The company, sponsor of this meeting, offered a lecture given by Valentín Pérez, professor of Animal Health at the University of León.
Madrid, 17 January 2024
From 5 to 9 June, Vetia Animal Health took part in the 25th National Sheep Forum, held in Valladolid and organised by Tierras Ovino and TecnoCarne. Under the heading ‘Keys to review the production model’, this edition of the Forum served to analyse current aspects of the sheep sector such as the challenge of digitalisation, new perspectives in genetic improvement and reproduction, the keys to rebreeding, health problems, the increase in production costs and the importance of sustainability, among others.
Vetia played a leading role in this event as a sponsor company and offered attendees a presentation given by the Professor of Animal Health at the University of León, Valentín Pérez, entitled ‘Effects of vaccination against paratuberculosis on the parameters produced in a flock of dairy sheep’.
In it, Pérez described the serious consequences, both in terms of production and, ultimately, economically, of a dairy sheep farm being affected by this disease, also known as Johne’s disease, caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis, or MAP.
He pointed out the stage following the first lambing as the time when the effects of paratuberculosis can be felt, as well as the different symptoms that occur in the animals depending on the productive stage of the disease: mastitis, weight loss, diarrhoea, etc.
The professor from the University of León also defended vaccination as the most appropriate control method for sheep in terms of cost-benefit. In his speech, Pérez underlined the high effectiveness of vaccination, which significantly reduces clinical cases of paratuberculosis and, in many cases, makes them disappear.
In this regard, he took the opportunity to present the results of a study carried out on an Assaf dairy farm. In these facilities, half of the replacement animals were vaccinated with Gudair for two years, leaving the other half as a non-vaccinated control. For 8 years they monitored the number of lambs born to each animal, as well as the number of lactations, the amount of milk produced and the number of deaths. The researchers were able to observe that, after 8 years, 12 ewes from the vaccinated group were still alive, compared to only one from the unvaccinated group.
Another of the main findings of this study was the significant reduction, within the non-vaccinated group, in the number of lactations and milk production, as well as in the number of lambs.
Valentín Pérez insisted that these results show that vaccination not only reduces cases of paratuberculosis, but also exerts a positive pressure on other productive and health parameters of the herd, by reducing mortality and increasing milk production and the number of lambs obtained.
For the professor of Animal Health, these positive effects could be the consequence of a learned immune response induced by the paratuberculosis vaccine, achieving cross-protection against other diseases or processes not directly related to paratuberculosis.
Vetia Animal Health would like to congratulate the organisers for the high level of the seminars included in this edition of the National Sheep Forum.
For more information: info@vetia.es
From 5 to 9 June, Vetia Animal Health took part in the 25th National Sheep Forum, held in Valladolid and organised by Tierras Ovino and TecnoCarne. Under the heading ‘Keys to review the production model’, this edition of the Forum served to analyse current aspects of the sheep sector such as the challenge of digitalisation, new perspectives in genetic improvement and reproduction, the keys to rebreeding, health problems, the increase in production costs and the importance of sustainability, among others.
Vetia played a leading role in this event as a sponsor company and offered attendees a presentation given by the Professor of Animal Health at the University of León, Valentín Pérez, entitled ‘Effects of vaccination against paratuberculosis on the parameters produced in a flock of dairy sheep’.
In it, Pérez described the serious consequences, both in terms of production and, ultimately, economically, of a dairy sheep farm being affected by this disease, also known as Johne’s disease, caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis, or MAP.
He pointed out the stage following the first lambing as the time when the effects of paratuberculosis can be felt, as well as the different symptoms that occur in the animals depending on the productive stage of the disease: mastitis, weight loss, diarrhoea, etc.
The professor from the University of León also defended vaccination as the most appropriate control method for sheep in terms of cost-benefit. In his speech, Pérez underlined the high effectiveness of vaccination, which significantly reduces clinical cases of paratuberculosis and, in many cases, makes them disappear.
In this regard, he took the opportunity to present the results of a study carried out on an Assaf dairy farm. In these facilities, half of the replacement animals were vaccinated with Gudair for two years, leaving the other half as a non-vaccinated control. For 8 years they monitored the number of lambs born to each animal, as well as the number of lactations, the amount of milk produced and the number of deaths. The researchers were able to observe that, after 8 years, 12 ewes from the vaccinated group were still alive, compared to only one from the unvaccinated group.
Another of the main findings of this study was the significant reduction, within the non-vaccinated group, in the number of lactations and milk production, as well as in the number of lambs.
Valentín Pérez insisted that these results show that vaccination not only reduces cases of paratuberculosis, but also exerts a positive pressure on other productive and health parameters of the herd, by reducing mortality and increasing milk production and the number of lambs obtained.
For the professor of Animal Health, these positive effects could be the consequence of a learned immune response induced by the paratuberculosis vaccine, achieving cross-protection against other diseases or processes not directly related to paratuberculosis.
Vetia Animal Health would like to congratulate the organisers for the high level of the seminars included in this edition of the National Sheep Forum.
For more information: info@vetia.es
