While the foot-and-mouth (FMD) virus continues its devastating rampage through numerous other dairy herds, it perhaps miraculously has left South Africa’s Ayrshire dairy cattle herds mostly unaffected so far. Ayrshire breeders and commercial producers are doing everything possible to keep this wolf at bay.
By Lloyd Phillips, senior journalist at African Farming and Landbouweekblad
Ayrshires are the third most predominant dairy breed in the country, after Holsteins and Jerseys. Exact numbers of all Ayrshires in South Africa are vague, but the Ayrshire Breeders’ Society of South Africa (Ayrshire SA) has between 13 000 and 15 000 registered animals and 40 members on its database.
Edmund Els, an Ayrshire breeder and milk producer in the Western Cape’s Hermanus district, was elected Ayrshire SA’s newest chairperson at the society’s annual general meeting held at Howick in KwaZulu-Natal in November 2025.
He says 75% to 80% of all South Africa’s Ayrshire milk is supplied to Woolworths, the upmarket retail chain. Ayrshire SA reports this amounted to 67 142 977 litres during 2023.
Els says: “Most of our members across the country report having been able to avoid foot-and-mouth so far or having experienced mild symptoms of infection. The society is most worried about our members in KwaZulu-Natal. Most of us have had strict biosecurity measures and herd health management programmes in place for many years already. Woolworths’ regular audits of our farms require it.”
This is echoed by an Ayrshire breeder and milk producer in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, who asked African Farming not to be named.
Also read: New FMD outbreak puts Creighton’s 35 000 dairy cattle in jeopardy
‘I’m surrounded by foot-and-mouth’
“Foot-and-mouth is everywhere in the areas surrounding my farm. I just keep on with making sure my cows are up-to-date with all their other vaccinations and that they get all the vitamins and nutrition they need to have healthy immune systems. Every time they leave the milking parlour, they are also drenched with an appropriate disinfectant.”
Both Els and the anonymous farmer report that to avoid potentially introducing foot-and-mouth into their herds, few to no Ayrshire breeders or milk producers are currently willing to buy replacement cattle. They are instead continuing to artificially inseminate their heifers and cows mainly with imported semen, and breeding replacement heifers for own use.
The lack of live animal sales is not having significant financial or material impacts right now, but ripple effects might start being felt in the next few years. Such effects would most likely pertain to genetic progress within the national Ayrshire herd.
Els says of greatest concern is that prices to South Africa’s producers of Ayrshire milk are not keeping pace with continually increasing costs of production inputs. Profit margins are, therefore, under increasing pressure.
The anonymous source says: “It’s not only the costs of the usual inputs going up, but we also now have the added costs for the additional biosecurity measures and enhanced herd health management. I just feel milk buyers need to help farmers in light of foot-and-mouth. Instead, the buck is being passed to the farmer to carry all the extra costs.”
According to Els, South Africa’s Ayrshire milk producers are trying to be as efficient as possible. Efforts to this end include trying to identify, source and use the best quality and most productive and efficient Ayrshire genetics possible. It is also essential to manage these genetics optimally and to manage nutrition efficiently.
Also read: Cautious reactions to KwaZulu-Natal’s latest FMD management strategy
‘Leave vaccination to us’
Both Els and the anonymous farmer separately agree that introducing a national vaccination strategy against foot-and-mouth disease is necessary and positive. However, the two men want to be allowed the choice of which brands and types of vaccines to use in their Ayrshire herds, to source these vaccines directly from suppliers and to administer these vaccines themselves.
The anonymous farmer says: “We already do it with vaccines for other diseases. It would be no different. We have all seen the state is too slow and ineffective and that this is why foot-and-mouth is now out of control. Decisions are being made on our behalf by people who probably don’t own cattle, have not seen the suffering the animals go through, have not experienced the distress we farmers go through, and are not losing huge amounts of money.
“The state must allow us to look after ourselves. If it is not willing to do so, then it must be challenged in the courts.”
Neither Els nor the anonymous farmer are willing to venture an opinion on whether foot-and-mouth is indeed going to have a negative impact on national milk supplies and consequently on milk prices.
The anonymous farmer says, though: “Logic dictates though that if foot-and-mouth carries on as it is, milking herds could well be decimated, leading to reduced milk production. At this stage we also don’t know what the long-term effects of the virus might be on herd fertility, conceptions, inter-calving periods, resorptions, abortions, calving percentages and other aspects. It can take years to recover from things like this.”
Also read:
FMD | Understanding requested for cash-strapped livestock farmers
FMD: What can you do? – Dr Sipokazi Nyeleka
WATCH | Neo Brian Rasehlo talks to us about FMD (Setswana and English)
