Bluetongue in Focus: Signs, Strains, Vaccines and Farm Preparedness

Hello everyone, it's Friday the 7th of August and welcome to Episode 305 of the kite podcast with me, Will Evans and me Ben Eagle. This week we are talking about the thing that everyone is talking about at the moment and that is Blutern virus, BTV, with a particular focus on the situation in the southwest, vaccination, the signs to look for and what to do if you think you have BTV on your farm. To discuss this, we're joined by Vets, Laura Roberts from Sandstone Vets, which covers Cheshire, North Wales, Blankershire, Shropshire and Staffordshire and Rebecca Cavill from Torch Farm Vets, which covers Devon and Cornwall. Laura is also on the BCVA board, the professional body for farm vets in the UK. Farmer Jenny Huckway is also with us as well as podcast producer Becky Ray. Now everybody's favourite dairy market analyst Chris Borkland is away this week. He's in your beloved Wales, Will I think, but he has sent us this market report. Well this week I'm on a study tour of dairy farms in your beautiful country will, in the Brecken Beacons. I haven't found any so far but you never know. I've even been up the mountains to see if there are any up there but not a single one. Plenty of those white woolly things though. Still they won't be here for long. All the farmers will be heeding a certain vegan TV presenters advice this week and getting rid of them to grow carrots and potatoes. Another brilliant idea about farming from somebody who knows, sod all about farming. So to the market and what has been happening this week, well the GDT index for the first auction of August was an unspectacular event with the index up just 0.1%. Well I guess at least it wasn't a reduction. Nevertheless the average price dropped about 40 dollars to $370, which is the lowest since late January. S&P posted a 1.2% increase with a loss increasing by 160 euros and a quick to 2835 euros its highest level since May. So that was a good result and it emphasizes that much of the drop in prices on the GDT is Southern Hemisphere based. That said though butter was down overall to its lowest value since January at $5,225 with EU product dipping below 4,000 euros for near-term sales. To put that in context a year ago EU butter was 7,000 euros. I don't think overall the auction will have had any impact on likely farm gate returns which equate to just over 30 PI reckon. But with luck in the following, wind our market is now starting to outpace the GDT I think particularly on cheese. In Europe Dutch butter held this week at 3,890 euros which is about where some traders have their prices and we're at 3,400 to 3,500 sterling. Cream in Europe is about the same as butter and equivalent to between £1.35 and £1.40. Here we're still higher though between £1.62. Highers £1.70 somebody told me that's quite a range and actual prices will depend on volumes bought or sold of course probably not a lot at the higher price. Dutch whole milk powder had a very useful 200 euro boost this week for reasons I'm not too sure of. Food grade SMP was stable at 2,820 euros and feed grade. Well that jumped a useful 70 euros to 2690 so some positivity again there. On the futures market EU butter dropped again. I'm afraid by 75 euros over the next six months to an average of 4 to 80 euros. That's the lowest since mid-June these butter stocks in Europe really are overhanging the market. This better news on SMP was up by 100 euros to 2980 euros and we now have November, December and January contracts above the all important 3,000 euros threshold again. And there are six contracts over this threshold for the next 12 months so that's unundoubted positive. However the base ampy price from butter and SMP still isn't crossing 30p yet I'm afraid. On cheese some EU traders are still listing cheddar at a very low price equivalent to less than 2,900 sterling and some prices are pretty rubbish the GDT. Cheddar price is at 3,225 euros or 2760 sterling so that's an absolute shocker of a price. Here I don't think prices will have changed much from around the 3,000 sterling level for British but Stoenect's prices have slipped a bit for quarter one. They are down 90 pounds from what they were a week ago to 3,1,6,5 sterling so drop below 3,2. Current prices it has at 2,9 sterling which I think is absolute nuts given where cheddar prices are milk for cheddar prices are heading here. I'd be absolutely staggered if any of our manufacturers are selling that sort of a level. The EEX index is at a similar level though so perhaps that's also holding the market back. And mozzarella is at around 3,000 sterling from both Stoenects and EEX. I think it's crackers that it's more expensive than mild but hey that's the market right now. And finally spot milk is around 45p, a bit lower for large volumes obviously. So there you are, another mixed report, some positives, some negatives but at least milk prices, farm gate milk prices are still on the way up with some more announcements made this week. And now it's on to our esteemed guest with a very important subject for this week, BTV. Take it away everyone. Thank you Chris. Laura, welcome to the show. Can you introduce yourself to this next please? Hi I'm Laura, I'm a vet working in Cheshire and have worked in the surrounding area for the last five years. Aside from that I'm also a director at BCBA Board which you already mentioned which is the organisation or association that represents farm vets, well cattle vets particularly in the UK. So part of my role on the BCBA Board has been bluetooth on lead so keeping members up to date with what's going on, attending meetings and representing farm vets on these meetings. Okay, thank you. Rebecca, welcome to you as well. Can you introduce yourself to please? Yes, my name is Rob or Rebecca. I'm one of the directors of one of the farm vets done it to which farm vets in North Devin Milsay Venturing to West Somerset and down into North