26 Aug 2017
The ability of an animal to be resilient to diseases is dependent upon several factors which include; immune status, husbandry practices, vaccination and genetics among others. The majority of these areas can be employed in preventing disease occurrence in food producing animals. Examples of alternatives to antibiotics:
• Vaccines
• Probiotics
• Genetic selection
The prevention of infectious diseases has proved to be one of the most cost-effective methods of disease control. Vaccines stimulate a protective immune response. A few reported flock trials of Footrot vaccines and Bovine Viral Diarrhoea (BVD) in the UK. The key findings were:
• A 62% protective effect was reported against footrot and 32% against contagious ovine digital dermatitis infection in 748 fattening lambs (figure 1 and 2).
• The trial also recommended vaccinating all sheep to limit future environmental contamination and challenge.
