Blue tongue virus

[twinkletoesimnot]

Hello to any farmers, farmer's wives, livestock keepers, smallholders etc.

We are in Norfolk, our animal's winter housing is inside the TCZ. We haven't been contacted about testing yet but we only have a small number of animals.

Anyone else in Kent/ Norfolk affected by this and want a place to keep updated / chat about it?

I'm mostly worried about the fact they are culling positive animals. Mine are irreplaceable to me. I've been looked down on by some local farmers who have said I'm a hobby farmer and it's tough - but it's my understanding that they could be positive this week and negative next. Why should I let them kill my cow if it has it? (I appreciate I'm worrying when I haven't been tested yet.)

It's idiotic to think it will prevent the virus spreading when some camelid keepers are not registered with Defra and won't be testing and the local deer population must have some cases too- it's fair to say in my local area that there are more deer than cattle!

It's such a mess!

Maybe not the right topic.... hopeful bump!

Well it's not something I have heard about not being a farmer so this is a bump / permission to vent

although my quick google suggests I have an inappropriate user name and fatality rate can be high ?

😂to the username!
In sheep apparently so, sadly. But so far all positive animals in the UK have been asymptomatic and only found through surveillance testing.

Is this testing soemthing that happens all the time / regularly?

How long does the virus take to showing symptoms/ death ( in cows )

I don't think it kills many cows.
Seems to be a production disease - loss of milk yield and loss of calves, calves born malformed or weak / still born. 😩
There was a different variant back in about 2008 which they had a vaccine for but no vaccine available for this (worse) variant.
(Shudder at Covid memories!)

They have done surveillance testing in all border counties (Norfolk, Suffolk, Sussex, Kent And Dorset I think) ever since to monitor it in case of clouds of midges being blown over from Europe where this seems to be more of a problem.

So they want to cull infected animals to prevent the virus becoming common in our midges in the summer - because there are not many midges in this weather, but the virus stays a long time in the system ?

It's a "greater good" thing

But it must be unlikely your animals are affected but it's just a worry ?

Yes exactly.
And 🤞🏻🤞🏻ours are unaffected but you just don't know.

Have seen today that they have decided not to cull the latest positive case in Kent so hope that's now policy!