The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Kitchen Cottage on August 17, 2015, 06:30:03 pm
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The sheep were crovected last month. I dagged them week before last and last week had a small flystrike on one sheep bum which meant I topped up the crovect. I check their little bums every day.
One sheep looking ill yesterday. very clean. Checked its bum and didn't seem to have flies on it.... not bloated. Worms up to date so put it down to off colour.
Today seemed weaker and gave it electrolytes. It was still up and around but just poorly.
Lunchtime (working from home) notice it has a couple of flies on its back..... cut away the wool and it is riddled with flystrike on the back. :( :( :(
It was still blue from the crovect last week
Never had it on the back and only twice (caught early) on the bum....
two hours of wool and cleaning..... gave antibiotics and metacam.... it had a horrible afternoon..
Put in a quiet stable...... went out just now and it had died.
I feel terrible.
I checked it again and again and never noticed the flystrike :( :( :( :( :( :( :(
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I'm so sorry :( I haven't had any fly strike yet and am very paranoid that I won't recognise it when it happens.
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:hug: It happens. You'll know now that it's not always on the bum, and that any sheep - particularly any lamb - looking sorry for itself during fly season should be assumed to be strucken until proven otherwise.
From the flyestrike page (http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/livestock/sheep/fly-strike/) here on Accidental Smallholder:
A sheep that has been fly struck will display abnormal behaviour – it may be on its own, not grazing or cudding but looking preoccupied; it may be rubbing along a fence or wall; it may be stamping its feet, kicking or biting at itself. If you are at all concerned – don’t wait until tomorrow, catch the sheep and examine it closely. There is a distinctive smell associated with fly strike.
The smell is indeed distinctive. The fleece is usually wet and white fleece may look greyish at the site of the strike.
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I agree, at this time of year flystrike is my first, second and third choice if a sheep's looking off colour. Once the maggots have gone in they're excreting into the body (yeuch!) and can bring down a struck sheep within hours.
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Its also worrying that People are more and more talking about sheep taken down after been treated - I've seen sheep on neighbouring farms struck just a week after being done - so I do wonder if reistance exists?
That said - this time of year as everyon above has said - any suspect sheep are rounded up and checked - sometimes you panic and expect the worse as the sheep is nuts and scratching like mad, and its just a bramble stuck close to the skin - othertimes its the quietish one who's riddled. Just get them checked, get them sprayed and get them isolated and offered good high energy food;
I usually pen them up on grass about 20ftx20ft with;
Water,
Energy lick bucket;
Ad lib good hay;
Double ration of ewe nuts / rolls
If available some soft fruit chopped in with the nuts
I find this helps them get going again nice and fast - its amazing how fast strike knocks condition off
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I think it's also worth getting some painkiller from the vet for bad flystrike - only time I've ever seen a sheep grind it's teeth in pain.
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We had one a couple of weeks ago, she was drifting away from the flock and despite three or four daily checks the maggots were quite established. We were lucky to catch her when we did but I still felt terrible, she's back out with the flock now after 4 days of intensive nursing with high protein food and hay after a complete shearing and treatment. Never fails to amaze me how little pockets of maggots just keep appearing the more wool you take off :(
sorry to hear about your sheep KC. It's crap when it happens.
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crovect- may as well just spray yourself in it and have some really bad nightmares. Dont rate it at all unluss its 'aftercare'.
Bad stuff. Trippy as hell. - been some bad batches too as other things have superseded it now.
I would only use it after finding maggots and not as a mechanism to stop them.
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The shepherd that sheared my sheep this year said that resistance IS building up to Crovect. Which was confirmed to me when I had a wether who had really bad strike in his feet! I Crovected his feet to within an inch of his life, at one time the maggots would have just dropped off the second the stuff hit them. But it didn't seem to have the same effect as it had before. A few weeks later he was off his feet again, I checked him - and he was riddled with maggots, with barely any foot left on his fronts :-[ . He'll be going off to the abattoir unfortunately :(
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Never fails to amaze me how little pockets of maggots just keep appearing the more wool you take off :(
I think the smell of the first lot attracts every fly for miles around so they have an egg laying fest. It's as if they are trying to kill the animal as quickly as possible so they can get down to the business of eating lovely rotting flesh.
I hate maggots with a vengeance :rant:
Crovect here has been replaced with something else -same ingredients - I'll have to go and check. I think it's bound to be less effective on woolly sheep, as it needs to penetrate to the skin, and on primitives which are fairly narrow animals, so the applicator lets a lot run off. We use a spray so we can check exactly where it goes, which works for a small flock, but you'd soon get RSI with larger numbers.
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If we find flystrike I shear a circle around the struck area then use 100ml Jeyes Fluid diluted with 1 litre of water to flush 'em out - sterilises the wound at the same time but don't use it any stronger or it'll sting. Just wait for the maggots to appear and pick them off with pair of tweezers and drop them in a bucket which is emptied into the old oil drum we use for burning garden rubbish. (Yeuch, makes me shiver just to think about it!) Haven't seen any this summer - I think the cold/hot/cold weather here has kept fly numbers very low.
