Carried by biting midges, it affects ruminants like sheep and cattle, causing symptoms including fever, lesions, redness around the mouth, eyes and nose, reddening of the skin above the hoof, excessive salivation and nasal discharge.
Sheep are particularly prone to dying from the disease, with some farmers reporting substantial losses.
As of 11 October, 3,301 cases have been confirmed right across the country but principally in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset which have 1,943 cases between them. Devon is worst affected with 1,256 cases.
But the bald statistics only hint at the pressure, both emotional and financial, that the disease has heaped on farmers already reeling from the effects of a wet spring, followed by a long hot summer – which somewhat ironically provided ideal conditions for midges to thrive.
Seeing the signs
Devon sheep farmer Mark Walter first noticed signs of the disease when he was out checking stock towards the end of July.
“Three or four ewes, young ewes that had got lambs on them still, were not very well, drooling at the mouth.
“I didn’t know what it was, so I drenched all the lambs and the ewes for something else that I thought it might have been. The next day, I thought these sheep were not right, and I thought then it was bluetongue.”
Mark called his vet in to test the sheep, but he didn’t wait for the results before taking action.
“On the Monday, we ordered the vaccine, started jabbing on Tuesday, then Wednesday and Thursday we got all of them jabbed up. The amount we were using was unbelievable, already. You just don’t think, you just do them all, basically.”
Costs mount up
At around £2.50 to £3 per dose of vaccine, plus any other treatment like antibiotics or pain relief that may be required, the costs of this sort of exercise soon mount up
The test results confirmed the disease was bluetongue and Mark, who lambs between 750 and 800 ewes and fattens about 2,000 lambs, reckons the outbreak has cost his business about £20,000 so far. It has killed around 60 animals: 20 ewes, five rams, and 30 lambs.
Although the majority of the sheep survived, they are likely to take many months to recover, and the disease has also affected Mark’s 100 beef cattle. The lack of grass due to the hot weather has compounded the problem, with additional feed and concentrates needing to be provided.
“I think the cost is going to be the biggest thing for everybody, it’s going to be ongoing.
“It’s going to take us 12 months to get over – just in time for the next lot to come in.”
Mark Walter
“The lambs that were born last spring, it’s hit them terribly, really. I think they’re going to take three, four, five, six months to recover. They’ve gone very thin, and it’s going to be a big knock-on factor next spring for the meat market.
“The cattle are the same, it’s hit the cattle quite a bit. You’ve got animals that have had lower nutrition because the grass just isn’t there.
“That gives a lower immune status, they have less energy to fight anything that is thrown at them and when you throw in a challenge like the bluetongue, they’re fighting a losing battle and we can’t keep up.”
Ram fertility problems
Mark has had to buy additional sheep to try and recover some of these losses, as well as rams. Bluetongue can seriously impact the fertility of breeding rams.
While research indicates that the effect is often temporary, recovery can take several months, and the full longer-term impact is still being studied.
“We spent £5,000 last week on additional rams, because we don’t think our rams are going to be any good.”
Jemma Young, from Penbode Farm Vets, who has been helping Mark to treat his flock, says she has been spending a lot of time fertility testing rams.
“Everybody wants to know, either so that they can sell rams with a guarantee on them, because that’s what the buyer is looking for, or because they need to know what their rams are going to be like.
“Fertility is definitely down. I would say that we’re looking at around 50% fertility. Other practices I’ve spoken to have reported even lower rates of around 30%.”
Summer heat
Jemma agrees that summer heat contributed significantly to the severity of the outbreak.
“Midge activity increases exponentially over about 12 degrees, and they love anything above 20-plus. And we weren’t even seeing that decrease in temperature overnight, it was still up above 20 degrees during the evenings, so they were absolutely rife everywhere.
“From everyone’s point of view, it’s not been easy. We’ve had thousands of calls with farmers who have just been so stressed, so wary, so concerned.
“We try and figure out how best to help as quick as we can, because if you ring in in the morning, I don’t want you waiting until tomorrow. With everything that’s going on, I want to see you as soon as I can. We help as best we can, but we can’t fix everything.”
There is no doubt that bluetongue has added another layer of stress to an already very difficult farming year.
Hidden costs
“I think the cost is going to be the biggest thing for everybody. You know, it’s going to be ongoing, it’s going to take us 12 months to get over – just in time for the next lot to come in,” says Mark.
“It’s the hidden costs, the fact that lambs are taking longer to get fat, you need to put more food through them. You’re not sending lambs to slaughter that are getting such a high grade. You lose pennies everywhere because of that.
“And all those costs that aren’t numerical. I think time is a huge one. I think those are the costs that we don’t know and we can’t quantify but probably make up a larger proportion of those overall costs than anybody is aware of. And that’s really hard to get back.”