A clear TB test in recent days meant that pressure was lifted off the shoulders for another bit at least. I don’t lie awake thinking about it but the uncertainty it puts the business in when it comes around tends to hover over us for the duration of the testing week.

I say that knowing that on a beef farm where almost all stock are finished, being locked up with TB is less of an inconvenience compared to a farm selling weanlings or a dairy farm, but it’s still a draining experience. I think it’s the futility of it that annoys me most.

That will become a bigger issue as labour shortages bite on both farms and large animal practices more in future.

Albert Einstein’s quote “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” gets trotted out often when the topic of TB comes up and sure enough it got an airing at the IFA TB meeting in Mitchelstown last Wednesday evening.

Sanity

Driving up to it, I was questioning my own sanity.

Given that I’m not a fan of the whole process to begin with, was I mad to be overdoing the topic when the test was being read at home the following morning?

I left better informed even if there was some difficult stuff to listen to.

Chief among those were hearing how farms which never had TB for decades and had implemented best practice but were dealing with outbreaks now.

Trying to process that on the way home, I wondered does there need to be more work done ahead of road building projects or clear felling of forestry or is it just a coincidence that there tends to be outbreaks of TB following those events.

Genetic resistance to TB was another topic and one I tried to dig deeper into for my own farm.

I found a table for comparing dairy bulls on this issue on the ICBF website but one doesn’t seem to be available on the beef side and I’ll be reverting to the biro and paper method to compare them.

It’s yet another trait to try and breed for but if it can play a part in building resistance to TB within the herd, then I’m alright with that.

Tricky

Raising more awareness of it will be tricky though. Reaching consensus in beef cattle breeding can be like navigating your way through a minefield.

We’ve seen enough high-profile instances of that in the recent past.

The challenges were brought home to me when I did a bit more investigating into where my own herd stood from a TB perspective.

Looking though the bulls I used in the last year was interesting.

The AI bull I used with the lowest, by some distance, predicted prevalence of bovine TB slipped from a four to a three-star for replacement index, so as a participant in SCEP I’m slower to use him more widely.

At the other end of the scale a higher replacement index bull I’ve used has a predicted TB figure that following my own bit of research, I’m not going to be as comfortable using him in future.

There’s probably a point where AI and breeding companies may need to have a higher emphasis when it comes to purchasing bulls for use.

A contributor from the floor at the meeting said they should be compelled to not sell semen from bulls that have a higher risk of being susceptible to TB.