Over 1,420 calves have tested positive for BVD in Northern Ireland since March this year.

Under the programme, which is run by Animal Health and Welfare Northern Ireland’s (AHWNI), over 633,000 animals have had their BVD status directly assigned since the voluntary stage began in January 2013.

Since the programme officially began in March this year more than 215,750 calves havng their status directly assigned since March 2016.

As a result of this over 1,420 calves have been identified as being BVD positive, meaning 0.66% of all calves tested.

At this stage, 98% of herds affected have less than 4 PI calves, meaning the calves are the primary source of the infection, and over 60% of positive herds having only 1 PI animal.

Current estimates suggest that BVD annually costs the NI cattle sector more than £20 million per year due to additional costs such as veterinary bills and eradicating the disease from an infected herd.

The tag and test regime is now in its fifth month of official operation.

Progress

The Ulster Farmers Union (UFU) Animal Health and Welfare committee recently met with AHWNI implementation group to discuss current progress of the scheme during its first quarter and to raise issues experienced by some farmers with the scheme to date.

UFU raised members’ concerns over the length of time some results are taking to come back to members and the issues that this causes on farm.

In response, AHWNI informed the committee that at this stage over 95% of results (204,962 results since March) have been returned to the farmer within seven days of receipt by the lab. However, 5% taking more than 7 days to return, still means almost 11,000 results that took more than a week to get back to the farmer and AHWNI are working hard to reduce this delay.

Republic of Ireland

The meeting also offered an opportunity for AHWNI to present results of the BVD eradication scheme in the Republic of Ireland since 2013. Since the beginning of the scheme in ROI, the number of PI animals has fallen from 13,868 (0.66%) to 2,728 (0.15%). According to AHWNI the number of positive herds has fallen from 9,479 (11.27%) to 1,909 (2.65%) and ROI has now registered over 59,500 herds with BVD negative status.

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