The virus is widely distributed in mosquito populations throughout North America and in parts of Central America. It was first identified in 1956 in mosquitoes collected in Utah’s Cache Valley, which gives this virus its unique name.

It has been demonstrated in at least four Canadian provinces, 22 U.S. states and in Mexico. However, it took until 1987 for it to be identified as a cause of abortion in sheep with severe central nervous system and musculoskeletal system changes in aborted fetuses.

In 1997, it was also recognized as a very rare cause of human disease.

The virus is only spread to mammals and humans through mosquitoes; there is no direct mammal-to-mammal spread. It was first identified in Canadian sheep in 2012 in malformed lambs in Ontario.

This virus is maintained in two host populations: an insect population (mosquitoes) and a reservoir vertebrate host that amplifies the infection.

These vertebrate hosts are primarily deer but also include small ruminants such as sheep and goats, as well as horses and cattle. Many other species of mammals have also tested positive.

Like many insect-borne viruses, the late summer and early autumn months are when the highest amount of virus is present in the mosquito population.

A 2014 serological study was carried out in Saskatchewan by a team led by Dr. Fabienne Uehlinger at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine and Dr. Wendy Wilkins at Saskatchewan Agriculture. Sixty-five per cent of sheep were positive and 94 per cent of flocks had at least one sheep positive for the virus. In addition, 20 per cent of cattle, 33 per cent of goats, 69 per cent of horses and 51 per cent of mule deer tested positive.

If a pregnant sheep or goat is infected with the virus by an infected mosquito during early gestation (first 48 days), it can result in early embryonic death, abortions or stillbirth in lambs or kids.

If the infection is in the first month of gestation, it may result in early embryonic death and the result is pregnancy rates that are much lower than usual in the flock.

Between 32 and 48 days of gestation, the virus can cause severe congenital abnormalities of the fetus, affecting both the nervous system and the musculoskeletal system. These lambs can be aborted or stillbirth and will often have various brain abnormalities, such as hydrocephalus and enlarged skulls, or severe musculoskeletal abnormalities, such as a twisted spinal column, fused joints and abnormal limbs (arthrogryposis) and underdeveloped muscles.

It appears that these adverse clinical syndromes are mainly seen in small ruminants such as sheep and goats. Adverse consequences of infection in horses or cattle have not been identified consistently.

Clinical symptoms are limited to the impacts on the fetus. The ewe will not have clinical disease and the virus in the bloodstream can only be detected for about two weeks after infection. The virus is also difficult to demonstrate in the aborted fetus, making diagnosis particularly challenging.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to prevent this viral cause of abortion because no vaccines for Cache Valley Virus infection are available.

The only potential way to prevent infection is to limit the exposure of pregnant sheep in the first 50 days of gestation to mosquitoes. Obviously, it is almost impossible to avoid mosquitoes in grazing animals such as sheep.

However, producers could perhaps alter the breeding schedule so that the sheep are not in the early pregnancy period during the high risk mosquito season.

The good news is that sheep that become infected will develop immunity and will be unlikely to abort in subsequent pregnancies due to this virus.

In some of the current outbreaks of Cache Valley Virus abortions, we think that the sheep were infected in late July or early August of last year.

At some point in the late summer or early fall, mosquito populations start to drop off and eventually we should see abortions due to this virus decline.

As well, because this is a very seasonal disease, it corresponds to the seasonality of the mosquito populations.

Producers who have an unusually high rate of abortions or stillbirth in their flocks should work with a veterinarian to submit aborted fetuses to the diagnostic laboratory to get an accurate diagnosis. There are many other causes of abortion in sheep and goats, and some of the other viruses can also cause malformed fetuses.

In Saskatchewan flocks, there is an initiative to provide free testing on abortion cases funded through Saskatchewan Agriculture and the vet college’s disease investigation unit. This is a time-limited program, and a local veterinarian can help submit those samples.

John Campbell is a professor in the department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine.

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But healthy udders not only ensure proper milk production, they affect kid performance in meat goats, said Dr. Rosie Busch from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

Why it matters: Attention to udder health and milking conditions are critical in assessing and treating diseases, some of which impact kid and overall herd health.

“You want to ensure that every goat has an examination of the actual gland and the teats,” Busch said.

“I think it’s a great practice to palpate udders. It’s really important (that meat producers) know what a normal udder should feel like – an udder that’s in lactation and an udder that’s dry.”

Pre-breeding and pregnancy ultrasounds are ideal opportunities for udder palpitation, suggested Busch. Producers should pay particular attention to kids that fail to thrive and check does for milk production.

“If you have a problem with the survivability of kids at kidding, mark those does,” she said, adding that lagging kids from does raising multiples are often not thoroughly investigated.

“Once (producers) start identifying those animals, they are repeat offenders.”

Busch said milk component analysis provides insight into nutrition, disease control and overall composition. For example, mastitis can decrease casein, calcium, lactose and fat while increasing albumin, sodium and chloride, immunoglobulins and lactoferrin. Other diseases also change milk composition.

Goat teats use physical barriers, like a keratin plug, sphincter closure and naturally occurring antimicrobial and linoleic acids to protect against infection.

