May Seasonal Focus

A few important lookouts for producers at this time of the year.

For those that lamb or kid in May-June, be sure to keep a close watch on worm egg counts – and use an effective pre-lambing treatment to ensure lambs and kids are not picking up excessive worms in the nursery paddocks. It is well known that females that are approaching parturition (giving birth) experience a relaxation of their immune system, which renders them more susceptible to worms.

Practically speaking, this means that the adult animal will be less capable of mounting an immune response to the parasites, and therefore more parasites will survive and produce eggs, resulting in a blow out of numbers in the animal and what is being deposited onto the pasture – and then picked up by animals grazing.

The pre-lambing or kidding time is critical for ensuring the lambing/kidding paddocks are carrying the lowest possible level of contamination, so the progeny are picking up less worms.

Pre lambing/kidding paddock preparation over the warmer months will also have helped reduce the worm pressure coming from pasture.

Lookup here to find out more about preparing low worm risk paddocks for sheep.

Look up here to find out more about grazing management in a goat enterprise.

Test! Don’t Guess! – know what you are dealing with – in terms of both the numbers and type of worms. This means getting larval cultures done when conducting some worm egg counts. It takes about a week longer for these (larval culture) results to come back (the lab grows the eggs into tiny larvae!) but the results are worth the wait, as you can then choose a drench that is suited to the species of worms present.

Factor this time into your collection processes, so that you aren’t caught short of time. The ParaBoss team see and hear many examples of situations where product choice could be optimised to target the population present. An anecdotal message that is used a lot in industry is that ‘the most expensive product is one that doesn’t work’ – this can also be applied to this scenario – don’t use a product that’s targeting a species that is not present!

If paddock feed in your area is deteriorating in quality – factor this into your thinking with overall resilience of your livestock. Animals that are nutritionally stressed are more susceptible to all parasites, so maintaining livestock in good condition pays, in many ways. Supplementary feeding programs should begin before animals have lost too much condition in order to maintain a healthy and resilient animal (plus its more expensive to feed condition back onto animals than to maintain condition)

In tick-prone areas, consider the population of these parasites ahead of the cooler months, and if a treatment is required to effect a further reduction on overall tick numbers in the environment, both now and in the future.

For those sheep producers approaching shearing time, consider well in advance which lice treatment method and product you wish to use. Consider the issue of chemical resistance at the forefront of your choices and be sure to rotate chemical groups.

It is also essential to consider which fly products have been used in the previous fly period, and avoid use of back to back groups. For more information click here.

For more information on what chemical resistance is, and how it occurs, click here.