Top Animal Health Links (Jan 21-27)

Below, please find our weekly disease surveillance scan links, broken down by Network. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter if you want to see the best animal health links on the net every day. Read our guides on how to use Twitter and Facebook for continuing education. If you missed last week’s top links, check them out here.

General

A New Disease is Testing Us for the Next Global Epidemic

Bees

For decades, scientists have assumed that varroa mites feed on honeybee hemolymph (blood). But a new study suggests that these parasites instead have a voracious appetite for a honeybee organ called the fat body

Equine

On January 18, 2019 the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) was notified of two cases of equine herpes viral abortion caused by equine herpesvirus-1 (EHV-1) at a farm in Haldimand County

Fish

Check out this new tipsheet on Winterkill, a natural phenomenon affecting aquatic animals – produced by the OAHN Aquatic Animal network

Poultry

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) confirmed Jan. 18 the presence of virulent Newcastle disease (VND) in a small flock of backyard exhibition chickens in Utah County, Utah.

Small Ruminants

In Saskatchewan, sheep were part of an effort to enhance the native prairie and improve nesting habitat

Swine

Results support that the PF sampling method is capable of detecting one single PRRS virus-positive pig among a high number of negative pigs

Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development reports a Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea outbreak in the province remains isolated to one farm

After eight years of gathering data from more than 1,000 pigs infected with porcine circovirus 2, University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) researchers have identified the gene associated with pigs’ susceptibility to the deadly swine disease

Wildlife

The North Atlantic right whale population has been struggling to grow, so the birth of a third right whale calf is exciting to researchers