Dairy clipping, clean bedding and debris removal from udders and legs before milking is advised, but Busch warned that water is the nemesis of disinfection protocols for teats and milking equipment.

“Water provides a basis for bacteria to penetrate the end of the teat. It can bring soil and manure down from the top of the udder to the end of the teat,” she explained. “And if we’re using a lot of water in our prep process, it can be where contamination occurs.”

Regarding mastitis, on-farm milk cultures can help identify the type, but freezing a pre-treatment sample for culturing and possible diagnostic lab work is ideal.

Subclinical versus clinical mastitis

Altered gait can indicate mastitis, as can the sloughing of skin or teat lesions.

Clinical mastitis cases present with a hot, painful and potentially swollen mammary gland with apparent lymph nodes between the legs, abnormal secretions, and sometimes no milk at all, said Busch.

Staph aureus, a contagious and untreatable bacterium, commonly causes blue bag or gangrenous mastitis.

“Typically, when we find it, it’s this catastrophic death loss. It looks really terrible. It can cause multiple organ failure,” she said. “Milking equipment management is critical to help reduce the spread of this disease.”

Producers should separate infected animals and provide two milk streams, with infected animals milked last using gloves on thoroughly dry teats.

Busch said in acutely affected cases, systemic treatment may save the doe’s life, but its udder won’t recover. Subclinical signs, like a small udder abscess, often provide undetected entrance into a herd, but stress can trigger shedding into the milk.

“There is a vaccine in Canada,” she said. “Ideally, if you’re using it for Staph aureus control, it’s best to start vaccinating as doe-lings before they’re freshened.”

Coliforms are gram-negative bacteria, similar to E. coli, which can cause clinical mastitis and occasionally gangrenous mastitis. General udder hygiene, particularly during milking or milk handling, is critical to limit infections, as is provision of a dry place for goats to lie.

Busch said the J5 vaccine for gram-negative mastitis can lower coliform counts, but it depends whether contamination is in the udder or occurred during milking.

“With agalactia, you can have blind or non-functioning glands and then a hungry neonate,” Busch said. “For those raising meat goats, it’s usually the first thing you notice. Their kids are either starving or dying.”

Snatch-rearing kids before nursing could minimize contagious disease spread, as will frequent replacement of tubing and feeding implements.

Elevated bulk tank somatic cell counts and reduced milk yield, curd, and longer clotting times indicate sub-clinical mastitis.

“Over time, those glands can become scarred or fibrotic because they’re constantly battling infections,” Busch said. “And (the animal gets) a hard gland after they’ve had (untreated) infections.”

Coagulase negative Staph is a gram-positive bacteria that causes high somatic cell counts, she said, and it is present in 85 per cent of milk tested for mastitis. A study she’s working on with Iowa State shows 40 per cent of apparently healthy does have the bacteria.

“That’s a lot. If untreated, it’ll go on to cause fibrosis.”

It’s thought to respond to early treatment, but Busch said further research and data are needed to discern whether animals are susceptible to recurrence of the same infection or to new ones.

“Mastitis control and disease control, in general, comes back to reproductive management. So, if we have everyone freshening simultaneously, it becomes a little bit more challenging to manage and monitor these high-producing does all at one time.”

Busch said an annual milking cycle could identify and control disease and manage market and facility capacity. Some producers incorporate extended lactation over 365 days as an additional control tool.

“If we only have to kid out a third of the does each year, that can be helpful for disease control, but you definitely want to be strategic about it and make sure you have planned breeding times for that extended lactation.”

The post Udder health influences kid mortality, milk quality appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Stallions often receive excellent physical care, but their basic psychological needs for social interaction and movement are frequently disregarded in favour of breeding priorities and financial factors, leading to conditions like confinement and isolation.

Elite stallions may have luxurious management routines, but these programs – including metred exercise routines, daily grooming and attentive care from farriers, veterinarians, nutritionists, bodywork therapists and dentists – may not necessarily align with natural horse health and behavior.

Shifting attitudes, more education and improved understanding of stallions’ holistic needs are essential for enhancing their wellbeing and benefitting the broader equine community.

Attitudes around stallions often bias them as difficult to handle or aggressive. Those perceptions may impact their care and lead to neglect of the connection between housing and behaviour issues. Cultural norms and concerns about the risk of injury to the horse or the handler contribute to cautious and restrictive management.

Unfortunately, research regarding stallion welfare and an understanding of their specific needs has been limited by their small population.

Stallions have the same basic equine needs as other horses. In their natural habitat, stallions are social animals, belonging to wider groups with mares or as part of a bachelor herd with minimal isolation. Domestic confinement and partitioning often results in frustration, aggression and other stereotypical behaviours.

Stallions possess heightened awareness, intelligence, and a strong drive for social engagement. This is pivotal for their mental and emotional wellbeing and shapes their behaviour toward human handlers and fellow equines.

When stallions exhibit intense emotions and behavioural issues escalate, the handler’s response often involves restrictive measures rather than addressing underlying causes. Handlers may incorrectly attribute blame to the horses, and thus perpetuate a slanted belief that categorizes stallions as naturally high strung and hazardous.

Proper socialization and handling practices during their formative years can go a long way in avoiding those issues. They prepare the maturing horse to behave appropriately under various circumstances.