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I was thikning that maybe like with wormers a traffic light system should be used, but it needs to be co-ordinated over a larger area - IE first treatment one chem, next one another, etc to prevent resistance building up.
I have used jeyes fluid, but used a sponge in a 50ml to 1 l mix and dabbed it onto the area by sponge after a very close shear with the electric clippers, it killed most maggots and most got out on the own damn quick, I was caught out on this one as it was last year in early November and jeyes was at hand and nothing else. Ewe made a stonking recovery and had triplets though :)
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Every time I go to clik my 20 sheep it either rains or is forecast so have resorted to just calling them over into a pen and checking them every couple of days. The field that they are in is pretty open and windy. My problem will come when I have to wean the lambs as the ewes will need to move into the river field where it's a lot more sheltered. Hopefully I'll get a couple of dry days then. :fc:
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An experienced sheep farmer told me a few days ago that it's possible to poison a lamb with crovect. Anyone have any experience of this? He might have been talking about a young lamb. I have to say it is tempting to overdose them when you find them riddled with maggots...
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Well of course it is. The pack gives dose rates for each type of use, including for treating a strike. As with any med, exceeding the recommended dose rate can be dangerous. You have only to read the Operator Warnings for Crovect to realise that this is a very dangerous chemical.
The guidance says, when treating a strike, to use 2.5ml per 100-150cm2, which it says is approx. the size of a human hand, and that most strikes will need 5-10ml.
The maximum dose for any other use of Crovect is 30ml for a 40kg lamb. When treating a strike, 30ml would treat 1800cm2, or the area of 12 human hands.
If you've a lamb to 40kgs with more extensive strike than that, it'll be unlikely to survive anyway, and it'd probably be best to put it out of its misery.
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We really want to phase it out here, but must keep it just in case. Never ever use it without protection, I have to my stupidity. And if it makes me that feel bad I just wonder what it would feel like to a young sheep. I'm sorry I don't mean that from a bad place I'm very sorry for your loss :bouquet:
If Baz feels dry sheep this morning we on it later. Been so wet, and when we could last do it we lost our darling Oliver dog, and so that time was full of looking for him and field checks. Two days ago in a right Hoolie we found caught and treated two shearlings, both in good fettle. We have both clik and clikzen here, not sure which one we will use yet, no lambs going til October, so no worry about withdrawal.
IMHO i don't think it's about resistance with crovect, i just don't think it s as strong at it was. Perhaps I'm wrong.
The pink n green it is for us.
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So are Clik and Clikzen less toxic? If so, why the longer meat withdrawal period?
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Well after not having been able to get a dry-enough window to Clik my sheep (at 70 quid a bottle I don't want to have to repeat) and having checked them regularly (and it has not been that warm here until this last weekend)... I found today one black Shetland hogget covered in maggots... Much more difficult to spot at some distance, but she was away from the flock and I could actually go up to her and just pick her up... Spent 2.5 hours cleaning her up, all over her body, but hopefully mainly superficial. I (and she) now smell lovely of Battle's Maggot oil, but it does seem to bring the bu&&ers out. She is still upright now, in a pen in a field and has actually eaten a bit of mix.. not having much hope she will pull through though...
What antibiotic would you use? Betamox LA ? - I have got that. Can't get hold of (farm)vet until tomorrow.
Has anyone experienced coloured sheep to be more susceptible or is it just an individual thing? She has a clean behind, and flies laid all over body, so I suspect it was after the massive downpour on Saturday followed by a very warm and humid Sunday...
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sorry to hear that Anke.
Those buggering flies are evil
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She's got a shot of Betamox, I drenched with twin lamb (as she hasn't either peed or pood since early afternoon - I think she stopped eating a while ago) and offered some willow and hazel branches along with some hay. Not sure she will touch it though... not holding much hope, she looks like she has given up, let me just catch and hold her for her injection - not normal for any of my ewes... :'( :'( :'(
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Thanks Sally, I didn't explain myself properly. I understand you can overdose, I meant had anyone lost a sheep to crovect overdose, that wasn't struck?
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My turn to be confused! ???
How would you come to overdose a sheep that wasn't strucken? Giving it more swipes with the 'wand' than you should, do you mean?
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My turn to be confused! ???
How would you come to overdose a sheep that wasn't strucken? Giving it more swipes with the 'wand' than you should, do you mean?
That's the exact query I had a few weeks ago but no one advised me :-[ I decided you would have to do an awful lot of extra passes with the wand for it to be dangerous. Anyway, no one has come to any harm so far
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The trick is to have the right amount in each spray so that the number of stripes you want to do gives the correct dose.
For instance, if you want some on its head, some down the back, some around the crutch, and some across the shoulders, then divide the total dose by 5 and set the gun to that. If you only want to do the back and crutch, divide the total by 2. (Unless you know you're not very accurate and want to do each stripe twice to be on the safe side... in which case halve the dose in the gun again.)
