HPAI Update: USDA Clarification on Federal Order for Dairy Cattle

May 30, 2024

The United States Department of Agriculture recently released additional information about the federal order to assist with developing a baseline of critical information and limiting the spread of H5N1 in dairy cattle, as well as guidelines for shows and fairs. Some brief highlights related to recent common inquiries include the following:

USDA Updates on HPAI

Animals moving interstate to an exhibition, show, or sale may pass the 7-day testing window; is it possible to skip additional testing to return to the first farm? Animals moving interstate to an exhibition, show, or sale must have a negative test result from samples collected within 7 days of movement. These animals may travel to their home herd using the same negative test result provided the exhibition, show, or sale does not exceed 10 days of length.
Limit animal comingling of animals and follow biosecurity protocols.
Please check with each exhibition event to understand individual guidelines in place for dairy cattle.
Additional guidance about minimizing transmissions at livestock exhibitions can be found here.

Source : wisc.edu

Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.