Early socialization under the nurturing guidance of a dam (which should stretch for six to eight months) instills social etiquette in the young colt and shapes it into a strong and resilient horse with amicable character.

Proper herd interactions during formative years also tutors future breeding stallions on suitable social behaviour before the introduction of prospective mares. Teaching solid ground manners through proper handling techniques will further give the young horse a fundamental grasp of expectations in various situations.

Human interference with a young stallion’s natural mating interactions during its initial breeding experiences can also hinder learning, particularly regarding proper breeding etiquette. The young stallion must learn to interpret the mare’s cues and communicate respectfully.

One sensible strategy is to allow those young stallions to spend a season with older broodmares. These older mares can impart social rules on the younger males, as well as the advantages of herd membership.

These valuable lessons contribute to success and tractability when the stallion returns to the breeding shed; lessons that cannot be replicated by humans.

Looking past breeding season

Addressing the social needs of mature stallions beyond the breeding season requires creation of opportunities for interaction with other horses. Whether they are partnered with a single broodmare, a companion gelding and/or pony, or integrated into a bachelor herd, these arrangements provide the stallion with valuable companionship.

Handlers play a valuable role in recognizing and respecting the stallion’s affinities and preferences when setting up these social opportunities.

Regardless of age, breed or gender, all horses need companionship and space for free movement. Enriching a stallion’s overall quality of life generally also results in positive changes to behaviour.

–Carol Shwetz is a veterinarian focusing on equine practice in Millarville, Alta.

The post Managing your stallion appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The CFS-funded program will be made available at no cost to Canadian sheep producers to bring them in line with government regulatory amendments that close the loop on full traceability.

“We understand that all the users, farmers included, are going to face a lot more work in terms of meeting regulations. The ultimate goal here is to make that easier, less complex, less work wherever possible for producers,” said CFS executive director Corlena Patterson.

“But also, to keep traceability in the hands of the sheep farmers so that we are not at the mercy of service providers or other groups to dictate cost, price or program direction.”

To meet the increasing demands of government regulation, sheep farmers now require a centralized end-to-end supply chain traceability system for their flocks.

AgroLedger will be the underpinning system to meet traceability regulations. It will also provide producers with real-time critical disease information and valuable performance data, which will inform herd management decisions, improve performance and simplify reporting.

For example, a requirement for the Canadian Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) vaccine strategy is to track whether animals have been vaccinated. That determines protocols required to respond to an outbreak.

“But first, you need to be able to identify them, and (until now) there isn’t a system in place where you can scan an animal’s ID and know if they’ve been vaccinated,” said Patterson.

AgroLedger is an information-sharing platform capable of tracking and providing details even when the animal is sold or enters the food chain.

“We realized traceability was more than understanding when the tag was put in the ear (and) where the tag moved when it was in an animal’s ear,” Patterson said. “It’s more about understanding an animal’s history and moving that information with the animal through its life cycle.”

Patterson said AgroLedger is the foundation for a larger, cost-effective digital system that puts operation management details at producers’ fingertips. It provides rapid disease response support, simplified reporting and the ability to evolve to incorporate new regulations.

Patterson said the European Union initiated a new policy on imports of anti-microbial-treated animals and meat.

“We have no way of knowing which and what treatments an animal has had through its lifespan … to be able to meet trading partners’ expectations,” she said.

During CSF involvement in national animal health discussions, it became apparent that AgroLedger would need to incorporate diverse layers of information on animals’ history to comply with disease risk mitigation programming and import and export policy.

The program is approaching its release date and a group of early adopters has been working with the development team since the third week of June during real-world testing.

“We are going to start onboarding those who volunteered to be an early adapter in the system. We’ve met with all levels of the CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) to discuss its functionality,” said Patterson.

“So, we are pretty confident in where we sit in terms of technology, but it needs the final stamp of approval.”

The post New traceability program soon to be available for Canadian sheep farmers appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Ian Steppler, president of the Manitoba Beekeepers Association, said Manitoba’s losses this year are extremely high.

“We’re nearly at a 60 per cent loss right across Manitoba right now, the highest loss in Canada by at least five per cent,” he said.

The conversation over decline in honey bee numbers is not new. Entomologists have been talking about colony collapse disorder for decades. It’s an important topic not only for beekeepers but for farmers who rely upon the insects as natural pollinators. Another year of significant losses brings the subject to the forefront once again.

Steppler was one of three experts who gathered for an online discussion about the pollinator situation in the province. He was joined by Dr. Rob Currie, a professor and head of the University of Manitoba’s entomology department who specializes in honey bees, and Dr. Jason Gibbs, an associate professor in the entomology department, whose expertise lies in native bee species.

Predator

The oft-cited villain of honeybee colony losses is the varroa mite. A varroa mite infestation occurs when a female mite enters a honey bee brood cell. The mite lays eggs on the larva. When the bee emerges after pupation, the varroa mites also leave and spread to other bees and larvae.

“It’s a very large mite, not unlike a wood tick,” Currie said.

From the bee’s perspective, “it’s the equivalent of having a wood tick the size of a dinner plate on your body.”

