The Department of Agriculture has confirmed a new case of bluetongue in Co Wexford.<\/p>\n
The disease was found in a non-vaccinated 16-month-old heifer, which had no clinical signs prior to the death.<\/p>\n
This is the first case of bluetongue confirmed in 2026 in Ireland.<\/p>\n
The Department said this case highlights the importance of submitting unexplained mortalities to the Department\u2019s regional veterinary laboratories.<\/p>\n
Vaccination<\/strong><\/p>\n The Department said it is still worth vaccinating against BTV-3 at this stage, as it remains the most effective measure against the disease. <\/p>\n It is reminding farmers who have not vaccinated to talk to their private veterinary practitioner in deciding whether vaccination is appropriate for their herd.<\/p>\n The virus is extensively circulating in Britain, with reports of multiple cases with a variety of clinical signs in cattle and sheep. Cases there remain concentrated in southwest England and Wales. <\/p>\n There also has been recent detections in Scotland.<\/p>\n Clinical signs of the disease include fever, loss of appetite, drop in milk yield, lethargy, lesions, mucous membranes and swelling of the face, lips and tongue.<\/p>\n If you suspect a case, the animal should be isolated immediately and the case reported to the Department of Agriculture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Department of Agriculture has confirmed a new case of bluetongue in Co Wexford. The disease was found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[78],"tags":[1043,117000,19228,71827,18,135,19,17,5,229982,284441,16842,2451],"class_list":["post-672860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-beef","tag-bluetongue","tag-dairy","tag-department-of-agriculture","tag-eire","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-niamh-murphy","tag-regional-veterinary-laboratories","tag-sheep","tag-wexford"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117214816282657851","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}