According to latest figures from Animal Health Ireland, 1.61% or 1,234 herds have one or more BVD PI calves that remain alive.
The AHI figures also show that over 98% of calves tested negative for BVD up slightly on 2013. The number of calves testing positive for BVD 8,245 or 0.44% of calves tested. The numbers of positive tests are down over 5,700 or 23% compared to the same time last year.
There have been 2,007,000 results received by the ICBF since January 1, of which 12,000 have come in the last seven days. Since the beginning of the voluntary phase in 2012, 4.67 million results have now been received.
BVD eradication programme began in a voluntary form in 2012 before becoming compulsory in 2013 following the introduction of legislation by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM).
According to the AHI herds that complied with the programme guidelines in 2012 were advised that their test results would count as one of the three years of anticipated tag testing that the majority of herds would have to undertake before entering the monitoring phase of the programme.
Following a review of data on the ICBF website and a series of communications with herd owners, some 7,300 herds that took part in the voluntary phase of the programme are considered to have complied with the guidelines and therefore to be in their third year of recognised testing in 2014.