While there are a number of factors that play into colony losses, such as nutrition, environment, climate and pesticides, the varroa mite is the number one culprit when it comes to colony losses.

“It’s kind of like the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Currie said. “If you could eliminate the mite from the equation, you wouldn’t necessarily eliminate the problem, but I think it would greatly improve our ability to manage bees successfully.”

Before the varroa mite became prevalent in Manitoba, there was occasionally poor colony survival and the odd disaster, but nothing like what’s been seen since the mite came on to the scene in Canada in the early 1990s.

Other issues

Nevertheless, other stressors also have an impact.

“You can’t always pin it down to one thing for all producers,” Currie said. “One producer might have a mite problem, another might have a nutrition problem, and another might have a feed problem. The environment is something we can’t control. But it definitely kicks us in the head every once in a while.”

Steppler, a beekeeper who runs a 1,200–1,500 hive apiary on his family’s 3,500 acre farm near Miami, agrees that varroa mites are a problem but this year’s colony losses were much worse than a normal year. The reasons stem from the hot, dry summer of 2021.

The drought that spanned the Prairies saw wildfires fill the air with smoke, which created a stressful environment for bees. Steppler speculates that the drought led to plants providing less nutrition to the bees so they were malnourished as they transitioned into winter. And just as the bees were settling into winter, the climate dealt another blow.

“If you drove across the countryside in Manitoba in October, we had fields of canola in full bloom. We had more flowers in October than we actually had in July because of the drought,” he said, nothing that late flowering reignited the colonies.

“They actually started transitioning out of those winter nests back into almost a summertime nest and they began brooding up again,” Steppler said, and that process allowed varroa mites to re-establish as well. The cold spring of 2022 didn’t help matters.

“It’s almost like beekeepers got kicked and were on the ground when Mother Nature came and gave them another hoof to the gut again just to finish them off,” he said.

Native bees

When most people think of bees, they think of honey bees or bumblebees. But Gibbs points out there are more than 20,000 species of bees of which 250 are bumblebees and about nine are honey bees. And honey bees behave differently than most species.

“A very typical bee would be solitary,” Gibbs said. “They don’t have colonies at all. There’s no queens or workers, just a single female.”

He says as many as 70 per cent nest in the ground. Most people, if they noticed at all, might mistake it for an ant’s nest. Most bee species are indifferent to humans and they don’t sting.

“They’ll completely ignore you. And most of us go through our entire lives without noticing them at all,” said Gibbs.

Nevertheless, native bees are also under pressure and it’s even more concerning because they don’t have human benefactors working to replenish losses.

“Some native bumblebees have undergone pronounced declines in the last two decades and are even ranked on endangered species lists,” Gibbs said, citing the rusty-patch bumblebee as an example. And while they can still be found in Manitoba, the yellow-banded bumblebee has become a species of conservation concern over that same period.

Gibbs said there is simply not enough data to say with confidence that the status of native bee species has changed. This is partially due to challenges in identifying them and sparse historical records.

“My students and I recently rediscovered a bee in Manitoba, Epeoloides pilosulus, which hadn’t been collected in Manitoba in 95 years,” he said. “This species has been ranked as endangered but it’s hard to say what its populations have been doing in the last century with records so few and far between.”

The reasons for population declines in native bees are also different from those for honey bees. For one thing, they are not susceptible to varroa mite infestations. However, declines in native bee species are actually a much bigger problem.

“The concerns regarding native bees are often much greater than those regarding honey bees,” Gibbs said. “Honey bees in North America are not native, so annual losses are an economic concern but not an ecological one.”

For native bees, the changing landscape is the most important driver for population losses.

“Some bees are specialists. They’ll only visit willows or they’ll only visit sunflowers,” he said.

As a result, their livelihood is heavily reliant on diversity in the landscape.

The lack of ecological diversity caused by monoculture agriculture, amplified by modern agricultural tools and chemicals, is often blamed for declines in both native and honey bee populations.

Because he straddles the line between crop/cattle farmer and beekeeper, Steppler has a nuanced approach to this argument.

“We use all these technologies on our farm also,” said Steppler. “I won’t say GM technology or Roundup Ready technology is killing the bees. I’d say more so, it’s that GM and Roundup Ready technology are stripping the landscape of diversity.”

Steppler is trying to strike a balance on his farm to address that biodiversity deficit while remaining profitable and productive.

“We need these efficiencies and these technologies, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t focus on little things that contribute to what we’re lacking,” he said.

Some of those “little things” include planting flowers in ditches for the bees, or sprinkling clover, which has nutritious pollen and high yielding nectar, in pastures where cattle feed.

“The cows eat the grass first, and then they munch on the clover,” Steppler said. “We rotate them out, get a rain and the clover regenerates.”

This rotation gives the bees an opportunity to constantly feed on the clover.

“It doesn’t provide enough for a crop, but it provides enough nutrition for the bees to be able to maintain and develop themselves.”

On the research end of things, Currie said he hopes to come up with diagnostic tools that will help beekeepers identify the causes of colony loss. Researchers are also working on breeding bees to better deal with stressors.

“We’re trying to create locally adapted stock that’s really well suited to our conditions that has resistance to some of these pests and parasites that we find inside the hives.”