Cornwall. So they've sort of made epicenter at the moment for bluetooth. We predominantly do daily work, we do a bit of beefy sheep work as well, say. Okay, can you introduce yourself to please? Thank you, thank you very much for having me first. I'm Jenny Hickray, I'm dairy farming in North Devin with my husband and his parents. We milk 230 cows all year round carving pattern and we supply a la on their welfare pro skiing. Whereabouts in North Devin, are you farm? Do you know winkly? Hey, I know Tauington. Yeah, I know that. Lovely, nice part of the world. Okay, Laura, can you introduce yourself to bluetooth and virus generally in terms of what it is and what the different strains are? Yes, so bluetooth. virus is a virus that spread by midges. There's about 29 different stereotypes or strains and we've had a previous outbreak in the UK around 2007-2008 which was BTB 8 but the one we're seeing at the moment is a different strain which is BTB 3 which came across a few years ago with some midges we think from Europe that were infected and has kind of been here on enough over the last couple of years and then we've seen a huge striking cases this year. It's the strain that BTB 3 is a strain that we've been seeing in the Netherlands that they had a huge impact of it a couple of years ago. So yeah it's spread by midges it's the Koola Kordy's major which is the same one that spreads Spall and Berg and yeah we see it when the mid season is around which is now the warm weather we have is heating up we see midges most of the year. Yeah one of the key differences between BTB 3 and BTB 8? Not much clinically they would appear very similar so clinical signs wise they are very similar you will really be able to tell them apart just looking at an animal. We have seen a couple of cases of BTB 8 and one case of BTB 12 in the last couple of years but primarily they're BTB 3 and what's really important is that there's no cross protection between the strains so just because an animal might have been infected or vaccinated with a strain BTB 3 it won't be protected against BTB 8 and vice versa. Brilliant okay great. All right what are the signs to look out for what should we do for as farmers on animals how can we tell that they've got the virus? So basically one of the main things the virus does is it causes blood vessels to be leaky so you get fluid coming out of the blood vessels into the sharding tissues so one of the main things you see from that is swelling so from what I've I've personally seen in terms of cattle one of the first things people tend to say is they're lame but they almost look like laminatic because all of the limbs are swollen and obviously once you get done to the primary band on the hoof can't smell any more a bit toe-tapy like don't want to put their feet to the ground and really really stick gates so they stand up and they they're like rigid it's been that this sort of typical thing that I've seen as well as that they've usually got a temperature so anywhere from very mild to like they're from like 39 and a half right up to about 41 degrees so quite a range on that and usually quite a lot of drooling so a lot of extra saliva coming out from out the cation you can see a bit of regurgitation with it and quite often discharged from the nostrils and that could be either clear or a little bit new appearance a bit snotty quite often crust really crusty noses as well as it can present a little bit like photocensitisation so you know if they've gone they've eaten something they shouldn't have done some comes out any white bits go pink so sometimes you'll see soles on the other as well and quite often seeing ulcers in the mouth not fairly typical as well as swelling's over the head it can also cause fluid to leak into the lungs so you can get a bit of pulmonary dimis so they might present this like breathing quite heavy or quite laboured and a bit noisy of the lungs and we listened to them so in some of them are really mild and they're just a bit lethargic holding back you know especially the young stock like they're out and feel you'll spot them because they're on the right looking a bit a little bit uncomfortable or just a little bit a little bit no so some of them have been really really mild and some of them have looked really quite sick so quite what a variability in what we're seeing but those be the key bits to look out for and how long does it actually take for an animal to show symptoms from guessing it? it's between as between four to 14 days incubation period so it could be up to two weeks so actually once you've seen your first case your potentially continues to see cases from the same bike for up to another 10 days so it can't be quite along yeah can be quite a long time before you actually start to see when you start to see you're probably going to start to see a lot because it's yeah going through them that way. Okay Jenny let's go over to you what's your experience with blue-tank-bean? currently so yeah in North-Evern we are surrounded by it at the moment and we had our local show didn't we yesterday and the topics wasn't aware of this time it was have you got it or have you vaccinated? So everyone's talking about it and fortunately at home on the dairy farm we have had one potential case in the young heifer and that came out six and samples and that takes a bit time to find out if it was that but clinically they didn't actually think she had it so fingers crossed on that one but it just has put us on like higher lads you're looking at animals thinking any looking at any symptoms of blue-tank and we think we kind of do forget that animals do get sick from other things at the moment I think just just focusing a lot on blue-tank but that's situation at the moment. They're completely and and Rob do you want to just talk about the situation more broadly across the southwest especially in North-Evern? I think it's I think we our first case we saw in sample our first case on the 