Data released by Animal Health and Welfare NI (AHWNI) shows that from start of the compulsory scheme in March to the end of last week, only 0.59% of tissue-tag samples were positive for BVD.

This is slightly higher than the rate of 0.51% positive results from the beginning of the voluntary scheme in January 2013, but it was thought that the figure could rise to between 0.7% and 0.8% as more herds joined the scheme in the compulsory phase. That would follow the pattern in the Republic of Ireland’s programme.

“The results are fairly low, although there is a health warning with this as we are still in the early days of the programme with no account of autumn-calving herds yet,” Sam Strain from AHWNI told the Irish Farmers Journal.

He said that the longer voluntary scheme in NI compared with the Republic of Ireland may have been a factor in preventing a sharp rise in the number of positive results as the compulsory phase began.

Since January 2013, 14,458 herds have joined the programme, with 8,999 of these joining since March 2016. Strain said it is difficult to get an accurate figure of how many breeding herds there are in NI, but he suggested that the majority have now started the scheme.

The number of empty samples submitted from the start of the compulsory scheme is expected to fall from the current figure of 0.95%. “This is inevitable in the early stages as farmers learn how to use the tissue tags correctly. We have already seen this figure fall dramatically week on week,” Strain said.

He also said that it was too early to put a figure on the number of persistently infected (PI) calves retained on farms, although he acknowledged that this could be an issue with some farmers.

Strain also urged more farmers to receive results by text message instead of by post, to enable faster response times. So far, 59.2% of herds have registered mobile numbers for this service since March.

Strain pointed out that farmers must either contact AHWNI directly to register a mobile number by phone or email or add it themselves through logging on to the AHWNI website.

“Mobile numbers can be included on the piece of paper that accompanies tissue samples, but this stays with the laboratory and does not reach us, so we are unable to text the results,” he added.