The post Another bad season for bees appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Why it matters: Parasitic varroa mites feed on both adult bees and developing brood, causing weak and malformed bees, high mortality and, associated with that, winter losses due to lack of hive resilience.

There have been observably lower control rates with the product — until now, a major tool in the beekeeper’s tool box against the parasite — both he and Manitoba Beekeepers’ Association chair Ian Steppler have noted.

“The consensus is that general efficacy, countable efficacy of that product — Apivar — is quite variable,” Lafrenière said. “It probably is no longer in that 90 percentile range.”

Although numbers are rough, he suggested control may be closer to 80 per cent or lower.

Beekeepers are concerned that the drop in control heralds an increase in mite resistance against the product, although Lafrenière said the industry is still definitively nailing down whether it is, in fact, resistance, or whether other factors like environment might be playing in.

It’s a trend the industry has seen before. Older products such as CheckMite or Apistan also came close to 99 per cent mite control when they first hit the market, Lafrenière noted. Those products have since slipped, he said, with some numbers now showing as low as 30 per cent control.

Manitoba is also not alone in the issue. The honey industry nationwide has reported higher-than-normal varroa mite issues, Lafrenière said.

The latest regional updates, published through the Canadian Honey Council’s official magazine, Hivelights, specifically noted concerns with bee mortality and potential winter survivability linked to the mites in British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario and Saskatchewan.

Combo approach

For the beekeeper, it may mean the buck no longer stops with Apivar. The product is still seeing higher control than some of its predecessors, Lafrenière noted, but may now need to be supplemented with another treatment, such as formic or oxalic acid washes. The biggest tool, he added, will be monitoring.

“If you don’t know what level of varroa mite you have and you do a treatment and you only get 80 per cent control, are you going to be leaving too many mites behind?” he said. “You need to know what your mite levels are.”

Control is also variable with those organic acid treatments, he said. Products like formic acid are highly temperature dependent, while oxalic acid has a fairly short effective window, and mites that are sheltered within the brood may not have enough contact with the product.

“Again, it is not meant to be a stand-alone treatment,” he said.

Some producers have turned to multiple applications to extend the effective window, he noted, although oxalic acid has been touted more as a cleanup option.

There is also, he noted, the issue of timing.

Spring control is critical, he noted. Producers are best served by keeping mite levels below a one per cent threshold or risk a ballooning population later in the season. If mite populations get out of control, he noted, there are few products registered for use once honey starts to flow.

Formic acid is one product that is approved for use in honey flow. At the same time, the provincial apiarist noted, that route may well come with a hit to honey yield.

A formic acid treatment at that time of year would have to be on the higher end of the recommended rates because of temperature requirements, he said.

“It could actually harm your bees,” he said. “It certainly will knock out some of your brood production, which bees will overcompensate for eventually, but at that quick turnover period, you need as many bees coming on as the ones that are aging and dying off. You want to maximize your bee population.”

Oxalic acid, while also an organic product, is not registered for use in honey flow, although Lafrenière noted that some research into that timing application is underway.

Hot button topic

Lafrenière expects industry conversation around the issue to pick up steam this year. A national integrated pest management committee meets in mid-February, he said, and he expects the topic to build off existing explorations already being held at that level into resistance in the older control product Apistan.

“I’m hoping that at that meeting there will be more discussion about what is the overall strategy for 2022 to deal with growing levels of mites that might be resistant to Apivar,” he said.

The post Varroa mite protection product for bees losing its punch appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“There are a lot of horse breeders in the province of Manitoba who have foals on the ground that are just as big and contributing just as much, if not more, to Manitoba’s economy than mares producing PMU,” Diane David, executive director of the Manitoba Horse Council, said. “We think, in this instance, the Manitoba government should be giving all horse breeders the opportunity to apply for assistance.”

The Manitoba Horse Council represents clubs and individuals involved in equestrian sport.

Why it matters: Horse breeders and owners are facing many of the same drought stresses as other livestock operations, but the province says there are blurred lines between hobby and agricultural business to consider.

On Aug. 31, the province unveiled two AgriRecovery programs that it argued would shoulder the livestock sector’s immediate feed supply issues.

Under the Livestock Feed and Transportation Drought Assistance program, producers can apply for reimbursement of purchased feed, feed tests or feed transport for breeding herds. Beef and dairy cattle, sheep, goats, bison and PMU horses are eligible. The Livestock Transportation program, meanwhile, covers costs of bringing breeding stock to feed.

The announcement came a little under a month after producers received confirmation that AgriRecovery would be triggered this year, a reaction to one of the worst droughts in recent memory. The federal and provincial governments eventually settled on $155 million to cover all Manitoba AgriRecovery programs.

A number of PMU operations have taken advantage of the programs so far, according to the province.

Manitoba Agriculture and Resource Development Minister Ralph Eichler said horses were not seen as a priority by the stakeholder group helping to develop those programs. That group included organizations like the Manitoba Beef Producers, Keystone Agricultural Producers and Association of Manitoba Municipalities.

“They wanted to focus mainly on the cattle, the bison and the elk and the sheep and the goats,” he said, “but they did talk about horses and we’ve sent it back to them.”