7th of July and it was one of those where I've went out and and looked said I think I've seen blue-tank we're like beauty things so like North-Evern first like you know surely surely like that's great let's send some samples and and see what we get but is it really you know we're probably not quite the right location everything else and then literally within the next couple of days like every animal that was popping up we're like something's not quite right here you know we're seeing a few more sick animals and they're all presenting with fairly similar clinical signs around this little area up around Elfkoom and then within that just probably about 10 days ago just absolutely rocked it was Friday afternoon and I was looking at the diary and I was like have we got enough fat samples weekend because the phones are like bringing off the hook we've seen a lot of sick animals we did about 220 visits for animals with blue suspicious blue-tank symptoms within 10 days so and we've not had very many of those back yet so I'm expecting the numbers of confirmed cases to go fairly sky high by the beginning of next week we've had about 30 back and there have been three that have been negative one of those was retesting was positive so whilst we are on higher alert and anything that that looks suspicious we're testing actually the majority of what we're finding is that it's so far has been at their positive and I would expect quite a large percentage of the ones that we're waiting on to be positive as well what about across the country more widely Laura how many cases have we seen or where and where are those cases so the government figures today online are 187 cases with four of those in Wales and 183 England the majority of those are concentrated in the southwest but what I would say about that figure is that it is behind there is a lag on the government website and on the case maps of what we're seeing because of the delay and testing it can take up to two weeks to get results back and then more time for those to go online it's likely over the next couple of weeks like Rebusev will see a huge strike in the number of cases online but actually they're happening now and have been happening for the last couple of weeks so yeah compared with this time last year I think we had nine cases and we've now got yeah 187 confirmed so getting idea of where we're up to we've had some up in Cheshire some around Saffisher a couple in Wales like I said but the majority of them are focused around the southwest at the moment but that could all change when we get some more test results back we might see more clusters further up the country I think as well as potential that is being under reported because at the moment it's so defrable pay for three samples like three lap vies they won't pay for a visit they don't have the time to go out in general obviously dairy routines we've potentially out more we've got that relationship but I would certainly from some of the conversations around the show yesterday you know neighbours got it but perhaps haven't mentioned it so I think I would urge anyone who worried they might have it please do test because we need to have a true picture of what's actually going on am I right in thinking it's notifiable it is notifiable yeah and then that then the one of the things that's holding it up is the fact that then it's per bright that's got to test for it or is it is it the natural turnaround time of the test in terms of coming through many positive things in the turn so turn around we were told at the beginning with the first one that we sent off that it would be two days if it was a if it was a sort of government test it would be five days if we're paying privately for it or that was one standing at the time so that it is literally the sheer volume rather than the turnaround is it's what I'm taking from that's the first ones that we did they were back within the week and that would be so working day wise it would have been five working days and obviously since then we're still we have probably we've probably about 12 days behind at least a result and practically then if you get a confirmed case what you know is that farm shut down or what you know what what's there's no there's currently no restriction and because it's midborn because it's midborn you can you can stop the cows moving but once the virus is instantaneously and they're flying around spreading it as as that they will along with the wind pushing them wherever they want to go realistically stopping the movement of cattle probably isn't going to impact that very much I did speak to one of my founders last week and they normally sell up to sort of glossary direction and actually the person buying it said Bill Dealer was didn't want them because he didn't want to be buying animals from farm that was awaiting a blue tongue confirmation to then move those mish cattle into the vicinity because he didn't think his neighbours would be madkin which I think he didn't move proudly fair very sensible as it stands there's no movement restrictions unless we get so everything we've found so far as BTB 3 if you have if we find BTB 8 or any other stereotype than that animal would have movement restrictions imposed but at the moment as it stands if you've got confirmation it doesn't affect your it doesn't there's no official effect on your trade I should just say, listen, is. because the situation is moving so quickly, just that any figures that we're quoting today, we're actually recording this on Thursday, Thursday the 6th, or we'd know this comes out on Friday the 7th. So that's just a figures updated to that. Laura, why do you think we are seeing these sort of more places in the West, rather than the East? - Purely, I think a livestock density thing. So the East saw it first a few years ago when the midges blow over. But there are just so many serious less cattle and stock in general over there, but there just isn't the same body surface