To help build reporting all abortions into farmers’ calving routine, the Ruminant Health & Welfare (RH&W) group has launched a flyer and online hub with FAQs to help reduce the barriers of reporting abortions and submitting abortion samples for investigation.
With autumn block calving around the corner, experts are urging farmers to report and investigate all abortions and stillbirths to understand disease status and identify how to protect their herds in future.
The information for these RH&W resources have been created in consultation with a collective of experts from Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), Scotland's Rural College (SRUC) and Animal Health NI.
The intent for the flyer is that it should be printed off for farm notice boards as well as saved to the phones of all members of the farm team to help increase the rate of abortions reported.
Pertinent at the moment is the current strain of bluetongue, BTV-3, as well as Schmallenberg, both of which can cause late term abortion, stillbirth or deformities in calves, so there's a genuine notifiable disease reason for the need to investigate all abortions.
From a worker, farmer or vet point of view, knowing a little bit more about the risks on-farm, and being able to manage that risk for anyone coming into contact with the herd is a positive action farmers can do.
For more information and download the flyer: https://ruminanthw.org.uk/reporting-all-cattle-abortions-and-stillbirths/