At the same time, Eichler added, it will be “difficult” to differentiate “between what is a personal need and that of a business.”

Horse breeding stock is the source of much of that sticking point, he said, acknowledging that he has heard some push-back from horse breeders on their exclusion from the program.

“You’ve got a lot of people invested with 10 horses that have literally hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up, but still wouldn’t qualify,” he noted. “So where do you end with it? So that’s the challenge.”

Current programs require any producer of any eligible livestock type to have at least 10 animals.

Overlooked

It is not the first time that horse owners have been frozen out of livestock aid, according to Meighan Janzen, who, along with her husband, operates MK Livestock near Fraserwood, a community west of Gimli.

“This isn’t the first year that we’ve had hay problems,” Janzen said. “There were other years for sure that we were denied because we’re not cattle.

“It would have been nice, back then, to even get half of what the beef producers get — something just to help with trucking,” she added.

But while Janzen is not a beef operation, she argued, she is a livestock breeder, as are her longtime horse breeder parents, the historical proprietors of Silvertip Paint & Quarter Horses.

Drought conditions, mixed with quality requirements for horse feed meant that much of her feed came from Quebec this year, she said, something that required costly freight.

“It would have been nice to get some of that back,” she said.

David said they have not heard many of their members complaining of specific programs, but they have heard plenty about how drought has impacted those members this year.

High feed cost has been a repeat concern, she said, and one that has been compounded by COVID-19 for stables that draw income from lessons and other in-person programming.

There are horse owners unable to overwinter their animals due to that high feed cost, David also noted, and animals that are sold are often drawing a lower-than-expected price.

Both David and Janzen also noted the higher feed quality requirement for horses compared to beef cattle, something they argue also plays into the financial stress of the drought.

Between 2019 and 2021, David estimated horse hay prices increased anywhere from 40 to 45 per cent.

Back to the table?

The province may go back to review horse eligibility, Eichler said in an early-December interview, adding that the recently unveiled AgriRecovery program for herd rebuilding has taken up much of the department’s attention thus far.

In early December, the province launched the Herd Management Drought Assistance program, targeted to recover herds that were deeply culled as the result of drought. That program covers replacement for breeding females of beef cattle, bison, sheep, goats and elk.

The post Horse breeders push back against AgriRecovery exclusion appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Gackle, N.D. | Reuters — There was barely a buzz in the air as John Miller pried the lid off of a crate, one of several “bee boxes” stacked in eight neat piles beside a cattle-grazing pasture outside Gackle, North Dakota, about 150 km east of Bismarck.

“Nothing,” Miller said as he lifted a plastic hive frame from the box, squirming with only a few dozen bees. “Normally this would be dripping, full of honey. But not this year.”

A scorching drought is slashing honey production in North Dakota, the top producing U.S. state of the sweet syrup. That means fewer bees can thrive, which leads to even less honey.

The shortage of strong bee colonies, meanwhile, is putting West Coast cash crops like almonds, plums and apples at risk, according to more than a dozen interviews with farmers, bee experts, economists and farm industry groups.

Miller and other Midwestern apiarists haul their drought-weakened insects by truck to California almond farms in the winter to pollinate orchards there. California is the top global producer of the nuts increasingly in demand for milk substitutes. Then they move on to other fruits.

The drought’s impact therefore will be felt far beyond North Dakota, where withered alfalfa fields and parched pastures usually teeming with sweet clover and gumweed are providing bees little nectar this summer.

The dearth of strong bee colonies and the resulting higher costs to lease them for pollination services will add to the challenges of West Coast growers already dealing with drought and, in California, soaring water costs. It could also add to soaring costs consumers are facing at grocery stores.

Scientists have linked weather extremes from severe heat to floods and droughts to climate change. Such weather events are rippling through the food chain, raising food costs and heaping economic pain on small-scale farmers — and devastating bee colonies.

The 2.7 million managed honeybee colonies in the United States, one in five of them in North Dakota, are crucial to pollinating scores of crops, including cherries and peaches as well as almonds and apples. Income from pollination services totalled $254 million in 2020, according to U.S. government data.

Many beekeepers produce honey during summer in the northern Midwest and Plains, where bees forage on pastures and rangelands, harvesting what honey the bees do not consume or stow away to nourish their young.

North and South Dakota, Montana and Minnesota accounted for 46 per cent of all U.S. honey production last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Apiarists truck the beehives to milder climates like California during the fall and winter, generating crucial income by leasing colonies to fruit and nut farms to pollinate crops.

Poor summer weather on the Prairies has left colonies weakened, with fewer bees. A smaller amount of nectar also forces beekeepers to help feed their colonies with less nutritious sugar solution or corn syrup, an added expense for producers already hurt by a smaller honey harvest.

“What happens in North Dakota in August has a direct impact on what happens in California in February,” Miller said. “Weak colonies that lack sufficient stores of honey going into winter will not be in good shape for the upcoming almond bloom.”

Miller expects less than 30 pounds of harvestable honey per colony from his roughly 16,000 hives this summer, down from around 50 pounds in recent years and the least in his 52 years of records, as North Dakota suffers its worst drought since 1988, according to climatologists.