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Really trying to not use toxic chemicals willy nilly but I have just had my 3rd case of medium-stage flystrike in 5 years. Castlemilk Moorits- supposedly flystrike resistant! Each time it has hit a lamb. Each time the lamb has had a touch of scour. I 100% know it is coming as I see a greenbottle or 3 perched on its behind. Upon catching the lamb it is obvious that it is unwell with light coloured eyelids as per the FAMACHA eyelid guide attached (probably has a high worm burden). Also they seem to be the lighter, less robust lambs.
So I have sheared their behinds, removing all maggots and washing with iodine/antiseptic spray. This seems to do the trick and the lambs have so far thrived, gained weight and look fine (in fact 'bounces' back dramatically in a few days and puts on weight- I'm presuming due to the reduced worm burden).
There is obviously a close link (direct or indirect) between worm burden, weakened animals and flystrike. So I think I am coming to the conclusion that routine worming in my young sheep just before 'fly-strike season' may actually be necessary to help protect them from worms and flystrike (leaving the mums unwormed to reduce chances of selecting for resistant worms). Going to worm all lambs in the next days Will this prevent incidences of flystrike?:fc:
I hope others find this useful!
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Would love some Flystrike resistant sheep, would pay decent money for them!!!
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I've just got in from dealing with a case of flystirke in a Hebridean x texel ramb lamb - Horrific as though none of the maggots had got to any decent size it was a huge infestation, from backside to front legs on Rhand side - Im attributing it to some kind sod throwing a dead fox over the wall into the paddock where the ram lambs are being kept this week.
That said its interesting you point out the link to worms, as this particular lamb had tape worm segments in its droppings - and would otherwise of been one of the most robust of this years crop.
Im trying barrier H blow fly repel as a preventative at the moment, and after 3 weeks I can still whiff the lemony kick of it masking the sheeps smell - hopefuly as a less destructive alternative to crovect et al.
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Whereas a mucky behind will always attract flies, I wouldn't have thought that healthy sheep are at less risk in he right conditions. My struck hogget is as clean as a whistle and in good condition. Actually all my sheep this year have been really clean and I have so far not had to worm the lambs even... (they will of course start to squit by tomorrow I am sure... ;D). Other than a case of flystrike in a foot this is my first case this year, and none of my sheep have had preventative treatment.
So in case of clean sheep (and all my serious cases of flystrike over the years have been clean sheep...) it is I think a combination of weather conditions and individual sheep maybe having a attractive (to the flies that is) body smell, maybe just under the weather that day (as it usually happens on humid, still days)...
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Is mineral deficiency perhaps a factor. I know Pat Coleby in her books sets great store by mineral supplementation preventing all sorts of issues such as parasites and worms. Just putting it out there as an idea as I don't know myself.
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There's certainly a link between worms => mucky bottoms => strike, so keeping lambs clean through worming and dagging is an important part of strike prevention.
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We saw several cases of flystrike around the shoulders and over the brisket when the sheep were wet through after a very wet WInter a few years ago and decided they had fleece rot which had attracted the flies. It was too early for them to have been shorn. We now Clik three weeks after shearing - along the back, across the shoulders and the top of the tail. This year I'm going to crutch the whole flock before tupping. Our Badger Face get freaked out by flies and sulk in the shade or a field shelter on humid days. The Southdowns seem blissfully oblivious.
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This year we've not cleared the orchard of fruit - usually we pick most of it and make wine but husband not doing that anymore. I've seen mucky bums which I'm assuming are from eating too many fallen plums and wet grass. Checking the sheep twice a day and yesterday, sure enough found a tiny patch of strike - caught early and all looking good again now. This lamb was sprayed with crovect less than 3 weeks ago yet still struck in one of the areas I sprayed (top of tail)
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Our clik 'end of date use' is coming to an end (we used clckzin for lambs) - we are starting to see ewes now with tracks but no flesh eating maggots (this is how it works it mutats the maggots so they dont have the ability to eat as it fooks up their mouths)
We are finding this year that the clic and cliczin is working so much better. But we always have crovect ready for the ones that are caught.
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Its goes as said - that you have to search for maggots. They burrow - they are attracted to heat. You have to trim and dig deep. When you can see them on the surface - its normally too late.
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There is an interesting article here http://www.rirdc.gov.au/news/2012/01/24/research-finds-tea-tree-oil-effective-against-sheep-fly-strike-and-lice-infestations (http://www.rirdc.gov.au/news/2012/01/24/research-finds-tea-tree-oil-effective-against-sheep-fly-strike-and-lice-infestations) on the use of tea tree oil to both kill maggots and as a repellant against adult flies
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There is an interesting article here http://www.rirdc.gov.au/news/2012/01/24/research-finds-tea-tree-oil-effective-against-sheep-fly-strike-and-lice-infestations (http://www.rirdc.gov.au/news/2012/01/24/research-finds-tea-tree-oil-effective-against-sheep-fly-strike-and-lice-infestations) on the use of tea tree oil to both kill maggots and as a repellant against adult flies
really interesting, thank you. Ive used Tee Tree oil for several years as the main component of my horse fly repellent. Im going to spray all the sheep tomorrow with the same thing