New Active Confirmed Property identified

A Confirmed Property in mid-Canterbury has been identified via routine testing.

The Programme is carrying out cattle movement tracing and genomic analysis as is standard practice when a property is confirmed infected, and we are working closely with the farmer.

It is not unexpected that we have found another infected property at this stage in the eradication effort. In fact, we can expect to find more as we continue on this journey. 

Farmers can take heart that, while we may find further infection, we are undertaking a significant amount of surveillance, which shows the disease is not widespread. The number of infected farms has tailed off over the past 18 months.

With high levels of background and network surveillance being undertaken and very few new active confirmed properties we can be optimistic that good progress has been made towards eradication, and that we are in the ‘tail end’ of the disease outbreak.

General Biosecurity measures at calving to help protect against diseases 

Planning your calving season

1. Tag every calf that is born on your farm (bobby calves (under 30 days old) going direct to slaughter are exempt from NAIT requirements but require a specific tag).
2. Register each calf into NAIT against your NAIT number, before they are moved off your farm.
3. Record movements off farm in the system within 48 hrs.
4. Keep groups of calves separate for 48 hrs before mixing them while you observe them for disease.
5. Keep calf-rearing facilities and equipment clean, and limit how many people access calf-rearing areas.
6. Get people accessing calf-rearing areas to clean their boots and PPE, and any other equipment, and clean them again when they leave.
7. Remove sick calves to a dedicated sick pen.
8. Only buy NAIT-tagged calves with accurate and up-to-date records, and record their arrival on to your farm.

Accurate NAIT records help to track down infectious diseases including M. bovis, reducing the risk of spread in our farming communities. 

See OSPRI’s Calving checklist.

Calves outside the shed

As the weather warms up, older calves are ready to go outside the shed and the twice-daily milk schedule is cut down to once a day. This is a stressful time when M. bovis bacteria may be shed. It’s also a time when calves often get mixed with other cattle, perhaps being sold on or new calves coming onto the farm. This means a high-risk of infection. Make sure your calves don’t mix with calves from other farms unless you’re certain the stock they’re mixing with don’t have M. bovis or other diseases.