Beekeeper Dwight Gunter also expects less than half of his normal honey harvest this summer. Honey prices have increased about 15 per cent to 20 per cent so far this year as supplies tighten. Gunter’s farm near Towner, North Dakota, is in the driest part of the state, with his entire county under “exceptional” drought.

“Last fall, it was dry as a bone and we never got any rain in this area. No winter snow either,” he said. “The pollen flow this year has been considerably less.”

The drought is expected to weaken bee colonies across the region, said Joan Gunter, Dwight’s wife and the president of the American Beekeeping Federation.

“This is really going to affect bee health. We’re used to having good nutrition for the bees and they’re probably not going to get that this year,” she said.

Iowa-based co-operative Sioux Honey, which produces 20 to 25 per cent of U.S. honey under the Sue Bee brand, estimates the drought could drag domestic production down 25 per cent to as much as 40 per cent this year. Some 75 per cent of the co-operative’s honey comes from Montana, the Dakotas and Minnesota.

President and chief executive Mark Mammen worries that the drought will be a “double-edged sword” for his more than 200 producers as honey revenue drops and as weaker colonies may earn less from pollination services.

“Without pollination revenue, it would be very tough for beekeepers to survive these days.”

Higher pollination costs

California’s drought-hit almond growers, who account for around 80 per cent of global production, may be in for a shock come September or October as they negotiate pollination contracts for the upcoming season, said agricultural economist Brittney Goodrich, at the University of California at Davis.

Almond growers required about 2.5 million colonies last year to pollinate acres that have more than doubled in the last 15 years as demand for almond milk and health foods has grown. That represented around 88 per cent of all managed U.S. hives, Goodrich said, adding that supplies of strong hives will remain tight this year.

“This certainly has the potential to impact almond yields,” she said.

Pollination services are among the largest input costs for almond farms, and those costs are set to rise at least five per cent to 10 per cent for the upcoming season, said Denise Qualls, pollination broker and founder of brokerage The Pollination Connection.

“I’m definitely concerned about there being enough bees for pollination,” Qualls said. “If growers want good, quality hives, they’re going to have to pay for them.”

Almond farmer Ben King has already seen his pollination cost rise from US$210 per hive to US$230 as demand for strong colonies has outpaced supply and beekeepers pass along their higher costs.

The drought, meanwhile, is tightening bee supplies further. King’s beekeeper will only guarantee him 675 hives for the upcoming season, down from the 700 he normally would rent for his groves near Arbuckle, California.

“Overall, you’re going to have less pollination because you’re going to have less hive strength,” he said. “Everybody is scrambling this year because of drought.”

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Although invisible to the naked eye, the horse and human cannot exist apart from the biology and ecology of their microbiome and the microbiome is being heralded as the next most important bodily system.

There is emerging evidence that the gut microbiome with its complex interactions of microbial communities including bacteria, archaea, parasites, protozoa, viruses and fungi is involved in more than just food digestion and that the microbiota interplays intimately with the immune, neurological, and hormonal systems of the body. Even glucose and energy metabolism have been found to be influenced by the microbiome.

Equine veterinarians and horse owners have long been aware of the notoriously sensitive nature of the horse’s digestive system. To a large degree the horse owes this sensitivity to the ecology of the microbial community within the digestive tract. The equine microbiome is intrinsically linked to the horse’s physical, mental and emotional soundness. As such, circumstances that disturb the health and balance of the equine microbiome have numerous downstream consequences to the horse’s health and welfare.

Dysbiosis refers to an imbalance in the intestinal microbiota which precipitates changes in health. When this imbalance is severe in the horse, it may clinically manifest as colic, colitis, acute laminitis, and/or diarrhea. Less serious derangements to the microbiota can be responsible for weight loss, ill thrift, failure to thrive, undesirable behaviours, gastric or hindgut ulceration, inflammatory bowel diseases, periodontal disease, generalized inflammation, obesity, chronic laminitis, neurological diseases and metabolic syndromes. Because the ability to definitely diagnose dysbiosis is not readily accessible, its connections to various expressions of illness often go unrecognized.

Research has found that the microbiome of non-domesticated horses includes a more diverse spectrum of microbiota compared to the overall low diversity of the core bacterial community found in domesticated horses. This may be one possible explanation for the overall sensitivity of the domestic horse to gastrointestinal tract diseases in comparison to their wild counterparts.

The microbiome is entirely unique to each being. The horse is initially exposed to micro-organisms at birth as the foal passes through the birth canal and then exposure continues through nursing and exploration of the environment. The change in the population and composition of the young horse’s microbiome during the first six months of life is remarkable when considering the intestinal flora goes from sterile in utero, moves through a milk diet and then to a relatively stable and teeming microbiome capable of digesting a diet based solely upon plant fibre and forage.

Establishment of a ‘quality stock’ microbiome during a horse’s formative years is essential to a lifetime of resilient digestive health for the horse. Stall rearing, early and abrupt weaning practices, introduction of large amounts of grains and processed feeds to the young horse and social isolation are detrimental to the stability and diversity of the ‘stock’ microbiome.

Later in life, diet, stress and environmental circumstances can influence or change the microbiome as well.

