Modelling the economic impacts of bovine viral diarrhoea virus at dairy herd level; the case of Slovenia

In the last decade Bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) was listed by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) as a notifiable disease, due to the fact that it causes significant production losses in cattle industry worldwide. The production losses include reduced milk production, reduced conception rate, abortions, growth retardation, early culling, increased mortality and an increased occurrence of other diseases. This paper presents a possible approach to how an economic analysis of BVD virus, could be conducted at the herd level. For this purpose a spreadsheet model in MS Excel has been developed utilizing Monte Carlo Simulations (MCS). Simulation results show that economic losses at the heard level could exceed 18,000 €. Obtained results suggest that this could be promising approach for analysis BVD effect at herd or animal level.