The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: kelly58 on May 05, 2014, 06:41:56 pm
-
When can l worm my lambs, what age is best ? :thinking:
-
When they need it---do a FEC and treat according to results
-
And what age is the best time to start with regular FECs?
-
I generally start doing mob samples at about 5 or 6 weeks old---but in a wet /warm period if the lambs are eating lots of forage it may pay to start earlier?
I actually do mob counts on the ewes before lambing and then every 2 weeks after lambing as I want to build up a picture of worm levels. I can then track these for various farms over the years ---but I guess I'm just a bit of a sheep nerd ::)
-
We worm ours with a combined fluke treatment end of May/Early June as fluke is a problem where we are and it should then cover them until slaughter. Done this for past 2 yrs and it's worked fairly well.
-
But how old are they by then, Twizzel?
-
3 1/2-4mths old roughly.
-
I generally start doing mob samples at about 5 or 6 weeks old---but in a wet /warm period if the lambs are eating lots of forage it may pay to start earlier?
I actually do mob counts on the ewes before lambing and then every 2 weeks after lambing as I want to build up a picture of worm levels. I can then track these for various farms over the years ---but I guess I'm just a bit of a sheep nerd ::)
I totally agree with the reasoning behind this Tim ... (and have done FEC on ewes so know I have a resistance problem on this smallholding) but economics of doing all those FEC samples when you only have a few sheep is questionable against cost of wormer.
-
FECs aren't going to help at this time of year with Nematodirus either.
If you can do FECs for the first year at least, then you know what you are dealing with, and will have a better idea of what to do for the following years. And you can do FECs yourself - Tim should do a master class on it for us all ;).
-
Nematodirus can become a problem well before anything shows up in a FEC. We stock to SCOPS guidelines on things like switching wormer groups and keeping ewe doses to a minimum but wouldn't care to risk the lamb's health by waiting for FEC counts to reach a high level.