April Seasonal Focus

At this time of the year, as the seasons begin to change to more cool conditions, monitoring remains a strong priority to ensure you have the upper hand on parasites in your flock or herd.

Keep an eye out for which worm species are impacting your stock. Some worms are more prevalent during cooler months than others. The amount of rainfall is also an important factor in worm and larval survival on pasture. Therefore, before you pull out the drench gun, know your enemy and choose your product to suit the worms present. The key message of ‘test – don’t guess!’ applies now and throughout the year. Factor in the time that a larval culture takes to come back (a week from the processing of the sample is generally the time to receive a result) so you are not flying blind unnecessarily. Don’t assume that you have the same proportions of worm species as the last time – a lot can change since your previous test!

Sheep blowfly pressure will continue as long as the temperatures remain warm, with moisture present. Keep up monitoring, and if an outbreak is happening, be sure to choose a treatment/preventative that will suit the expected period of protection required, with regard to period of protection, but also withholding, sheep rehandle, and wool rehandle periods. Be sure to not double up on the same chemistry as what was last applied.

For those in areas with difficult or deteriorating seasonal conditions, proactive management will be your ally. Seasonal extremes are being experienced in some areas – some are experiencing flooding, and others are commencing or well into drought/supplementary feeding programs. With any extreme event, such as flooding or dry times, stress impacts on the animals and their ability to withstand some of the pressure that the likes of parasites apply to them.

An animal’s ability to mount an immune response to worms, for example, is impacted by several factors, but their resilience determines how well they can respond to a worm burden. It is a well-known fact that animals in better condition score are more resilient to the impacts of parasites. Therefore our own management can impact the worm situation in the livestock and the impacts that the worms have on the livestock.

Maintaining livestock in good condition is highly beneficial to the overall wellbeing of stock, including their own ability to deal with worm burdens. Animals that are weakened by poor nutrition are more susceptible to any factors that impact their immune system, including worms.

Animals that are stressed will be more susceptible to the effects of ticks, flies, and lice, as well as worms.

If animals are experiencing stress, a helpful strategy to assist them is to keep a close eye on parasites and keep their populations to a minimum. This involves careful monitoring, for example conducting worm egg counts and fly counts, tick monitoring, and checking for lice. This, coupled with good nutrition, will help with their resilience during the stress period.

Stress periods are not always floods or droughts – lambing, kidding and calving are also times when the animal’s natural immunity is relaxed, resulting in sharp increases in parasite burden. The key message here is for autumn lambing, kidding and calving herds and flocks to use proactive management and test, and apply the appropriate course of management that will avoid severe outbreaks of parasites when the animals are least able to mount their own responses due to having young offspring at foot, and unable to be yarded to treat.