New TB proposals to be announced today.

Is this going to be aligned in anyway with the new scheme in NI? It had a very light, almost no touch on wildlife.

Let's see will our weak unions, represent farmers interests or will we get railroaded again.

If you are waiting or depending on the department to solve the wildlife problem on your farm, you are in serious trouble. At least walk around and find out what animals is on the farm and where they are coming in

I wouldn’t be moving wildlife without knowing if they were TB carriers.
dont they say others may move onto your land who could be carriers.

I don’t know

I was thinking much the same as you, for years i saw rooting in the fields and drew the conclusion that they be left alone.

Then 1/3 of my dairy cows (the best cows) went down with TB last year.The badgers that were caught, had TB.

It's the same with deer. A man told me lately, he had 30 deer, feeding the silage fields all spring.

So Brian, do we cull some of the population or let them multiply and hope for the best.

I had the first ever reactor for our farm in the test in January. One of the best cows and just 7 days calved at the time of the test. She didnt show up anything in the factory or on the cultures. 1 clear test then and a letter came to say all restrictions lifted so I'm taking that as an admission from the department that she didnt have tb. The compensation I got at the time would just about buy a weanling now and I'm left with a calf that didnt thrive instead of one of my potentially best weanlings. But at least the factory got a pile of cheap meat out of it. My herd will now go down as 1 of the increasing numbers of reactor herds even though as far as I'm concerned they have admitted she didnt have it. The whole testing things a load of shite and until vaccination starts nothing will change and the tb wheel will just keep turning making some lads rich and the poor farmer stressed and out of pocket.

I lost 11 cows as inconclusives last August, no legions, got two clear tests, vet reluctantly passed us as had two he wasn't happy with on severe interpretation but let them off, factored the above two, along with 25 cull cows since and noting showing up in factory

It's not logical that any of the original 11 had tb, given the amount of animals factored since that are companion animals that they seem hellbent on culling to have had no traces

The trouble is the set in your field might be harmless it's the one in 2 fields over that can cause the harm or the deer coming in from a few mile down the road.

I just can't understand what is happening at the minute. Around me here it predominantly dairy farms that are going down but with big numbers 20 -30 cattle.

I have been down 3 times in the 7 years. 1 animal the first two times & 4 the last time. All killed out without lesions in the factory.

I have also gone down twice where I sold cattle in the mart and then a few months later they killed out with lesions.

I am thinking whatever is been injected into the animals is more reactive now than it used to be.

On my test in October where 4 went down 3 of them had big lumps you could see easily before they went near the crush. The other one was taken as a precaution. But I had two others with smaller lumps, vet said he suspected they were clear but if I wanted he could put them down but I didn't. They were crystal clear on the two subsequent tests & have killed out clear in the factory.

I have absolutely no faith in the skin test at the minute & I think the blood test is too severe, in that if an animal has any interaction with the virus the blood test seems to pick it up but the animal may never develop TB. There has to be a happy medium somewhere, culling/ testing & monitoring deer and badger needs to continue until a vaccine for cattle is developed.

That is 4 herds so in all different parts of the country that had tb reactors but when killed out and samples cultured had no legions .

WTF is going on at all ,this is bollix carry on

The thing is farmers last year were told stay the course. That these were short term conditions that will lead to the greater good.

Now this year we learn the department has plans to use last year as the excuse to impose stricter conditions, removing compensation and to demonise any herds that were affected for the future.

All it's doing is making livestock rearing financially and mentally unattractive to farm.

There's some who've come through the tillage academy and find themselves in positions of power in the ag department as a goal to pursue just for the whole sake of bitterness tinged with telling themselves of climate targets. I know a few who used to be in sales for seed, fert, agri chem who now work for the dept and had a hatred of cows. The tale of there's too many stock in the country flowed like butter from their lips. Their bedfellows were the rewilding element brought into the department.

Think you're getting a bit paranoid that they're out to get the livestock farmer.

Most of the problems have been driven by a lack of culling of wildlife and over reliance on vaccination which isn't effective enough in the real world. Which have been multiplied by more forestry being harvested and bigger herds, more reliance on contractors for slurry and probably use of trailing shoe/dribble bar also.

Lack of lesions doesn't mean anything in itself. There's no way to distinguish between where animals are on the scale of infection through bloods or skin test and even a minor infection has the potential to flare up at any stage in the future so there's no option but to cull.

Vaccination of cattle isn't going to be a saviour. Bcg in humans was aimed at tackling the worst of the symptoms. It wasn't the reason tb was reduced in the population

There's a lot of talk about lesions here, which to the best of knowledge, are looked for visually in the factory. Nowadays aren't all these reactors PCR tested?

Are people getting the results from these tests?

Are ye saying that these are all coming back negative?

Well I have no idea what a pcr test is ,all I know is I contacted dept. 2 months after my reactors were slaughtered and I was told they had no legions . The dept make no efford to let farmer have any details only whisk off the reactors ,that the job done ,they dont check for badgers unless a quick phone call if badgers have been seen on holding.

I’m the only suckler farmer left around here. Buy in nothing but a stock bull every 5 years or so. Just out of contiguous testing coz all around me buying shite dairy calves had been down with tb. Got 2 letters this week saying 2 neighbours that buy shite dairy calves are down again so I’m probably goin to have go testing again.

In my case the dept liason officer gave the results of the first test clear. The vet contacted the dept for the rest and was told the other reactors were clear too. I was told they weren't doing culture tests on my breakdown by the dept officer.

It's as clear as mud into the what and why and what's going on.