Thousands of lambs being born dead or with deformities

London Sally Clay is close to tears as she holds in her arms a lamb that has just been born but will not survive for long. "I don't think he can see. He's brain damaged and his head is lolling, he won't be able to suckle." The ewe comes across to nuzzle her offspring.

"He does have a wonderful mother who is trying to get him to stand up, but it's not going to happen. Lambs like this are not viable. It's heartbreaking."

John, the veteran farmer beside her in his lambing shed at this East Sussex farm, says grimly, "He's getting cold now. I will have to shoot him. It's not easy."

The pair of them were looking forward to the lambing season as a time of early mornings and hard work but deep reward.

Invisible

Instead it has turned into a nightmare. This is one of 74 farms across England that have been struck by a new disease that is causing thousands of lambs to be born dead or with deformities that mean they cannot survive for more than a few minutes.

A thousand farms across Europe have been hit in the last month or so — but nobody knows how bad things will get, because the lambing season is not yet in full swing. The disease is invisible in sheep until the infected ewes give birth.

Schmallenberg disease is so new that it was only named in December, after the town in western Germany where the first cases were seen last August. Scientists are not sure how it is transmitted, but the leading theory is that plumes of midges carrying the disease were blown across the sea in the autumn.

Sheep have a gestation period of five months, so the adults infected then are beginning to give birth now. There is also a fear that cows will be affected. So far the disease has been found in cattle at five British farms, where calves have been aborted six months into pregnancy.

Public meeting

Cows have a longer gestation period than sheep, so any major impact on births will not be seen until later in the year. John, who does not want his surname to be used, has lost 40 of the 400 lambs born so far, but others have lost more.

He went to a public meeting where a scientist from the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA) said the worst-hit farms could lose half their flocks. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said this has happened in rare cases in Europe, but the worst seen in Britain so far is 20 per cent.

That is still a major challenge to the farming industry, which is already struggling. Lambs can fetch £100 (Dh585) each at market and 16 million are born in Britain every year. "This has huge potential financial implications for the farming community," says Alistair Mackintosh, said of the National Farmers Union's (NFU) livestock board.

Catastrophic

"To lose 20 per cent of your flock is catastrophic. I was talking to a farmer who has 10,000 sheep. If he loses even five per cent of the animals born this year, that's a hell of a lot of lambs."

Catherine McLaughlin, the NFU's animal health and welfare policy adviser, said there was no need to fear eating lamb or being near the animals. "We've had reassuring messages from the Food Standard Agency and the Health Protection Agency and the equivalent bodies in Europe," she said.