AS a £10 million initiative to eradicate bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) from Wales’ national cattle herd is underway, farmers are reminded to take advantage of free testing and veterinary support now or face possible compulsory testing at their own expense in the future.

BVD is a viral disease that causes immunosuppression and reproductive failure in cattle and the average cost to affected farms is thought to be more than £4,000 per year.

Thanks to funding secured from the 2014-2020 Rural Development Programme for Wales, every beef or dairy farmer is entitled to free tests to establish if the disease is present in their herd.

Gwaredu BVD is the three-year RDP-funded BVD programme for Wales, which began in September 2017.

There are two delivery partners – Menter a Busnes in the north and Iechyd Da in the south; these are responsible for managing the vets who will undertake the testing work.

Testing requires five animals between 9nine and 18 months in each distinct management group to be blood sampled and these will be tested for BVD antibodies.

The blood test can occur at the same time as the herd TB test.

The samples will be sent to an agreed lab and the results should be back by the reading of the TB test.

A derogation has been provided for situations where young stock are not available for testing at the time of the TB test.

If there are BVD antibodies present on the farm then finding and removing ‘Persistently Infected’ (PI) animals will be recommended.

A total of £500 will be made available to identify persistently infected (PI) animals.

The PI hunt may require different strategies on different farms and this work will be done in association with the farm vet.

If more than £500 is needed, then the additional costs are borne by the farmer.

This three-year voluntary programme may be a precursor to legislation and the FUW is therefore urging members to engage in this initiative whilst testing is free.

For farmers whose herds don’t have the disease, there is the opportunity to talk about protecting against future infection and for those that do there is support to eradicate BVD from their herd.