area for the midges to bite and infect, whereas in the South West and further the country, like where I work around Cheshire, there is a lot more animals and a lot more surface area for the midges to bite and therefore, can spread it much more easily. - I think the suggestion as to why it's perhaps in the Southwest to start with is that once a cow has been bitten, they can be viry mixed, they hold the virus in them for about 60 days. We've had a really mild winter, so as long as the temperature doesn't drop below 12 degrees in the midges stay alive, and once it gets perfectly deign, the virus can replicate in them and they can spread it. So the suggestion that I'd heard, I mean, it's still a bit of a mystery, it's not confirmed, but the suggestion was potentially it managed to overwinter in North Devon. We had a couple of cases in, so certainly North Cornwall last year, and that really is at that point, it's just going into the midge population and because we're so too shocked and it doesn't take midges like to live for about two to two weeks, they can bite quite a lot of animals in that time, and it doesn't take very long to go from this farm to that farm to the other farm, whereas in the Netherlands and the Southeast, they took an off, the stalking density and the sizes of the flocks and the herds are quite different, so once it gets in, it just, yeah, it's just moved through very quickly because it's been very easy for midges to do that. - Okay. - But if you, at the beginning of July, what sort of percentage of dairy herds, for example, do you think were vaccinated in the Southwest? - I think it's one of those, probably for the last like 80 months we've been, so again, this is what we're expecting to happen. It's coming like please vaccinate, like when it gets here, it's going to spread like wildfire and it's going to be a little bit scary, and last year lots of people vaccinated and went, "Oh, it's not here." And whether that's because we were really successful with our vaccination campaign, then we just needed vaccine or maybe we can hope, or whether it was more, they're actually potentially, whether conditions environmental conditions, not as friendly for midges last year. But yeah, it's, I think we've probably proportion wise, most of our dairies have, we have got some dairies, including some large dairies that have them, but I would have thought probably by extreme penetration to about sort of 70% something like that, but take a lot of carfors because we've been worried about the fertility effects for them. The sheep and the beef, definitely a lot more variable and a lot of vaccine going out at the moment. And so, yeah, that would be where I'd put it. I would imagine similar, but I think probably expectation was, it would come across the channel hit the south east and the south coast and then come along from there, but I can't speak for outside of our area, but I think we probably felt we might have had a little bit more time. So there was, definitely, most of those that vaccinated last year did, these, so will we start to look at like when, speaking to Barry, when they looked at vaccine sales, they've sold about half the vaccine they did last year, but predominantly the vaccine they sold last year went into cattle and was a two day starter course. So when we're saying we're selling half, we've potentially boosted most of what we've, it's not, we've potentially, we've seen for sheep, it's one day, it's both times around. So it's a bit difficult to know exactly from that where it's gone, but that was the sort of, that was their feeling on what they were here of practices that's selling into that actually cattle protect, a dairy cattle population reasonably protected. But beyond that, it's, yeah, it's difficult to really know, but I'm definitely not everybody is vaccinated. There were people who vaccinated last year, weren't we didn't see it? Let's see, let's see how we go. - Yeah, I mean, Rob and Laura, and then perhaps Jenny, you can come in on this, but can you just make for farmers listening, can you just make the general case of vaccination? - Yeah, so vaccination's really effective reducing clinical signs in both cattle and sheep. I was in a well, I've been out yesterday, I was watching and they said that the every case has been in an unvaccinated animal that we've seen this year, they're their vows. To give you an idea, like Rob said, there was a lot of vaccinated cattle in their practice area. We've had a lot of vaccinated cattle in our practice area. We haven't seen it in those. So yeah, it's the only real way you've got of protecting yourself, spot-ons and dipping and those kinds of things don't work to prevent midges. The only effective case we have is vaccination. - I think, and Jenny will probably be able to, in fact, to this best of the me, but certainly at the show of the conversations we're having with farmers, like the effect in your mental health of going out, looking at your field and going, "Oh, not they've got another one." The next day, we've got another one and you've got two or three more. We've got to treat those. Actually, I've had a number of people, who even if they've had mild cases in young stock, or tend to vaccinate the cows, not everybody has vaccinated young stock just from, because the main factor they were concerned about, is the time was fertility rather than milk drop, rather than necessarily other bits, but just the impact of going out and seeing six stock, like actually not of them have gone, I just need to vaccinate everything. I don't want to see this and we've probably had that from the ages as well, too. - Oh, absolutely, definitely. And I think the initial, there is an initial cost to it, but it does pay to be proactive, rather than reactive in this, for animals and for your mental health as well, like you said, to go and ask to check. It's easier to give a jab to a healthy animal rather than a sick animal. So yeah, definitely. - That's