During summer 2011, cattle presented severe hyperthermia combined with dropped milk yield and diarrhoea from unknown origin. In October 2011, blood was collected from cattle presenting these clinical signs in Schmallenberg, a small city in West Germany. A new Orthobunyavirus, responsible for these unspecific clinical signs was identified and named Schmallenberg virus (SBV). Upon November 2011, an epizootic outbreak of abortion, stillbirths and malformed new-born was observed in bovine, ovine and caprine herds in Europe due to transplacental transmission of SBV to the foetus. The SBV vectors are small hematophagous midges of the gender Culicoides. This work contributed to estimate the impact of the SBV epidemic in Belgium (Study 1). On the basis of farmer’s observations, between 0.5% and 4% of calves were aborted, stillborn or malformed due to SBV in 2011-2012. Abortions and stillbirths were not clear consequences of the SBV outbreak in cattle. In sheep, between 11% and 19% of lambs were aborted, stillborn or malformed due to SBV in 2011-2012. Deformed animal was the most important finding of SBV outbreak at herd level and an essential condition for the farmer to send suspected samples to the National Reference Laboratory (NRL) for SBV analysis. The results gathered from the study indicate that SBV surveillance and monitoring should be implemented by SBV RNA detection with rRT-PCR in organs collected from stillborn and deformed calves and lambs born in big herds. The high impact of SBV highlighted in the Study 1 was putatively explained by unknown host supporting the SBV activity. In this respect, the role of pigs had never been evaluated. This was essential considering the suggested role of the domestic pigs in the life- cycle of the SBV-closely related Akabane virus (AKAV) (Huang et al., 2003). The absence of RNAemia after experimental infection of piglets with SBV realized in the Study 2 of the i thesis suggests the absence of obvious role of domestic pigs in SBV life-cycle. The absence of RNAemia is indeed a ...