WITH the price of rams, the last thing you’d want to do is introduce expensive, disease-free animals in with your existing rams if you’ve got ovine brucellosis on your farm.
Brucellosis is a sexually transmitted bacterial disease, caused by Brucella ovis.
It is harboured by the ram in the testicles and causes infertility which expresses itself as poor scanning and lamb marking percentages, long drawn-out lambing seasons and abortions.
It also makes you a pretty bad neighbour as it can spread if infected rams or ewes stray into neighbouring . . .
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