good. I mean, there's a lot in that piece of mind, right? As well, as you were saying earlier, that thought of going out day after day, almost they're not knowing. - What are the words? What are my farmers used to be last week? It was a sheep client to be fair, but what I found them to see how things were going, it would seem three mildly sick animals on the Tuesday, but I fry a day, treats to 100 sheep, and they just use the word suffrage. And like, I'm not sleeping, I'm scared to go out. And I appreciate we're talking about cattle today, but it is quite a nasty disease, and because of how quickly it progresses through a herd, you're a flock, like you can go, well, I've got some sick ones now, a backstainate, but actually, you could still end up treating quite proportions to some of the Netherlands data from the herds that were on backstainated. They treated it anywhere from 80% of their animals. So it's massively variable. Like we've got some farms you go out and see them, and you think, well, that's quite mild, they'll lip that a zoo. And actually, they have, and you'll see others and you're like, pretty sure that that looks awful, that's going to take a long time to recover, and they're recovering quite well and they're not getting more cases. So it's very difficult to give advice other than backstainate, because actually what you're seeing on farm doesn't give you an idea of what you're going to see tomorrow next week, the fortnight's time. So I think that would be my main takeaway. It's just seeing people yesterday just feeling absolutely desolate, because that's, you know, what no one was, see six, six, or quite like. And actually, it's a disease that you can't do anything about. It's been spread by midges, but people still feel dirty, because they've got six stock, and like they shouldn't, and you shouldn't be in barris store, that this is on farm, but realistic work, you can, there is something you could use for vent, so vaccine is key. - Yeah, it's wonderful, you've got control over isn't it? There's so many unbearables like in the farming industry, the vaccinations one thing we can do. - Yeah, I mean, Jenny, you said earlier that you've been having conversations with other farmers in your region, but I mean, so I'm interested in this, almost the nature of those conversations in terms of when it comes to vaccination. I guess most people I've spoken to now have vaccinated, they've seen cases, it's right around us, so they've jumped on it and vaccinated. I know friends of ours haven't vaccinated, but this was months ago, but it was everyone's choice, and it's such a new disease at the moment. So I understand why people wouldn't spend that cost right away until you know like the consequences of it. But yeah, I think the majority of these people would be going down the vaccination route now. - I think it's where that sort of cost benefit, especially for the youngest of us being a bit of a question, and you know, if a cow or a bouts, she becomes a cow and you've got the cost replacing it. There's quite easy to look at costs for stillbirths and other things, and milk drop, you know, they're getting sustained milk drop potentially, that's in weeks of a kilo and a kilo and a half, quite easy to sort of say you'd vaccinate for that, but one of the guys that I spoke to yesterday re-escalated, they weighed them regularly. In anything they treated, they were seeing a daily life weight loss of point three kilos per day, and in the animals that hadn't been affected, they were growing, I mean, they're growing it half kilo because there's no grass here, but you know, that's potentially seeing a point eight kilo per day, different things, so even for mildly affected young sort. - Well, it's interesting because actually, if you look towards the Netherlands, and I was trying to work out the timing because it was summer 2020, or wasn't it? Because the milk flow did spring 2025 was the legacy impact in Europe. So when we started lifting milk volumes in GDB, very early last spring, actually on the mainland Europe, they didn't start lifting milk volumes until June, as that was because of the legacy fertility impact of the summer 2024 blutrum where they'd really suffered. So yeah, it's not just the immediate impact in terms of secarosis, it read, which is interesting what you're saying about actually quite a few farms in your neck of the woods have vaccinated on the basis and not wanting to suffer the fertility, inevitable fertility impact that comes with secarosis. - Is what, there's a few of actually, I did ask some of my colleagues what they were seeing in anobaccinated herds, and certainly, some suspicions of early embryonic loss, it is hot, so how much of that is, it wouldn't be so much of that as something else. We have had some calves, that will be actually this spring that looks a sort of looked bit suspicious of like within the brain when they were looking at them of blue tongue box at that point, they were able to be able to confirm that as a diagnosis. But yeah, milk drops will be massive, quite a lost scour through them. A couple of the others say they're averaging six litres less per day at the moment and they'd be treating probably about 10% of the cattle women it's so. It's interesting, Rob, because you know, talking about the milk volumes, it was that legacy impact on fertility, but what's the relevance of that from a sort of vaccination perspective in terms of fertility or, or I suppose calves, calf births beyond that? So I think one of the reasons that most of my blockheads did faxate was the fear of abortion, the fear of stillbirth and also because there's a time frame in which you can create dummy calves where the brain doesn't develop properly, so you'll see calves that are blind or are toxic, so they're a bit wobbly when they get up. And the main period at which they are susceptible to to the coming dummy calves is when they are when the calf's between 80 to 120 days old in