Badger vaccinations

Re: Badger vaccinations

Sarah Wheeler — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 22:03:26 GMT

Wow, thanks for sharing this Mariette. Very interesting.

Re: Badger vaccinations

Mark Holmes — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:45:42 GMT

If I were a farmer and had the option of sitting and waiting for the next failed test or actively embarking on a badger vaccination program, it would have to be bloody expensive to put me off.

Re: Badger vaccinations

Hannah Wynne Richards — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:40:25 GMT

At a guess I would say that probably both Government and farmers will say the other ought to pay for it

Wynne

Re: Badger vaccinations

Mark Holmes — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:25:16 GMT

So you are saying that any practice could set up their own badger vaccinating scheme for farmers who are worried about TB and their cattle? Are the costs prohibitive? Is the licensing new? Why has this not been done before? It sounds like a bloody brilliant idea, a business opportunity and something farmers can do to take matters into their own hands legally. What is the catch?

Re: Badger vaccinations

mariette asselbergs — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:46:21 GMT

Sorry, here is the website: www.Brockvaccination.co.uk

Re: Badger vaccinations

mariette asselbergs — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:45:19 GMT

Just an update for interested people:

In one of the next In Practices there will be a publication with guidelines for the use of BadgerBCG.

And the following website gives a lot of information. it was made by one of my trainers who has set up her own company. They are very experienced in surveying and did lots of work with night vision cameras on farms etc.

Re: Badger vaccinations

mariette asselbergs — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:58:49 GMT

[quote user="plantagenet"]

Can we have an expert opinion here, but I thought TB was not the ideal disease for vaccination due to the immune mediated nature of the disease (type IV hypersensitivity) Therefore although it reduces the chances of infection, in the case of a heavy challenge it may not only not help, but possibly increase the severity of the disease>

My days in path lectures are a long time ago, so I may not remember correctly.

[/quote]

Not at all pretending to be an expert! But this is one of the classic diseases and the vaccine one of the first, and we don't need to re-invent the wheel....

In humans BCG vaccination is still a very valuable help in endemic situations. It was used in Scotland and the UK to get the prevalence down. You are right, it is not a l00% foolproof vaccine at all, but it does give a reasonably good level of protection, and if you can secure that a high percentage of a population is vaccinated, (one vaccination lasts for life) then you will reduce the size of a circulating infection in a population. The vaccine is used massively in the developing world, and very cheap. Unfortunately the licensing and labeling as "badger vaccine" cost dearly, each badgerdose (@ten times the human dose) cost £16.50. The vaccine has been tested and found not to have ill-effects in badgers which already carry TB. (No protection either.)

Re: Badger vaccinations

Bob Russell — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:20:31 GMT

What a fascinating thread! Many thanks for starting it. This is all news to me - one of the few threads I want emailed to me!!

Re: Badger vaccinations

Richard Carter — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 10:46:27 GMT

I was under the impression a negative response in humans is considered to be more of a worry as people should have been vaccinated or exposed and become immune to TB. This would imply that an immune response is good and expected in healthy individuals. Presume being mammals one can extrapolate to some degree. The reason cattle were not vaccinated was that it then interferes with the tuberculin test.

Re: Badger vaccinations

plantagenet — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 10:05:04 GMT

My days in path lectures are a long time ago, so I may not remember correctly.

Re: Badger vaccinations

Braden Collins — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 08:18:02 GMT

Can you please keep us up to date with how TB cases progress in the vaccination area. I worked in Cornwall for about 8 years where for some of our practices had about 1/3 of the clients under restrictions for TB (my worst days testing had 76 reactors in one dairy herd). Most of them also reported seeing unwell badgers on their farms.

Perhaps DEFRA, farmers, politicians and conservationists need to look at this as a badger health issue as well as a cattle health issue, though I think it will be nearly impossible for them all to agree on a solution.

Re: Badger vaccinations

karen jones — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 08:07:40 GMT

We are in a TB hotspot, Shropshire Welsh border. We have one area where all the farms are now tied up with reactors all around one large badger sett, which the local badger group has CCT cameras watching at all times. The affect on farmers can't be underestimated not just on their businesses but on their welfare. As a practice we feel helpless in giving advice but we are running a meeting with Nadis to try and give out advice to farmers

Didn't realise we could get involved in vaccination, will pass that by the LA side Thanks for the info

Re: Badger vaccinations

Michael Woodhouse — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:19:44 GMT

Mariette, thanks for the detailed reply. All very interesting.

Re: Badger vaccinations

mariette asselbergs — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 23:58:48 GMT

[quote user="Michael Woodhouse"]

Very interesting. I never knew that vets were going out doing it, I assumed it was laypersons.

