09/06/2025
In the last two years, we have jumped deep down the hole of biosecurity!
For those not familiar, there are a few diseases that are heavily detrimental to ruminants, and by the time the physical symptoms become visible, your stock has already been shedding the bacteria, often for years.
We were incredibly lucky when we decided to run our first panel, we had just purchased some new sheep, and tested them before we allowed them to leave quarantine. We received positives on 4/5 sheep. Suddenly, that solidified the value of health testing for us. They never mixed with our herd or were housed in any of our pastures/regular use areas. We had the ability to remove them without putting our herd at risk.
Our goats have been purchased from herds with a clean health test history, and we have tested annually. However, with the sheep on property, that created a grey area for us. So we wanted to put the effort into ensuring our sheep keep the same health standards.
It was a big endeavour, and we send a huge thank you to all our friends and family who helped catch and pull blood... every sheep over one year of age has now passed two clean Johne’s panels, and one clean OPP panel.
We still don’t want to advertise "clean tested" until we have a few more clear panels under our belt, but it sure is a big win already! Next year, we hope to also pass a second clean OPP panel, and be on our way to feeling confidently clean!
This restructures our program quite a lot, and brings in a challenge to keep genetics diversified for the sheep, while keeping the risk of disease low. There is a lot of things we are still ironing out to keep this going over the long term, but feeing very thankful for the start we have!
