October 2014

My Scary Halloween: I’m sitting at my computer in a T-shirt. The heating hasn’t been turned on since last winter. The grass is still growing well ahead of the sheep and horses and there are more summer flowers in bloom in my garden than I had in July. It’s 23˚C outside and several peacock butterflies are sunbathing on the buddleia, catching the warm rays of the sun. How lovely! BUT, and it’s a big ‘but’, if this glorious but unseasonable weather is due to ‘global warming’, there is inevitably another, more sinister side to the climatic coin: the threat from seasonal pests and diseases in livestock will persist beyond their traditional timescale.

Just over a week ago we experienced the worst case of fly-strike on a ram lamb that I’ve ever seen. For several years now our ‘fly management’ regime has been 100% effective: we treat all the sheep and lambs immediately after shearing in mid-May with ‘Clik’ pour-on, an Insect Growth Regulator (IGR) that prevents blowfly eggs hatching into maggots and gives 16 week protection, taking us up to mid-September, by which time the threat from blowfly is waning. We also use ‘Red Top’ fly traps to reduce the blowfly population in the area, and finally, but most importantly, we check the sheep twice a day – morning and evening, as it takes less than 24 hours for eggs laid on the sheep’s wool to develop into maggots. On this particular evening I noticed a ram lamb separated from the flock, laying down; as I got closer to him I could see a dirty brown patch on his side, and his fleece looked ‘blown’ – lifted away from his side. The maggots covered about a third of his visible flank and spread across his back. A sheep that is affected this badly will often die of toxic shock.

Clik will not treat a sheep affected by maggots; a product that kills already developed maggots is required. I cut the fleece away from the affected area – in fact a lot of it just fell away where it had been chewed by the maggots – and applied an appropriate insecticide. The skin was severely damaged: maggots secrete enzymes that liquefy and digest skin tissue, allowing secondary infections, decomposing tissue then releases toxins that are absorbed into the bloodstream, causing systemic illness and ultimately, death.

I was determined to save this little fellow, so once the live maggots had been dealt with, I gave him a shot of antibiotic to help him fight off infection, an anti-inflammatory to soothe the pain, and then applied “Summer Cream”, an anti-bacterial cream with a sun-screen to protect the damaged skin and promote healing. Ten days later he’s loosing more fleece as a result of the shock to his system, but he’s alive, lively and doing well – and his new fleece is starting to grow through … but he’ll never win a beauty contest!

The forecast is that our Indian summer will soon give way to autumn, and the signs so far is that it will be a spectacularly colourful one.

And finally, Carole Youngs of The Smallholder Series has written a thought-provoking article for the winter edition of Practical Sheep, Goats & Alpacas magazine, about how to breed and manage sheep in the most environmentally friendly way.

www.smallholderseries.co.uk