utero, so when that cow is between 80 to 120 days pregnant, if the virus comes in, goes across the placenta, gets the calf and then causes damage to the brain as the brain's warming, so especially if a block calf is, you're obviously a lot of the, a lot of the pregnancies are at the same period of time, so you could end up with a lot of dummy calves. Some of the stats we've had back from the southeast were abortions, stillbirth and dummy calf, rates are 34%, so it gets those vaccines in, but you want, you've got two doses for cattle, three weeks apart and you have four cover three weeks after that, so we need to get, we need to get that six week period ahead of the 80 to 120 days, if that makes sense, so actually for a lot of people, we'll get that in as soon as you can. Yeah, really, really relevant, some of those late summer and autumn block covers and a moment. Laura, what sort of information is out there? Where do people go to find the information? I imagine the vets are pretty busy at the moment, but if people just want to sort of find out more themselves preemptively, where, where can they go for information? So there's the Remnant Health and Welfare, Luton Hub online, so just type in BTV Hub onto Google, and that'll bring you up a website, which has got lots of information for farmers and for vets. It's got things on there like a vaccine, cost calculator, it's got vaccine comparison chart, it's got gestation chart to look at when is the most likely the oldest, biggest impacts during pregnancy of Luton. There's also the Luton hotline number on there for asking questions and loads of other things, so go and have a look there and there'll be plenty to look at. Yeah. Okay, so with all that in mind, Rob, what would your message be to farmers who haven't had the herds faxinate? I think I find it quite difficult at the moment seeing the cases that I'm seeing to not say vaccinate, then where I've been at it like it's your choice. Here is the information I can give you. Like absolutely faxinate, book catalytic homes, we have faxinated, and I just wouldn't want to see what I'm seeing with the other one when we go out to build and seeing that, and just conversations with farmers who've got it, waiting for the vaccine to come in because it's being slowly dribbled, the update's been so huge, it's being slowly dribbled into the wholesalers and slowly coming through to us. So you're going actually, I think I need to vaccinate, are you waiting, if you are waiting a short period of time, but you are waiting for vaccine at the moment, so do it now before you go, well maybe I should do it now because there's going to come a few cases like get it in first and will be my advice. And you Jenny, what would you say? Following completely on from what Rob's saying, we faxinated for the last two years now on that advice, just we wanted to protect our fertility and calves born. Like everything's worth quite a bit of money these days isn't it? So it's to protect that and also if our milk contract we are completely monitored on that cabin mortality and stillbirth, so it just paid for us to do it. And I think, yeah, I can think understand why some people haven't, it's a big, well not a big cost really in like relation to actually how much it would cost your business, but that initial cost is a lot, but I think blue tongues here today, we haven't reached the peak yet, I think they're saying so I'd say jump on it quickly if you can with vaccines there, get in with it if you can. Yeah, I think that's a big, sorry, I think that is quite key in that peak midsies and just July to August, midsies are likely to still be acting until September, probably October, very mind-cattle-c and hold vaccine, a virus for 60 days. We've got quite a long window where your cattle have an opportunity to continue to be infected, and actually again the Netherlands data when they looked at the proportion of animals in a herd that were seropositivably tongue, so I'm vaccinated, herds like looking at who'd been infected, like actually quite often only 25% of the cowl said had made an immune response, so there's quite a large proportion there that okay, hadn't been infected, be equally had no immunity, it should the bit of it in those as well, so I think it's there's still a massive window in which cattle are going to be bitten, so it's not too late, you've got several months ahead of you, that you can cover. Climate change just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it? Lower practically, I believe it's important to change needles when vaccinating, so all right? Yes, so as discussed, the way the virus spreads by the mids, which essentially bites animal to animal, and essentially by using the same needle on multiple animals, we are replicating that process, so that is why it's a risk and why the advice is to change needles between animals, it's yeah, not very practical, I get it, I don't know if Rev's got an electric spirit to this in the south, but yeah, that's why we are advising change in needle between every animal to stop the spread within a herd. Yeah, okay, I think it's one of these things that farmers are very resourceful, so you give the problem and they want a solution, so one needle for animal is definitely what we are suggesting, it's quite a lot of reports like dip it in spirit, or you can reuse it, the one thing that we have been advised, there's not any evidence necessarily, but you don't want vaccines come into contact with spirit, so please don't dip your needle in, to live with if you are, if you are just infecting it, cotton will in spirit, but we are suggesting one needle per animal or one needle per as few animals as you can, you know, if you inject in five animals, you might infect five, but let's do five not 20, and you know, 10 or 100 or whatever, so change it as regularly as you can, it's the best advice, and I think the other thing, if you're vaccinating you're up to date for blue term, you aren't