Tackling high cost of sheep scab

With a between 8000-10,000 outbreaks every year, it has been estimated that sheep scab annually costs the UK sheep industry between £80m-£200m.

And as some populations of sheep scab mites in the UK are now known to be resistant to the main treatments, the sheep industry needs to make a concerted effort to bring this disease under control, it has been claimed.

‘For Flock’s Sake Let’s Stop Scab Together’ is a project currently underway south of the border aimed at demonstrating the effectiveness of a community-led approach to improve the control of sheep scab in three hotspot areas.

The two-year project has offered up to 300 participating farmers a unique combination of on-farm advice, best practice training, free blood testing using the sheep scab ELISA test developed by Edinburgh’s Moredun research centre.

The costs of visits by local veterinary surgeon have also been covered to allow two sets of blood samples for ELISA testing, plus a face-to-face advisory visit by the vet for each farm to discuss scab control and biosecurity.

Vet Karen Swindlehurst, who is coordinating part of the project said that the key aspects of the approach revolved around communication, cooperation and co-ordination within clusters.

She said that the levels of engagement and enthusiasm among the farmers had been high and in some clusters the coordinators had more volunteers for the project than could be funded under current budgets. However in areas less used to co-operative approaches and on common grazings it had been harder to win farmer engagement - but it was hoped peer pressure would improve uptake.