Networking to improve lamb survival and sheep welfare

As part of an EU project, SheepNet, JMICAWE Director, Cathy Dwyer, spent four days in France at the start of September visiting farms, engaging with farmers and contributing to a seminar on improving lamb survival. This project has been running since 2016, and involves farmers, vets, researchers and other stakeholders from six EU countries (UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Romania) and Turkey. The project aims to share science and practice across the countries to improve sheep health and reduce lamb losses, and the French visit was the final workshop for the project to share the story that lies behind the project. A key part of the work has been to facilitate and translate information between countries and allow farmers to develop ideas together, as well as to engage with farmers, veterinarians and researchers from across Europe. Although this project is coming to an end in December 2019, a second project, EuroSheep, will take its place to continue the work already begun. The materials already collated as part of SheepNet are freely available through the ‘knowledge reservoir’ on the project website: www.sheepnet.network.

Overall this project has been a great example of taking animal welfare, and other research, out of the laboratory and into the field, quite literally, and engaging farmers from many different countries in improvements to animal welfare.