Ovine Brucellosis is an infectious bacterial sheep disease that can affect the reproductive performance of your flock. Rams infected with B.ovis suffer from inflamed reproductive organs (especially the epididymis) impacting semen quality.
The main impacts of Ovine Brucellosis include:
Infertility: Infected rams have reduced fertility meaning that if there is a short joining window there can be reductions in the conception rates.
Premature culling: If Infected rams are culled after only one or two years in the flock, replacement costs will increase.
Treatment of Ovine Brucellosis
Ovine Brucellosis cannot be cured, and an integrated approach is required to manage it including:
- Buying rams with a National Sheep Health Declaration from studs accredited as OB-free
- Developing and implementing a farm biosecurity plan
- establishing the OB status of your flock before introducing OB-free sires
- isolating rams from ewes until their disease status is established as ewes can spread OB
- Manual palpation is an effective and practical way of identifying rams with testicular disorders
- seeking veterinary advice if you notice lower lambing percentages, longer lambing periods or abnormal lumps in the testes.
Spread of the disease
Brucellosis can spread in rams:
- At joining. Ewes are commonly served by more than one ram at each cycle. If an infected
ram serves a ewe, then rams that subsequently join with that ewe can become infected. - With homosexual and dominance related activities in rams.
- At shearing or whenever rams come into contact with infected semen.
likelihood of Brucellosis
The disease is common in rams, with the purchase of rams from saleyards and non-accredited flocks greatly increasing the chance of disease
Over more than thirty years as a veterinarian working in the sheep industry in western Queensland Dr. N O’Dempsey has seen two or three peaks of concern with brucellosis. But he advises that removing brucellosis from your ram flock is good management but people can spend a lot of time and effort and still not be addressing the issues that have caused their low lambing problem.
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