Vimco mastitis injection for sheep

[hiraethog]

Are there any farmers out there that have used this vaccine? It's been made to reduce the rate of mastitis in sheep. Looking for positive / negative feedback. Thanks.

 

[hally]

Are there any farmers out there that have used this vaccine? It's been made to reduce the rate of mastitis in sheep. Looking for positive / negative feedback. Thanks.

Heard it’s £6/ewe and has to be done every year.........that’s both pretty negative to me.

 

[hiraethog]

Thanks. Cant see that price being an issue, especially to a pedigree sheep breeder who relies on tup sales as a main source of income. Anyone with any success stories?

 

[primmiemoo]

Last year, the Vet said she'd keep eyes and ears peeled for more info about the vaccine, but said it would probably need jabs 6 months apart every year.

I'd be interested to learn outcomes, too.

 

[andybk]

yes used it last year , offered it @ £5 a ewe ,did 30 ewes , needs doing twice , didnt have any mastitis to be fair , but proper price was £8 per dose , and needed doing every year . good vaccine but needs to be more cost effective for serious uptake .

 

[Tim W]

I don't like the idea
If you have so much mastitis on a flock that you need a vaccine to reduce it you should seriously look at management practices and genetics
The same as the worm vaccine....
And the footrot vaccine for that matter

 

[Longlowdog]

@Tim W I said that a while back and got a pretty negative response. When others are culling hard to eradicate the problems I feel all the above vaccines undermine those efforts. In my opinion if you buy tups or breeding females reared under a vaccination regime and bring them home you could be buying a nightmare. However I have to be up front and admit I use Heptavac, wormer and Baycox on young lambs though I never worm anything over a year old.
A neighbour used the vaccine on 30 blue tex' and still had one case but then there are a lot of strains of mastitis and not all are covered. I would guess the cost was negligible to the cost of one of those ewes giving another set of twins each year for the next 5 years.
Did the Texel Society ever do anything about the results of their mastitis genomics study. Can you buy tups with certified mastitis resistance results on which to build a foundation flock?

 

[hiraethog]

I don't like the idea
If you have so much mastitis on a flock that you need a vaccine to reduce it you should seriously look at management practices and genetics
The same as the worm vaccine....
And the footrot vaccine for that matter

Not sure whether to take your management comment personally or in general especially Without talking to me direct or knowing my circumstances. What I will say is that you cant eradicate every single disease no matter what you do as so much is out of our control and nature has to take its cause. Anyt advice that helps reduce instances of diseases is a big positive to me, hence the post.

 

[Guleesh]

Not sure whether to take your management comment personally or in general especially Without talking to me direct or knowing my circumstances. What I will say is that you cant eradicate every single disease no matter what you do as so much is out of our control and nature has to take its cause. Anyt advice that helps reduce instances of diseases is a big positive to me, hence the post.

There's a big difference between purely reducing instances of a disease and breeding pedigree tups to sell as one of your posts suggests, from a flock full of mastitis prone ewes that are reliant on expensive vaccinations to be able to rear lambs.

For me personally I wouldn't be interested in the slightest in keeping or breeding from any ewes needing this vaccine, but I suppose if it becomes cheap enough plenty will be keen to use it.

 

[andybk]

The vaccine is really for dairy use , where it has reduced cases to very low numbers according to our vet , so its job is to prevent the use of excess AB on dairy farms , Sheep are only ever going to be a sideline , It has to be useful if only to reduce incidence of antibiotic use ,at the right price
maybe incidental i thought ewes had less other issues , as vax covers streptococcus . which is about in enviroment .i mainly tried it because Zwartbles being so milky can often have issues after weaning , more so than when feeding lambs , mainly fly related i think It was only a trial and i havnt used it this year though , and i have had 2 with mastitis (after that cold night wind a few weeks back ! against none last year , you pays your money and takes your choice i suppose .

i have noticed a different supplier (https://www.hipra.com/portal/en/hipra/animalhealth/products/detail/startvac)

 

[Tim W]

Not sure whether to take your management comment personally or in general especially Without talking to me direct or knowing my circumstances. What I will say is that you cant eradicate every single disease no matter what you do as so much is out of our control and nature has to take its cause. Anyt advice that helps reduce instances of diseases is a big positive to me, hence the post.

Sorry ---it's not meant to be a personal comment by any means but rather a generalized industry observation
Use of vaccines is great and greatly reduces the disease incidence in our sheep population but i think there are better ways of controlling some diseases and that there is a general trend to over rely on vaccines and use them to cover up what i see as bad practice
Mastitis vaccine for dairy cows is great if it works but if it is deemed necessary it tells me that something is wrong with the production system ?
Purely on an economic level a mastitis vaccine for sheep seems hard to justify?
If it costs £5/ewe (is that for 1 jab or 2??) then on a flock of 100 ewes that's £500/year which te be cost effective would mean saving 5 ewes from mastitis a year?
Do flocks run at 5% mastitis? If so am i out of order to suggest that there is something wrong with the breeding or the system?
Having just checked i can say that my ewes run at 1% or less annual mastitis incidence over the last 21 years

Footrot vaccine i feel is used in the same way, to cover up poor practice
I am all in favour of it being used as a tool in a well planned eradication policy (along with culling/clean grazing/footbathing etc) but using it every year as a routine treatment is surely suppressing rather than trying to eliminate/reduce a problem?

Do i want to buy stock from a breeder that has to use Footvac or a mastitis vaccine? Hell no