. The old system using a parish as a boundary did not reflect the way that the disease was spreading, you could have a farm at the boundary of a parish with a herd breakdown that triggered short interval tests across the parish but not on an adjacent farm if they happened to be in a different parish. Also some areas have remained on two or three yearly testing when they have been surrounded by parishes that have regularly had herd breakdowns.

This will bring us into line with Wales where all of the farms are on annual testing.

The EEC directive that governs the testing intervals states that to be able to trade all cattle in herds from countries that are not officially TB free must be tested every year with the provision that this can be relaxed to two, three or four years provided the herd breakdowns do not exceed a certain threshold. It is difficult to see how we have been able to argue our case to let the TB testing interval extend to up to four years here as no other country in Europe is having as many problems with TB as we do.

There are still no signs that we will ever get an adequate control strategy for tuberculosis. There is always the hope that one day legislation will change and new regulations will be forced on us from the EEC. Control measures in cattle do not work when the primary host of the disease is left to spread the infection. The continuing failure to tackle the wildlife source of the infection has prolonged the presence of the disease and encouraged it to spread to deer, llamas, alpacas as well as cats and some dogs. Nobody likes to think of culling badgers, but there are humane ways of going about it now. Carefully managed targeted control measures of badgers in selected areas are the only way that we are going to have any chance of controlling this disease now.

Boehringher are still working on the sourcing ingredience problem that they have with their useful milking cow tube Umbro Yellow. This used to be Leo Yellow. They are confident that they will be able to resume production in the early part of 2010. Hopefully it will not be too long before the product is available again as we have used up now all of the supplies that we were able to stock pile in the summer.

November 14^th marks that first anniversary of the last time that Bluetongue was diagnosed in this country. It is still very difficult to get accurate information about bluetongue on the continent after the deluge of scare stories last year. As far as I can determine there have been fifty three cases of BTV8 in France and five cases of BTV1 this year. There are no details of the severity of the incidents or the numbers of animals involved. I feel that we have been completely misled about this disease. It has after all been around in the tropics for more than 100 years. During that time it has been much studied and in later years much information has been fed into computers so that the way the disease spreads could be modelled and predicted. Last year there were many predictions of doom and gloom. I read many reports about the disease as it was as new to me as it is to you. I did not find any thing from any of the universities or research institutes that suggested any thing other than continuing spread and significant difficult to control losses from the disease.

It is good that we have all been proved wrong. It is also good that there have been a handful of BTV1 outbreaks in France again this year. That should mean that they will continue to be classified in a different control zone to us again next year and that exports of cattle and sheep to us will not be allowed. The Bluetongue Vaccines are still freely available. Much of the original stock remained unused and has now gone out of date. It is becoming increasingly difficult to justify vaccinating farm stock as the risk from the disease diminishes. Much will depend on the attitude of the auctioneers next year as to whether they continue to promote the sale of vaccinated stock. I will monitor what is happening on the other side of the channel again next year. The chances are we will have time to vaccinate should the disease re emerge next year as long as imports of affected stock can to stopped to prevent the introduction of infection by stock movements direct to this area.

The Welsh branch of ADAS are organising a series of meetings throughout the country to help you rear more lambs and to increase farm profitability. They calculate that nationally between 15 and 20% of lambs are lost between ewes being scanned and lambs sold. The talks will concentrate on nutrition and disease control particularly in the eight weeks before and the six weeks after lambing. The meetings start this month, but our local one will be at the Shrewsbury Market on Wednesday 20^th January 7.30 pm – 9.30 pm. Admission is free but you must let them know you are going either by e mail to animalhealth@adas.co.uk or by using the application forms that we have at the surgery.

Most cattle and sheep are looking good at the moment after a good summer for grass growth and now a long dry autumn. Many animals will be housed later than you have planned and there should be good quantities of grass and maize silage for winter feeding. This has also been an exceptional year for internal parasites. Worm larvae on pastures have thrived unchecked right through the year. They had a cold winter which holds the eggs in check so that they could all hatch out at once when cattle and sheep returned to pastures after winter housing. There was no set back in the summer as it stayed warm and wet and now the season has just gone on and on.

Now is a good time to get rid of the worms. Which ever method you prefer drench, injection or pour on take care to access weights accurately and check that the dosing gun or syringe is giving the calculated dose. Take particular care with pour on preparations. It is better to use them when the animals are dry. Some of the guns deliver the dose under high pressure that can easily miss the back and go onto the floor.

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