Not sure what you are allowed to say, but I have a few questions:

Is there any facility for euthanasia of obviously sick badgers?
Do you catch many a second time?
How productive is it (say you have 5 traps, do you usually get a couple of badgers or go out for weeks without seeing one?)
Are they shooting them in your area too?
Are you in a TB 'hotspot' or are they trying to vaccinate on areas that have boundaries with infected areas?

[/quote]

You are right Michael, the program was designed to be done by lay vaccinators. But since Defra dropped the subsidised programme, anybody can now arrange to have badgers on their land vaccinated at their own cost. They will need a licence from Natural England (no cost) to be allowed to trap badgers for vaccination. Only trained people are allowed to trap, but the training is not complicated, mainly about your obligations re welfare, health and safety and the implications of a protected species and what to do if you catch anything else. Once the badger is in a trap, any vet is allowed to vaccinate it. (As well as trained and certified and licensed lay vaccinators) Need to report to Natural England once yearly .

I have been doing the trapping myself to find out how much work it is, how it works in practice in order to see if we can promote/facilitate a program with interested (desperate) farmers where they can do most of the work of trapping and I as a vet come in only the morning after the traps have been set. Assessing the badger for health and trauma, vaccinating and microchipping is a few minutes work. The trick is the trapping but with experience it is not really complicated or even a lot of work, and it is even possible to involve interested volunteers to help out.

Now your questions:

1 Yes, obviously sick or wounded badgers must be seen by a vet and the vet can take the decision to euthanise them for welfare reasons. There is an obligation that euthanised badgers must go to VLA. (All the badgers I have seen so far were healthy and fat).

2 About one out of 4 badgers this year had been in before (was chipped), and I expect a much higher percentage next year, because it looks like we have vaccinated most of the adults present and only need to vaccinate new cubs next year. But they do like their peanuts and some don't mind the trapping. I had one badger coming in three nights in a row!

3 It depends where you can set the traps. If you set them at a sett with a lot of badgers you may get 4 in 5 traps. Where I have been trapping so far, the setts were outside the landowner's area and I set the traps along the runs and where they came through the fence. I usually got 2 badgers in 5 traps, but I probably didn't need 5 traps there. The coming week I am trapping at a sett where we know there are 4 or 5 badgers, and I am curious to see if we can get them all in one go. What is the most work - but this can be done by anybody, no need for official training or a license - is the preparatory work: finding active setts, active runs, latrines, then transporting the traps there, placing them and then putting bait under a flat stone every day at dusk, and checking the next morning if a badger has found it and removed the stone to get to the nuts. The more experience you get, the quicker this goes, but it can sometimes take a week, 10 days, sometimes only 2 days. It also depends on time of year and the weather, e.g. in spring and during a dry spell the badgers are more hungry for peanuts, but if it rains after a dry spell they prefer their earthworms. But again, this baiting can be done by interested volunteers, the farmers or landowners, etc.

4 Badgers are being shot, dug out and caught for dog fights illegally, but I think not on a large scale. There are plans for an official cull in a limited area of our practice. In that area we will not promote vaccination , that would just be a waste of money. Outside the official culling area we would like to promote vaccination but don't hold your breath on uptake.

5 We have quite a lot of TB, but also lots of tracer tests and cattle movements. There is no systematic data collection on TB in badgers in our area, everybody just assumes that badgers have and spread TB. Where I have been vaccinating this year was around a property which wanted a corridor of vaccinated badgers around it, and on land of the Woodland Trust. This was particularly helpful to gain experience with the process. The season when trapping and vaccination is allowed, ends 1 December, and opens again 1 May. Next spring I hope to vaccinate on farms which have TB in a closed herd and have badgers on their land. Unfortunately there is no coordinated epidemiological approach to do ring vaccinations or barrier vaccinations. It seems to me that it would be most sensible to vaccinate badgers in areas around TB infested regions as a first priority. But there is no pro-active surveying or monitoring of the spread of tb in badgers, no soil testing of setts with Warrick University's test for TB. There is still lots to do in the years to come....

Hope this answers you questions a bit!

Mariette

Re: Badger vaccinations

Michael Woodhouse — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:33:16 GMT

Very interesting. I never knew that vets were going out doing it, I assumed it was laypersons.

Not sure what you are allowed to say, but I have a few questions:

Is there any facility for euthanasia of obviously sick badgers?
Do you catch many a second time?
How productive is it (say you have 5 traps, do you usually get a couple of badgers or go out for weeks without seeing one?)
Are they shooting them in your area too?
Are you in a TB 'hotspot' or are they trying to vaccinate on areas that have boundaries with infected areas?