[Haylo-peapod]

Hi feldar, I hope your trip down to the field didn't reveal any more deformed lambs??

I meant to ask whether the lambs with the subsequent undershot jaws were twins of other lambs (dead or alive) already known to have been affected by the schmallenberg virus or if they were from ewes that had previously had lambs that all appeared to be normal at birth?

I wonder whether Defra/VLA have considered taking blood samples of a supposedly 'normal' twin of one that is known to have suffered with the disease to see wheher that throws up any relevant data.

Hope you are OK!

[feldar]

Hi Haylo-peapod
The lambs that are affected are from the same field as the lambs which tested positive for Schmallenberg. They are ones which looked normal at birth and nearly all the sheep had twins. The ram lamb whose twin was born deformed ( in my other thread) i've not managed to catch yet he's a quick little thing but i did try taking some photos last night, Most of the lambs took the P*** out of me and i got lots of pics of ears, bums and tails 
But what i did get was below.
The first pic shows a lamb we know has a twisted jaw aand the second you would think is a lamb not getting enough milk he is so humpy actually what he has is a curved spine he is as heavy as the others and full up but stands like this all the time. We will have to see how he fairs as he grows

[feldar]

All the lambs are doing well at the moment no casualties or skinny ones but their Mums have milk, We are going to catch up and bring in any overshot mouth lambs and mothers then creep feed and get gone ASAP, It remains to be seen how they "do" if their mouths aren't too bad we can get them to market any who are too deformed will be PTS
As for blood testing i don't think the government are too bothered and we just report findings to our vet who reports back to VLA centre, we can't afford to blood test everything and the directive back from them to us is yes you've had now deal with it!
Funnily enough our lambs are either twisted jaws or OVERSHOT on the bottom jaw, the literature only mentions Parrot mouthed as being overshot on the top jaw, trust us to be different!

[tizaala]

Can this dreadful virus be passed from sheep to sheep or only through midges? It could be risky taking them to market and spreading the problem .
I feel so sorry for You and your flock, truly dreadful.

[feldar]

Thanks Tizaala,
i don't know if it can be passed on! i know it needs a host, all viruses do and that would be the midge and /or the sheep but are my sheep now carriers? and could they possibly infect others if a midge bites them and then another sheep.
 I don't know if it crosses the placental barrier i wouldn't of thought so. The placenta is a very effective barrier in most animals and we are informed it is the massive antibody reaction to the mother being bitten and infected with the virus coupled with the hight temperature that such an infection causes that is the cause of the deformities in the lambs.
We haven't had much info given out since the first cases and i guess they just don't know themselves what's going to happen. I'm sure there will be someone out there doing a Phd on the subject as we speak.
Here's a photo i missed this is one of the lambs i know is overshot at the bottom, he runs about most of the time with his tongue stuck out
.We have had overshot mouths before, all big sheep farmers get one or two but i've never had such high numbers in such a concentrated area
Sorry they're not very good photos but as you know lambs just won't stay still for more than 2 seconds

[Brijjy]

Awful news still Feldar. I was talking to my sheep farmer neighbour. He lambs about 1500 ewes and he reckons he probably wouldn't notice this virus if it occurs in his flock as a certain percentage of lambs born do have something wrong with them. I'm not sure I agree with him as it seems to me that we don't know enough yet about this virus. As you have proved with your lambs, the deformities etc don't always fit with what we've been told.

[SallyintNorth]

It's now been confirmed as far north as Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire - 1 case in each county.  The official line remains that it has only been found in areas at risk of midge incursion from the continent in summer / autumn 2011 and that further spread will have been through domestic midges.

[Haylo-peapod]

So how far does the midge incursion from the continent extend? I don't recall Leicestershire and Warwickshire being on the original list. 

One small 'bonus' (if you can call it that) is that for the time being the numbers seem to be staying low in most counties outside of the South East and East Anglia. Not that this helps our friends in those regions sadly. Let's hope that as more of the northern flocks start to lamb the numbers don't grow too much more (preferably not at all).

I wonder if there would have been much spread from the domestic midges with the mild winter 

[feldar]

Well got more " unofficial info " from vet. It does cross placenta which is why we had to take lambs to VLA centre.They have to do a PCR on tissue samples to harvest the virus they can't get this from blood samples. The tissue is digested and run on a gel to confirm the virus is present.
We now probably have PIs ( carriers) in the flock and these would probably be the live lambs born with the mummified twins.
We could cull these out, but if say our neighbour has had this but doesn't confirm it, he would have PIs too then we would be back to square one. Unless all  PIs are culled all over the country there would always be a reinfection risk so it's far better to wait for a vaccine.
On the plus side all the lambs are still doing well even Humpy ( little lamb with curved spine) so we just have to wait and see. Be good if we had a wet warm spring so everything gets bitten before any rams go in

[YorkshireLass]

Oh wow.... I'm so sorry.

Has anyone confirmed for sure that the jaw/spine problems are due to SBV?

[Sylvia]

If this is caused my midges drifting over from France why hasn't it happened here before?

[YorkshireLass]

It's a whole new mutation of a virus....

[Rich/Jan]

The laboratory in France confirmed that we did have one lamb with the virus - body fused inside the female in a U-shape.  Possibility of others which were mummified or born dead but we did not connect this with the virus at the time so no accurate diagnosis on them as such.

[feldar]

Oh wow.... I'm so sorry.

Has anyone confirmed for sure that the jaw/spine problems are due to SBV?

No they haven't confirmed it officially but i would be very worried if it was anything else! The lambs have tested positive so far but no one has tested live lambs our vet says this is because there'isn't a blood test available yet they have to harvest tissue and that he thinks would probably be from the spinal cord so not a viable option on a live lamb.
Having the odd funny jaw in a large flock is not the problem it is the numbers of lambs coming through with deformed mouths in one concentrated area that makes it suspiciuos if it's not this virus then i'm a worried lady
Sorry to hear your problems too Rich/Jan i hope you don't get any more. But i think if you had some mumified ones then the rest of your flock was probably infected too

[Hazelwood Flock]

After an apparently normal lambing, I have been dosing lambs for cocci today and have found a large number of lambs who have bottom teeth forward of the pad. To be honest, the first thing I thought was oh crap the rams are no good, but on reading this I'm starting to wonder if I haven't escaped this virus after all. Just an odd one or two I could suspect a genetic fault but I have noticed about 7 out of 29 lambs - that's the ones who are really noticeable. I just hope I can get them fit for slaughter once the milk dries up...good job they like creep!