Abstract:
Harming the livestock sectors in Algeria, particularly cattle since 2014 and before its resurgence in 2018
affecting the sheep herd for the first time, foot-and-mouth disease, a notifiable disease is a highly
contagious viral infection, and a first-category health hazard. . It is, because of its extreme
contagiousness and its high morbidity rate, subject to an emergency intervention plan.
It constitutes a formidable economic scourge because it leads to production losses due to serious
consequences on the animal making it of no economic value and also reproduction constraints,
influencing the production rate in terms of fertility, growth, lactation and feed efficiency.
Although the mortality caused in cattle is relatively low, this was not the case in sheep, hit for the first
time by this epizootic in Algeria during the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. .Because of the high
neonatal mortality as well as the abortions observed during the disease, we considered it interesting
to study the impact of this virus on the fertility of sheep.
Review of the literature on foot-and-mouth disease (mode of contamination, epidemiology,
physiopathology, semiology, vaccination, etc.), this thesis addresses the epizootic of the wilayas of
oum el bouaki and constantine, where the density of animals is very high ( about two and a half million
sheep) and in which the disease has spread rapidly.
Based on the data provided by the veterinary inspections of the directorates of the agricultural services
and by carrying out field investigations at the level of farms located in the region, we have highlighted
the impact of the foot-and-mouth disease virus on ewes. in gestation, by corroborating the series of
abortions, the genital complications in aborted or lambed ewes, non-delivery, metritis, as well as
neonatal mortalities (young lambs succumbing by contracting the disease through milk), with
serological analyzes which showed a high prevalence of foot-and-mouth disease.
