'I feel guilty' - the farmer whose lamb had Scotland's first case of bluetongue

Earlier this year, farmer Fiona Johnson moved her family 350 miles north from a small village in Bedfordshire to the coast of south west Scotland, hoping to start afresh. She had no livestock, just "dogs and children".

Four months later, having purchased a small number of animals locally to rear for meat, Fiona's fledgling farm in Creetown recorded the first ever case of bluetongue in Scotland.

It was an already-poorly lamb, which Fiona said had not shown typical symptoms - it had been drooling, dropping food from its mouth and its legs were stiff, but not lame.

Experts believe that midges infected with the potentially deadly disease were blown over the border from England, where there are currently 439 cases , external .

The rest of her animals - 27 lambs and five calves - are testing negative, but Scotland currently has four cases and the farming community is acutely aware the disease could spread further - just when farmers are preparing to sell animals for breeding.

"For them, I feel guilty," she said. "Farmers local to us are on a much larger scale, they have thousands of sheep up on the hill.

Bluetongue serotype 3 (BTV3) does not affect people or food safety but it causes a high rate of death in infected sheep and fertility problems in infected cattle.

Symptoms include nasal discharge, redness and swelling of the lips, nose and muzzle, lameness or reluctance to stand, a decrease in milk production and diarrhoea in cattle.

Fiona has lived on farms from a young age and has seen the pernicious impact of the virus before. Although her family never had any cases, they felt the financial toll of vaccinating an entire flock.

More recently, she knew that outbreaks were "rife" in England and had seen stories shared on social media and in the news.

But she said she had not thought to vaccinate her own animals this time, partly because they were not for breeding, but also because the closest case of bluetongue to Creetown was a significant distance away.

"It was in the back of our minds that it was a potential possibility, but because we were so far away from the cases closest to us, we sort of thought the chances are pretty slim."

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Nevertheless, Fiona had her lamb examined by a vet and said her "heart sank" when a test for bluetongue came back positive.