So we had our annual scrapie inspection this morning. Scrapie is a degenerative brain disease of sheep that has been around for centuries. We're pretty sure it's caused by a tiny self replicating protein called a prion, although we know we don't have the full story about how it spreads. Prions are the cause of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or TSE's, like kuru and Creutzfeld-Jakob's disease in people and BSE in cattle.



It is thought that BSE was created by people in Britian in the 80's in a 'perfect storm' of unnatural feeding practices, poorly thought out feed handling practices and sheer numbers. At that time in Britain there were lots of people, people who liked to drink milk, eat cheese, wear wool and eat lamb. So there were lots of dairy cattle, and lots of sheep. Millions of sheep.



The United Kingdon being a crowded island nation there is a limited area for growing crops. Combine this with the fact that demand for dairy products is highest in urban areas where the concentration of consumers puts alnbd at a premium- and you see how it became the custom to confine dairy cattle in barns rather than fields, and feed them rations rather than grazing them on green growing stuffs. All that land devoted just to grazing? The lost income! The opportunity cost! Too expensive- we can come up with a balanced ration cheaper than keeping all that land in grass.



Pride goeth before a fall... It is especially expensive to come by the amounts of protein needed by young growing animals, especially one that will grow to be the size of the modern Holstein cow. And here were all these dead animals, and leftover parts of animals, to be disposed of...



So it became acceptable to grind all those carcasses, and meat byproducts from food processing plants- just meat, after all, pure protein- and feed it to dairy youngstock as part of their carefully balanced rations. The cattle got highly digestible protein in large quantities, the farmers' feed bills were affordable plus they could grow something else on all that land, which generated more income; and huge quantities of otherwise very unpleasant material was disposed of neatly and efficiently.



It seemed like a good idea at the time. But cooking all that material to high temperatures takes time, and money-and time is money. So rendering temperatures were lowered. The end result was that sheep who died of clinical scrapie disease were ground up and fed insufficiently cooked in large quantities to large numbers of dairy cows on a daily basis from the time they were babies.



Looking back it's a surprise it didn't happen sooner. Scrapie jumped species to infect cattle, becoming BSE, which then jumped species to humans to cause new variant Creutzfeld-Jakob (nvCJ) disease, a more rapidly progressive and aggressive form of an already terrible but rare and slow degenerative brain disease.



What is a surprise to me is that the average meat consumer in the rest of the world got so hysterical over BSE in the food supply. The numbers of cattle with BSE were and are vanishingly small compared to the numbers processed for food every year. Then multiply that number by the remote chance that a person will become infected from consuming the meat from an animal with BSE and you have a truly miniscule risk of harm. Look at how many cows had BSE in the UK; then look at how many people came down with nvCJ disease. How much smaller the risk here in the US, where we've had a handful of cases ever? Yet BSE occasioned an intense federal regulatory response wherein millions of dollars were made available.



Enter the US sheep industry. We've had scrapie in the US sheep flock since we've had a US sheep flock. If we could eradicate it, we'd have access to some export markets that are currently closed sicne we have scrapie and they don't. So the industry seized on the opportunity to eradicate scrapie.




Multiple complex and confusing programs later, a nice guy employed by the federal government comes out and verifies numbers on the scrapie eartags on all my sheep once a year, crosses out on his census form form last year anyone who died or was sold, writes in any lambs that were born or ewes I bought. We have a cup of coffee and he goes on his way. They give you the tags free. It's not a bad deal.

I do wish I didn't lose a sheep every time Roger comes to do inspection though. Last year I had my best ewe lamb strangle in a temporary fence I put up to make it easier to get them up. This year Roger forgot, and I didn't think to call him til end of June- which meant we were working them in the heat. Poor 40 got bred out of season by a precocious ram lamb and was full pregnant. I didn't shear her when I did the rest because I didn't want to stress her out pregnant. Keep a late pregnant ewe away from feed all day in teh heat and they get ketosis. She had a seizure as I was letting them back out to pasture. I went to the house to get the stuff to treat her with- but I couldn't find her. Still can't. Haven't seen any vultures though. I keep hoping, irrationally, that she will just walk up with three day old twins one morning. More likely, she went down under trees and the vultures haven't found her.

I'll know she's dead for sure when the dogs come in reeking of something rotten, and drag pieces of her into the yard.

Life and death on the farm....

I kept thinking, let me just get THIS done, then I'll update the blog. I finally realized, just like having children, you'll never get things just right so you may as well just go ahead and do it. Forthwith...

I have a new phone.