October 2022
Reducing Stress at Weaning
Weaning causes stress to calves due to the separation of the bond with the cow and loss of milk from the calf’s diet. Management factors to minimize stress should be considered to reduce impacts on growth rates and chance of disease (e.g. pneumonia). Options for two step weaning processes have been investigated:
Nose Flap Weaning: Harper Adams investigated the use of nose flap weaning, where a plastic nose flap is fitted to each calf for 4-7 days prior to separation from the dam. No significant differences were found, although the nose flap calves appeared to not experience as severe a growth check as the normally weaned calves. It appeared to work best when used outside, as a higher number of tags were accidentally removed while housed.
Fence Line Weaning: Calves are separated from their dams via a fence line for 7 days to allow a continuation of the bond whilst milk is removed from the calf’s diet. American studies have found reduced stress behaviors and reduced impacts on growth rates. However care must be taken to ensure a good barrier to avoid injuries.
Whichever method used for weaning, it is important to not combine it with other management changes such as sudden diet change, housing, castration/dehorning, pneumonia vaccination.
Liver Fluke Infection Avoidance and Testing
Liver fluke is an unfortunately common problem in this area, but the risk of infection is considered low currently due to the dry weather reducing the number of mud snail habitats. As the autumnal weather has begun, it is important to ensure cattle and sheep are not grazing high risk pastures and areas of poaching are avoided. Fencing off boggy areas, ponds and watercourses is important to avoid livestock contact with mud snail environments. Mud snails have been found in tractor tyre ruts, so moving bales into wintering paddocks now is advisable to reduce the use of heavy machinery in the wetter months.
Acute liver fluke infection only affects sheep, so liver fluke treatments in cattle are not required in the autumn, instead faecal samples should be tested during the winter. Unfortunately, as acute fluke is caused by migration of the fluke larvae, faecal egg counts are unable to diagnose early infection. Instead blood sampling 2022 born lambs will help you determine if and when a liver fluke infection has occurred.
Remember that triclabendazole (e.g. Endofluke, Fasinex, Tribex) is the only drench that will kill immature fluke, so should be reserved for autumn treatments of sheep only when required. Adult flukicides (e.g. Flukiver, Zanil, Solantel) are more appropriate for cattle and winter/spring sheep treatments.
To Drench or Not To Drench? Adult sheep
Tupping is a time when farmers would traditionally worm drench ewes, however it has been shown that routine drenching of adult sheep increases the speed of drench resistance developing on your farm. This is because adult sheep (over 12 months of age) have a natural immunity to worm infections, and so worm treatments are often unnecessary, and just increase the number of treatments the worms on your farm are exposed to. Haemonchus (the barber pole worm) has been diagnosed on farms in this area and can affect ewes if it is brought onto the farm through poor quarantine protocols.
Thin ewes may carry a high worm burden, not because the worms have made them thin, but because the worms have taken advantage of the reduced immunity caused by whatever is making the ewe thin. If you have more than 10% of ewes below the target body condition score of 3.5/5 (lowland), then please speak to one of our vets as this will likely be production limiting and the underlying cause must be determined.
We advise you check the worm burden of your adult sheep by collecting faecal samples for a worm egg count, helping you decide if treatment is appropriate or not.
Collect samples from 10 individual sheep, we need about a tablespoon from each sheep and they must be kept in individual bags
Samples must be still warm on collection, so should be collected after holding the sheep on a hardstanding or the corner of a field.
Push the air out of the bag and seal. Store the bag somewhere dark and cool until you can drop into the surgery, within 24-48hrs
We need to know the type of stock sampled, when and what they were last drenched with and the name of the field they are grazing