New quarantine

bovine

Member
Location
North
You're quite right that toxo doesn't spread from ewe to ewe but an infected ewe does shed the disease in her urine and faeces as well as in contaminated afterbirth IIRC. Pretty sure the vets used to advise putting aborted ewes in with dry ewes to avoid infecting other in lamb ewes but also to deliberately infect dry ewes so that they would be immune the following year.
You are mixing up toxo and campylobacter.

Sheep cannot pass toxo infection from one to another - has to go via a cat.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
You are mixing up toxo and campylobacter.

Sheep cannot pass toxo infection from one to another - has to go via a cat.

But the old vet advice was always to mix naive young sheep with aborted ewes to let them get natural immunity, as @GTB posted.:scratchhead: Very risky practice anyway IMO, unless you know for certain what the abortion agent involved is.
 

unlacedgecko

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Fife
But the old vet advice was always to mix naive young sheep with aborted ewes to let them get natural immunity, as @GTB posted.:scratchhead: Very risky practice anyway IMO, unless you know for certain what the abortion agent involved is.

Like the practice of putting cull sows in with bought in maiden gilts.
 

bovine

Member
Location
North
But the old vet advice was always to mix naive young sheep with aborted ewes to let them get natural immunity, as @GTB posted.:scratchhead: Very risky practice anyway IMO, unless you know for certain what the abortion agent involved is.
That is the advice with campylobacter abortion (if you don't want to import vaccine).

Moredun should know:

Sheep become infected if they eat feed (pasture, concentrates) or drink water contaminated with cat faeces than contain Toxoplasma oocysts. Unlike chlamydial abortion, toxoplasmosis is not directly transmitted between sheep http://www.moredun.org.uk/research/...rmation/disease-summaries/toxoplasmosis-sheep
 

AvonValleyFarmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Leicestershire
Sorry to hijack the thread but I didn't want to start a new one.

I have 100 sheep coming later today and cannot house that many for a few days as is recommended. Would I be best to leave them in a dirty field where my lambs have been?
 

Nithsdale

Member
Livestock Farmer
I can imagine.
Will have to enquire to see what's the smallest size bottles of toxo and enzo they do.
The biggest dilemma I can foresee for me (apart from paying the bill) would be determining the cut-off point of the ewes age to not vaccine. Got quite a few 3 year olds and wondering whether it would be waste of time/worth doing these or just the ewe lambs / yearlings :sick:

N.B. @Benn - sorry for hijacking the thread. :unsure:


I used Cevac, and vaccinated my flock for first time last year against Enzi.

I tag my homebred ewes with different colour tags each year. I drew off the 2 oldest age groups (4 and 5 years old)... and I chose not to vaccinate these ewes. I didn't have an abortion storm, my vet described it as a 'grumble', so felt it was low risk. Results have been good, and it reduced the cost of the initial vaccination.
 

Danllan

Member
Location
Sir Gar / Carms
@bovine can you recommend a decent text covering ovine parasites? I've just had a friend staying - equine vet - who studied at Massey in NZ, he loathes ag work but has advised me to buy 'The Sheep: Health, Disease & Production' since he studied under one of the authors and found the text a very good reference indeed. I can get a copy sent up from NZ, but if there is a particularly good text from the UK and centred on the UK I would rather have that.
 

bovine

Member
Location
North
Your easiest thing is to download the SCOPS manual for free

I have imported a copy of that sheep book, but haven't had time to look at it as yet.
 

bovine

Member
Location
North
Yes and no. The majority of the life cycle stuff etc has changed very little in the last 50 years. If you want to learn how they breed, live and transmit then a book will be fine. Advice does change, but not that quickly. If you followed SCOPS version 1 you wouldn't be that far away 10 years later.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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