going to be spreading it, so any other vaccines you do, that's fine, but if you haven't vaccinated for blue term, if you're doing a RBR booster, if you're doing a BVD booster, if you're doing an ESA and an ELA booster, you are the midg, you with your needle, so if you haven't vaccinated your cows and they've got virus, then it doesn't matter what vaccine you're giving, this isn't just a, it's blue term vaccine, that's why it's one needle per animal, this is, it's the needle you're sticking a multiple out of them, what's the problem, so I think people are going to go, oh, it's blue term vaccine, it's could be one needle per cow, like, no, any, any vaccine you're giving if you're not vaccinated, it's one needle per cow, but otherwise you are a very effective midg, you're a needle, so just to bear that in mind if you aren't vaccinated. Yeah, okay, we're, I suppose we've, we've maybe gone slightly past peak shows season, but we're still, there's still one or two shows and events around in the light stock farm in calendar, what's been the impact on, on those and the sales because of this, Laura? Because the virus isn't spread animal to animal, as far as I'm aware, especially in the local shows around us, there hasn't been a huge impact on show numbers catawais, I'm not sure if it's any different in the southwest, but yeah, I think most people, it doesn't really make a difference whether the animal is on farm or two miles down the road at the show in terms of if they've, you know, get bitten by a mitch or have been bitten by a mitch, they're in the same area and it's not animal to animal. As far as sales go, some of the sales have their own rules of regs involving, depending where the animals are going, so they might need to be vaccinated, they might need pre-movement testing, which yeah, will all be outlined in whichever sale. Yeah, we're just ahead of the main sheep sales now, and as far as the no-cattle sales haven't altered, but happy to be corrected on that. Okay, what were numbers, was it the North Devon show, you said what were the numbers like there, were they the same as usual, or were they less? There's a bit there, so isn't there? There's a bit there. The Shave mitties, we are the Shave vets for North Devon, the Shave Committee have had quite a lot of discussions, but whether this is right or not wrong to do, just because there have been a couple of shows recently that have cancelled any of the lifestyle countries. One of those was because they actually had blue tongue confirmed on the holding on which they hold the shave, and that was a few weeks ago, so it was possibly, and I probably had probably sent something to do with me. But as exactly as I was always saying, it's not spread from animal to animal, spread by mitch and at the moment, if you're in North Devon, then you are as much at risk at home as you are at the show. All that was certainly the feeling that we had, we did have, so we were down, they were down by eight entries on the cattle, still had quite a lot of sheep. I think a lot of the pedigree guys have faxulated, in which case actually they've got that protection wherever they are. I know the local show next week has cancelled all their lifestyle countries, so there is, and there was a little bit of abuse online as to, you know, should, is it responsible to be taking these animals to shows, and it, as Laura says, it's spread by the mitch, it's not spread by the cat, by the livestock, so you're not going to tease every night. No. A abuse online, you tease a project. Yeah, yeah. Steadily. And I think sales wise, as Laura said, I did speak to a lot of colleagues here at the market, yes, stay. um cattle would seem to be selling as well as ever um sheep if you're not vaccinated then you aren't going to go anywhere um I think um it massively down for lambs aren't vaccinated in our area. What's the treatment and recovery pathway for animals that test positive and reinfected? It's again massively variable so I did a little bit of breeding for walkami on the today so over in the other instance just to recover periods of up to 22 days um from treatment it depends a little bit because um so some infections and catalysts are clinical and some are really quite sick um so I've had some where people have were still waiting for confirmation but you know they they've looked fairly typical and they've recovered you know they're out in a field it's been difficult to get them in they've recovered on their own within 24 hours I've got others that are still giving repeat doses of non-steroidals and I've had to give long acting antibiotics that are still looking uncomfortable five days later um certainly one of ones I saw on Monday had been treated for four days and was still still directs it had temperature 41 degrees they they had been over the winter treated for pneumonia so I suspect that the virus on you know probably bit compromised anyway virus on top they were taking a bit longer to recover um and that seems fairly typical you know if there's anything else that's knocked them previously then unsurprisingly uh once they've got another viral infection on top that compromises is just a bit too much so um yeah okay so what should you do if you if you you're far more listening to this you suspect you might have um a case of BTV what should you do? Rob what's the first course of action? The first course of action um because it's notable disease and theory the first course of action is to phone a k h a um and say to them I think I might have gluten um I think if you're an authorization number which you can then give to your vet um in practice down here what has been happening is generally people have phoned us and said to fake no phone with that and said I think I might have gluten what do I do um so we have attempted to go out visit staying with real we don't agree take samples as we need to and then we come back and phoned k h ourselves because at that point we've probably seen five other