The diet of the horse is likely the largest influence upon the microbiome. The reason for this is simply because the diet of the horse is also the food source or diet for the microbiome. This teeming community has a very specific, maybe even finicky appetite for quality forage. This dietary script is necessary for the microbiome to play its proper role in providing health-giving nutrients to the horse.

The readily available sugars and starches, processed fats, preservatives and supplements built into designer equine rations have a profound impact upon the resident microbial populations affecting the pH and viability of the gut lining and altering the protective qualities of its mucous lining. Unnatural and unfamiliar food sources to the resident microbial populations indirectly contribute to systemic inflammation. The ongoing inflammation often triggered in the horse with today’s rich diets may actually be a contributing reason as to why health issues seem resistant to remedy. An unfavourable shift in the microbiome may potentially contribute to inflammatory conditions, insulin resistance, metabolic syndromes, allergies, poor hoof integrity and chronic laminitis.

Unfortunately horses with smouldering dysbiosis may be perceived to be ‘just not quite right’ or ‘deficient’ in some way and the synthetic solutions sought as remedies further compound the problem.

Unnatural feeding practices, stressors such as travel or changing herdmates, medications, dewormers, vaccines and steroids can all alter the delicate and at times precarious microbial balance within the hindgut. Often this results in alterations to the horse as a whole, whether it be attitude, health or performance.

Key management practices that can aid in keeping the horse’s microbiome healthy and happy include what is fed, how often feed is available, and with whom the horse eats. Plenty of high-quality long-stem fibre is the mainstay of a horse’s diet. If a variety of forages are built into the diet, the microbiome will be diverse, stable and resilient. Horses are trickle feeders and one could say this is a quality of the microbiome as well. Plenty of exercise and movement are favourable for gut motility and functionality. Make changes to the diet gradually. This will allow the microbiome to adapt. Ensure plenty of fresh water is readily available as the entire digestive process ‘runs as a river.’ Horses with these management advantages are better able to maintain gastrointestinal tract normalcy, reducing chances of health and behaviour problems.

Equine husbandry must carefully consider the impact that caretaking practices have upon the microbiome because a healthy microbiome nourishes and takes care of the horse in innumerable ways. If a horse’s microbiome is happy and thriving, chances are the horse will be happy and thriving too.

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Canada’s voluntary Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Herd Certification Program will now accept test results from American labs. Results can now come from labs certified under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, rather than requiring all slaughtered animals (including those processed in the U.S.) to have test results from a CFIA-accredited facility, the CFIA said Nov. 3.

Elk producers enrolled in the CFIA program are required to test 100 per cent of regularly slaughtered animals, something that was a challenge if elk were being processed in the U.S.

Overlaid on top of provincial slaughter test requirements, testing for the fatal nervous system disease has gradually increased year to year under the national herd certification program.

While the program always required testing for on-farm deaths and emergency slaughter — slaughter arranged within two weeks of the actual kill — the program included no additional testing requirement when first introduced. As of January 2018, the CFIA began requiring that 50 per cent of all enrolled animals sent for regular slaughter would have to be tested. In 2019, that increased to 75 per cent, until finally this year the program required tests for all cervids headed to the abattoir.

“The problem became that in some instances, these animals were not being slaughtered in Canada. They were being slaughtered in the U.S.,” said Corlena Patterson, executive director of the Canadian Sheep Federation.

The Canadian Sheep Federation is tapped by the CFIA to administer the CWD Herd Certification Program for Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec.

“Oftentimes, the exporter, or the person who owned the animals as they were being exported and going to slaughter, did not accompany the shipment of animals and it became a little bit difficult to get those slaughters sampled and to understand which labs could conduct them and get them back to ourselves, as the program administrators, to make sure they had all been sampled,” she said.

It is not immediately clear how many animals, and how many elk producers were impacted by that scenario.

“For our enrolled producers, it wasn’t a huge number,” Patterson said, “but I do understand in some jurisdictions where the program runs, that accounted for quite a number of the animals being slaughtered.”

Other producers, who were not enrolled, would not have been required to report any test results to the CFIA program, she also added.

Only two Manitoba herds are cur­rently enrolled in the program, accord­ing to information from the Can­adian Sheep Federation, “and their target market is not the U.S. market for slaughter,” Patterson said.

Patterson noted, however, that the CFIA had also changed how CWD compensation and federal support was managed in 2018 to hinge on enrolment. Enrolment is also, Patterson said, a common requirement for animals bound for the United States as breeding stock.

While participation in the program remains voluntary, as of April 2018 producers had to be enrolled with the CWD Herd Certification Program if they wanted to be compensated for animals destroyed as part of CWD control. Nor would the CFIA issue orders to destroy animals as part of CWD control to non-enrolled farms, although they would continue to track every case they were made aware of.

At the time, the CFIA cited the general futility of efforts to totally eliminate CWD, given its foothold in wild deer populations.

The 2018 changes caused consternations among elk producers, who argued certification was difficult to both get and maintain and also objected to what they saw as potential gaps in disease control, given the cease on destruction orders for non-enrolled farms.

The CWD Herd Certification Program National Standards have been consistently updated annually. The CFIA has said that 2020 standards are finalized and will come into effect Dec. 31 this year.

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