August Seasonal Focus

As Spring approaches, it is timely to start thinking about your parasite management both at the present time but also planning ahead for the warmer temperatures and what the conditions throw your way. This will allow proactive management rather than reactive management. Reactive management, whilst essential when animals are severely impacted or sick, is really the second tier of management when it comes to parasites. Proactive management is preferable and consists of testing and monitoring your mobs to keep a close eye on parasite numbers, weather conditions, and forecasts, as well as feed on offer.

What can you be doing now that may set the scene for a smoother run during Spring?

Consideration should be given to the impacts of nutrition in providing your livestock with their innate resilience. Animals that are under any stress are less resilient to parasites, and this is one way blowouts in parasite burdens can happen when stock are under nutritional stress.

August is a great time to clean up liver fluke in cattle, sheep, and goats, especially as many products that treat adult fluke can only be used at this time. Killing adult fluke now will prevent pastures, particularly low-lying and wet areas, becoming contaminated with infective liver fluke stages in the coming warmer months.

Winter cattle lice control should be well and truly taken care of, as untreated animals will have maximum lice numbers breeding up in their thick winter coats. Lice are good at causing irritation that makes cattle rub, disrupting the hair coat and making them susceptible to the cold weather, especially if it is wet. Reactive treatments for affected mobs should focus on a knockdown (fast-acting) product.

In the eastern states and in southwest WA, bush ticks (Haemaphysalis) will become active in spring and start to infect cattle with the deadly Theileria infection. These ticks are tiny and often go unnoticed, but a timely treatment, especially for introduced stock, can keep numbers low enough to stop them from being a nuisance.

Speaking of ticks, across the northern tick areas of Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and Queensland, the cattle tick (Rhipicephalus) eggs are getting ready to catch some warm rays of sunshine, hatch out and jump on board the nearest beast. Suppressive treatments early in September-October will suppress tick numbers and prevent the ‘spring rise’ in tick numbers.

In many sheep areas, the shearing season is peak lice control season, and rotating chemistry is the best defense against resistance development in sheep lice. Repeated use of the same GROUP of chemical is a fast track way to build resistance up. Bear in mind that many active ingredients are now sold as generic products, so knowing your active ingredient and chemical group is a must. Don’t be caught out with a different looking drum.

As the sheep fly season approaches, think back to what happened last year, what management and product(s) worked well, and what didn’t. Check back to what product groups you have used for fly management and lice management, and be sure to rotate groups to slow down the onset of chemical resistance of the lice. This also impacts worm management – e.g. if using a pour-on containing abamectin for lice, make sure you treat the mob with another effective drench at the same time, to prevent worms from getting resistant.

There are lots of handy resources available to help you with better management of flystrike products. Be sure to check these out and consult your trusted advisor if you need some help deciding which approach and products best suit your program.

Now is the best time to be planning your flystrike management program, as you have time to plan things out. Don’t wait for the fly wave to be looming or upon you for action, as this will see you revert to reactive rather than proactive management – can you see the pattern here?  

Spring is also when buffalo fly numbers start to build, so monitor them and work out the ideal time and product if you need to intervene, or manage to avoid high numbers.

Of course, worms are always an important parasite to be considering – as the warmer weather approaches, so does the activity of the warmer weather worms such as barber’s pole worm. Keep up the monitoring and know what’s going on in your flock, and which species are present, and as always, treat when necessary, targeting what is present in your animals.  

Weaner sheep should always be treated at weaning and put into some high quality (hopefully worm free) pasture. This will set them up for the coming months – however, due to their age and susceptibility, constant monitoring is critical to avoid casualties.

Springtime is also when cattle pastures are contaminated with peak numbers of Cooperia (small intestinal worms) and young cattle especially reach peak numbers of worms inside them. This worm slows growth rates and is hard to kill with traditional treatments such as pour-on and even injectable mectins. Insider tip: cattle drenches containing levamisole will kill these resistant Cooperia worms.

Whilst the parasite story can sound very doom and gloomy, staying on the front foot with proactive management can really help with the Spring time busy-ness that this time brings.