farms and we've got a list um to give some at the same time and they have very kindly give us the authorization codes for more than one at the same time um in our experience all times have been probably anywhere from getting through and getting an authorization code within 10 minutes to half an hour 40 minutes I have seen some stories that that's increasing and know that um 10 days ago they were having at 180 calls a day um and I imagine that's spreading yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah they're they're probably more than that so you can imagine these guys that they're working very hard um and they are they are doing good job but they are very stretched when you're speaking to a PhD so um and this is i mean this is a very unfair question but it's going to go ask Laura and and read this where do you think this is going to go what's your prediction for how the situation may look for the rest of the season Laura perhaps broadly and and read for the southwest i mean we don't understand no we haven't got crystal ball but we're preparing for worst case scenario which is that we will see a huge increase in cases spreading up the country um hotspotsing around cattle dance areas such as where i am around chasher um and where there's been a lot of unvaccinated animals can chain other parts of the country why there's naive animals it could go anywhere um the midges are there they're infected in big numbers the way they can take them the hot way there hasn't subsided for a good while now it doesn't like it's going to um we haven't entered the back to low period until Jan Feb time in the last couple of years which is when the midges really slow down and stop spreading disease so we could see still see disease up until Christmas potentially if we don't get a good frost or sustain low temperature so we just have to prepare that this is going to this is going to go north and we're going to see more of it unfortunately. Rob? yeah i mean i agree i think it probably spends a little bit um i i can see that environmentally um temperature wise midges are going to be very happy for some period of time um so i think the key is what can we do to keep virus low say that there's not as much virus to get into mid population and that is vaccination if you can imagine that every infected cow as we sort of already discussed can hold virus for 60 days if we can stop cows getting infected that 60 days less virus for the midge to go and find um and share around so i think it depends how successful our vaccine campaign is now as to what we see um we know the midge population here is absolutely full of virus um and we'll potentially continue to be for some time because we still got flocks that that haven't managed to vaccinate or aren't i'm willing to um and the same with cattle so i think so for we our core volume has massively calmed down but i'd say we've visited over 270 holdings um with with this clinical science and we know that they're probably all that haven't reported um so from our perspective it's had a fairly thorough sweep we've had a fairly successful amount of vaccine go out of the practice in the last 10 days but as i say there is a like in that and there is a very fair possibility that that's going to stall a little bit um because of how quickly it's got now there are other other avenues that we can get a vaccine potentially from there's opportunities to potentially import vaccine um but there's unlikely to be a little bit of a gap um if we continue to vaccinate the way we do so i think just if you're thinking about it get on and get it ordered would be my advice because it probably isn't going to turn up tomorrow um but yeah if we can if we can put a break if we can and cattle be although science a bit less significant in cattle than sheep um they are the main carriers of the virus so the more cattle can get vaccinated the less virus they'll be the less images can spread okay then uh i think i know what you're all going to say to this but what would your main message be to farmers from today's conversation Laura you go first uh speak to your vet about vaccination a staff have you haven't done it already um get your name down live web said we might um see a bit of a gap between one ordering and one how soon we can get vaccine into animals so um if you're thinking about it get your name down um and get it into your animals as soon as possible okay and you Rob um i mean definitely vaccination but i think just encourage you to farm and communicate to each other um that'd be a lot of people to see a lot of sick animals at the moment and it's pretty sold Australian when you put a lot of time and effort into doing the best you can and then this disease creeps in so absolutely vaccinate but just speak to your friends speak to your family okay and last word to you Jenny um yeah echo what they both said and yeah look after yourselves as well the animals really um farming is a challenge at the best of times and now we've added another element to it so speak to your vet speak to your neighbour and it's amazing what a conversation with another farmer can do for you yeah very well said okay that's all we have time for today but a very big thank you to our guests Rebecca Cavill Laura Roberts Jenny Huckway and podcast producer Perky Ray thanks also to Chris for sending in his market report um echoing what Jenny unrebsed that if you have any concerns at the moment or ask struggling who would like to talk generally you can always contact r a b i or f c n r a b i's number is oh eight hundred one eight eight uh treble four four four four four four four four four fours uh three and eight and 24 hours and f c n is oh three thousand treble one treble nine and that's hoping seven a m two eleven p m every day yeah thank you for listening as always please see the show notes from more information including our podcast disclaimer we'll be back with you next week but for now it's goodbye from all of us here