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Background: To improve bovine transrectal palpation (TRP) and pregnancy diagnosis (PD) training, the effect of a high-intensity one-week training programme for veterinary elective students (N=59) with an interest in production animal practice was evaluated., Methods: Training consisted of exposure to rectal examination simulators, abattoir organs, theory materials and live cow PDs supervised by experienced large animal practitioners. Palpation skills were assessed before and after training using a validated TRP Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in non-pregnant cows. Each student then performed PDs (n=12) on cows of known pregnancy status. Students' PD accuracy was measured as sensitivity and specificity, being respectively defined as the proportion of pregnant and non-pregnant cows correctly identified., Results: Students' scores improved from the first to the second OSCE (P=0.03), mostly as a result of improved ability to identify uterine symmetry/asymmetry and the presence/absence of a corpus luteum on the right ovary (P<0.01 and P=0.03, respectively). Overall student sensitivity and specificity of PD were 89.1 per cent (95 per cent CI 78.1-92.2 per cent) and 67.7 per cent (95 per cent CI 60.1-74.5 per cent), respectively., Conclusion: This prospective cohort study describes a strategy to improve students' TRP skills with the potential to reduce training time and animal use at teaching institutions by outsourcing student training to private practitioners., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© British Veterinary Association 2020. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)

Pigs were vaccinated by scarification or intramuscular injection with a swinepox virus-Aujeszky's disease (pseudorabies) recombinant (rSPV-AD) constructed by inserting the linked Aujeszky's disease virus genes coding for glycoproteins gp50 and gp63, attached to a vaccinia virus p7.5 promoter, into the thymidine kinase gene of swinepox virus. By 21 days after vaccination, 90 and 100 per cent of the animals vaccinated by scarification or intramuscular injection, respectively, had developed serum neutralising antibodies to Aujeszky's disease virus. Upon challenge with virulent virus, significantly fewer vaccinated pigs developed clinical Aujeszky's disease, nasal shedding of challenge virus was markedly reduced, and the vaccinated groups of pigs maintained or gained weight during the week after challenge whereas the unvaccinated control group lost weight. No transmission of rSPV-AD to in-contact controls was detected during the three weeks before challenge. In a second experiment, serum neutralising antibodies to Aujeszky's disease virus persisted for 150 days after the pigs were vaccinated with rSPV-AD by scarification or intramuscular injection and all the pigs showed an anamnestic response when they were revaccinated.