Jobs for January
If you farm in the North Island, you probably have an issue with FE, and it is costing you
FE is a severe, incurable disease that affects sheep, cattle, alpaca, llamas, goats, and deer. It's caused when animals swallow the spores of a fungus, Pithomyces chartarum, which lives at the base of ryegrass, and other pasture. The spores contain a toxin, which causes severe damage to the liver and bile ducts.
Often, you won't see any outward (clinical) symptoms of FE, but damage to the liver will reduce an animal's lifetime productivity by up to 25%. For every clinical case, 5-10 more stock will be affected by liver damage but show no symptoms (known as sub-clinical cases).
For example, you may see a few sheep in your flock showing physical symptoms of FE (indicating severe liver damage) such as peeling, burnt skin, depression, and always sitting in the shade. Later in the year, you might have a barren ewe problem, deaths at lambing, ewes that run dry before weaning, or other issues that you don't connect with FE. However, they're often caused by liver damage.
•
Start preventative zinc treatment for FE this month. Spores that cause FE don't generally start to rise until February, but it takes about three weeks for zinc levels to rise to a protective level.
•
Do a spore test by gathering pasture samples. Talk to your vet clinic to find out how best to take a sample – they can do the test for you.
•
Hay and silage paddocks are generally safer to graze as litter levels are lower than in grazed pasture.
•
Rotate animals quickly over pasture, so it's never below 5-6cm high – if you can't do that, consider lowering your stock numbers and/or feeding out hay or silage.
What is the spore count in your area?
Vet clinics nationwide send their spore reports to the Gribbles Veterinary laboratory. It compiles the numbers so you can find out the average FE spore counts in your area each week:
www.gribblesvets.co.nz/facialeczema-reports/
Read more on facial eczema
thisnzlife.co.nz
Sheep
•
Check daily for dirty, oily patches on wool, indicating flystrike. Sheep will nibble at affected areas to stop the itch caused by maggots of the Aussie green blowfly eating their skin. Flystrike needs immediate treatment so talk to your vet about the best products to have on hand. Have some way to restrain a sheep (preferably yards), so you can treat them easily and safely.
•
Current best practice is to always leave 20% of your best-looking lambs in a mob undrenched to help slow drench resistance. This way, you allow a population of non-resistant worms to mate with resistant ones.
Time to clean out your coop? Summer is a great time to clean out the hen house and spray for mites, but all that dust is carrying nasties you don't want to inhale. It's contaminated with chicken skin cells, which carry campylobacter and other diseases that can make you very ill. It's vital to wear a tight-fitting respirator when you clean a coop, no matter how small. Use a garden backpack or pump sprayer to mist water over the interior before you begin removing litter to reduce dust levels in the air.