Manawatu Standard

Resistant sheep are best bet

- JILL GALLOWAY

The best bet for farmers to overcome the disease challenge of facial eczema (FE) is to buy resistant rams, veterinari­ans say.

About 20 people were given the advice at a Manawatu workshop about maximising scanning percentage­s in ewes and lamb survival.

Most farmers found last season’s bad run of FE had cut their lamb numbers by about 10 per cent as ewes struggled.

Totally Vets veterinari­an Hamish Pike said sheep were sensitive to FE.

FE is caused by spores on ryegrass, which an animal eats. At high levels, it can damage the liver causing sunburn on stock, peeling skin, shade seeking behaviour and is usually seen in sheep and dairy cows.

‘‘Don’t wait for spore counts to get high before treating stock,’’ Pike said.

He said farmers should put stock on ‘‘safe’’ ground and consider putting in a crop, or grass other than ryegrass, such as fescue.

Pike said farmers could spray pasture with a zinc compound, which was 60 per cent effective, or use more expensive but more effective zinc boluses.

‘‘Allow five days before a bolus or spraying a pasture protects sheep. A bolus will give six weeks of protection and has a high reliabilit­y. It is expensive, but is convenient.’’

He said spraying costs were about $34 a hectare, with the fungicide applied by helicopter and depending on the length of the FE season, could need re-spraying.

Pike said farmers should be sampling their pasture so they knew what was happening in different paddocks on the farm.

‘‘Farmers should use spore counts to find out where it is best to put stock. A spore count sample is $25 for the first time, and $15 after that. So the cost is not high.’’

He said counts got up past a million spores per gram in areas where FE was rife last year, but the average rose until the middle of March and then fell.

By the time farmers were seeing clinical signs of the disease, it could be too late to treat, as the disease had hit two weeks before, he said.

Beef and Lamb New Zealand Wairoa representa­tive, Max Tweedie said buying a FE resistant ram was the best thing most farmers could do.

Facial eczema was on farmers’ radar this year after the bad season, said Tweedie, a specialist in sheep genetics.

‘‘Choose a ram breeder and stick with them. Then chose a ram using the FE ranking system.’’

He said it could be five to seven years before a flock was resistant, depending on the replacemen­t system and during that time, farmers needed to be buying FE resistant rams.

‘‘It won’t solve the problem next year. It is a long term solution .... Farmers need to make sure the ram breeders they’re getting rams from are using Ramguard so they are testing their rams.’’

Tweedie said ram breeders who were stringent about FE were likely to sell their rams for more than others.

 ?? DAVID UNWIN/FAIRFAX NZ ?? Genetics expert Mark Tweeie says farmers need to buy rams that are FE resistant.
DAVID UNWIN/FAIRFAX NZ Genetics expert Mark Tweeie says farmers need to buy rams that are FE resistant.

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