A sheepy week - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Tuesday 2 July, 2013

by Rosemary at 8:21pm in Sheep Comments closed

We decided to vaccinate our cows and ewes against Schmallenberg virus as soon as the vaccine became available. In case you don’t know, SBV is a midge borne virus that causes malformation and death in calves and lambs if the cow or ewe is infected in the first third of pregnancy. Some farmers in the south of England experienced horrible losses last year and the virus has now been found in Scotland.

Cows need two injections, four weeks apart and the immunity takes three weeks to kick in, so we had to get our skates on. We might have left the ewes (there are all sorts of unanswered questions about how long vaccine derived immunity lasts and so on) because we don’t tup until November, which is generally past the midge season. But not always – it depends on the weather. But the cows had to be done because the bull will be going in mid –end August, when the midges will definitely be around.

Since the vaccine comes in 10 and 50 dose bottles and has to be used within 4 hours of opening and we have three cows and 13 ewes, we will be able to do them all and waste only one dose - three cows and six ewes this week; three cows and the remaining seven ewes in four weeks. Result!

While we had the sheep in to jag the six ewes on Tuesday, we also gave the fifteen lambs their second Heptavac jag and we took faecal samples from the lambs too. The results were back 24 hours later and showed a medium count of strongyle eggs and 250 Nematodirus eggs.

Nematodirus are parasitic worms that cause nematodirosis in lambs (and sometimes calves). Heavy infection generally results in watery yellowy-green diarrhea, which can result in severe dehydration and even death. Other symptoms include dull, rough fleece and a “tucked-up” appearance. Less heavy infestations can manifest themselves as “ill-thrift” or “poor doers”. The highest risk of disease occurs in the spring in young lambs (4-8 weeks old), although outbreaks of the disease have been seen in older lambs later during the grazing season.

Now, our lambs look grand and none appear to be scouring but better safe than sorry, so we wormed all the lambs yesterday (Thursday) with Panacur 10%, which is what we had in the medicine cupboard. Panacur is an old wormer – been around 30 years to my knowledge – with fenbendazole as the active ingredient (one of the benzimidazoles) and there is recorded resistance to this in some worms but not Nematodirus, thankfully.

So we’ve dealt with the Nematodirus, but in 14 days, we need to take a second faecal sample for analysis to check that the other worms are being controlled. Our vet’s great at advising on the best course of action to take and we do appreciate his help.

So hopefully that’s the lambs protected from two types of internal parasites; next will be liver fluke, which we’ll treat them for at weaning. We need to be a bit careful as the flukicide has a long withdrawal period (around 56 days) and our tup lambs go away end of October, but I’m planning to wean a bit earlier this year – mid rather than late August – so we should be fine.