goats and blue tongue

does anyone know anything about this?

Do you mean the effects of the virus itself or the legal obligations ?

This is information on the infection :

http://www.dardni.gov.uk/index/animal-health/animal-diseases/bluetongue/bluetongue-questions-answers.htm

In France you still have the choice about vaccination of goats because the vaccine hasn't been approved for goats yet. (Like many veterinary products such as wormers.) If you choose to have the goats vaccinated (We didn't) then you have to pay the call-out fee but not the cost of the vaccine. This applies until the end of March.

Le ministre de l’Agriculture Bruno Le Maire a annoncé au Sommet de l’élevage à Cournon la gratuité du vaccin contre la fièvre catarrhale ovine pour tous les éleveurs en 2010. Le vaccin et l’acte de vaccination seront gratuits jusqu’au 31 mars 2010 mais les frais de déplacement du vétérinaire resteront à la charge de l’éleveur. Le vaccin n’ayant pas d’autorisation de mise sur le marché spécifique en caprin, la vaccination n’a toujours aucun caractère obligatoire pour les chèvres.

We had to have our sheep vaccinated otherwise we would have been fined. We had at least two miscarriages immediately after and the sheep lost condition. Hope that helps. 

Well I guess both really.

The breeder we visited yesterday had been having his goats vaccinated and quite a few of them died after so he stopped.  He's now nursing some of them through the disease and said not to get goats 'until France had this thing under control'.  That spooked me a bit but then he's the first person we've talked to about getting goats (other than here) so maybe it's just his experience.

I'm not going to go into the details of what I think of their vaccination, you can find out what people think yourself by looking on the internet, all I will say is that our animals have really suffered this year by being vaccinated. I can imagine he, like a lot of people I know, is pretty fed up with all the legislation and the extra work and heartbreak from having to nurse sick animals.

When you buy in stock always et a certificate de santé and make sure that you specify that your goats test positive to Elisa (Enzyme Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay) test. It costs about €30 but it's worth it and that way you'll start off with a herd that's naturally immune.

Don't worry too much, don't wait 'till everything's perfect to live your dream.

haha, the other day at the Oeffa conference, Joel Salatin told us his neighbor wouldn't sell him wood chips because he doesn't vaccinate his cows. The guy thought that people like Joel are going to cause the end of the world.

No plans to buy any kind of medicine at all for my goats. Except for diatoms!

asmileisthenewak47 wrote:
haha, the other day at the Oeffa conference, Joel Salatin told us his neighbor wouldn't sell him wood chips because he doesn't vaccinate his cows. The guy thought that people like Joel are going to cause the end of the world.

No plans to buy any kind of medicine at all for my goats. Except for diatoms!

Do you mean food grade diatomaceous earth? This sounds interesting. Please would you explain a bit more asmileisthenewak47?

Boer goat is said to be resistant to blue tongue.

Chelle

The link above doesn't work, but Wikipedia has the answer! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetongue_disease