[Dougal]

Just what you need the week before you're selling your store lambs, one of the better ones gets maggots all the way over the shoulder, now clipped out and treated with crovect but still hugely annoying. Will ruin the look o the lot with a half bare one parading the ring. It'll run on with the ewe lambs and go in the freezer but still it spoils the job.

[feldar]

yep been there this year too, still getting the odd one with maggots even on previously treated lambs. We are near marshy ground so it's always a challenge. Our lamb that had it between the skin layers is all healed now even if she is'nt very pretty with scar tissue and black wool coming through.

[SallyintNorth]

If it ain't maggots it's feet, or orf blisters, or an abcess, or ....  Whatever it is, there'll always be one that spoils the batch, eh. 

An Exmoor farmer once told me, "Sheep's only got two hobbies.  What it can eat and what it can die of."  BH reckons their all-consuming hobby is messing up his plans!

[andywalt]

I treated my flock with clic for the first time this year and wondered whether I would get it right?? since treating 3 weeks after shearing Ive had 3 cases of maggots and the ones with fly I topped them up with crovect, could have been several reasons why !!! might not have had a long enough fleece to take the clic and or the rain the following week had washed it out, all the other 45 have been fine so far.

next year I will treat early with crovect, then 4 weeks after shearing use clic and have crovect on standby for any cases or a top up late in the season.

does anyone else have a main stratagy they follow?

[Fleecewife]

Our strategy is:  Crovect to lambs mid May, repeated 6 weekly (not a day over)  Older sheep watched carefully prior to shearing then Crovect at shearing - we hand shear so no probs with not enough fleece.  For all sheep, Crovect 6 weekly until Sept, which gives them cover into Oct by which time fly season is over up here.  We used to have a big problem with flies when our neighbour was letting his sheep die of strike, but since he has been forbidden to keep animals any more we have had no problems with strike at all, or even many flies.
We don't use the official applicator (as I have written elsewhere) as it is too wide and wet for our breeds, so we can be much more accurate with where we spray, and include between the back legs (with the sheep sitting on its bum) and the underside of the tail, in a long stripe behind the front legs and in front of the back legs, as well as the usual head, back and general bum and tail areas.

[SallyintNorth]

Another really important tactic is keeping bums clean.  Mums until shearing (in fact a lot of farmers around here 'crutch' ewes with twin lambs as a matter of course), which keeps the lambs from getting dungy heads when they go to the milk bar, little ones whenever they show any wet dirt around the back-end.  Give them a good quality mineral drench before putting them on fresh grass (reduces looseness of bowels); worm at the first sign of trouble, or routinely to prevent trouble.  Flies like warm dank places, so keeping sheep away from the flies' favourite places when the weather is humid and warm will help - and as fleecewife points out, disposing of any carcases (be they yours, wildlife, whatever) to reduce the breeding grounds for flies.

[Fleecewife]

Or making sure your neighbours use a fly strike preventer too.....

Sally, what mineral drench do you use?

[Fronhaul]

I would be interested to hear about the mineral drench as well please.  Touch wood we have caught all but one of ours in good time although every mucky bum has been shorn which has tended to make some of the girls look slightly odd.  The one animal we missed was an alpaca boy but he is now recovering nicely (so much for all the websites claiming alpacas aren't affected by flystrike).  I have noticed that almost every field move this year has been accompanied by a fresh dirty backside to clean up.  I was about to blame the fact we are using Clic rather than Crovect this year but now I am wondering whether its our supplement regime that is to blame.

[andywalt]

yes I am crutching, especially the lambs which I have moved to good pasture, a few have been getting very loose, the ewes are fine because they are on poor ground while they dry off.

[SallyintNorth]

Sally, what mineral drench do you use?

We get a drench made up specifically for our sort of ground from PK Nutrition in Newcastle.  (PK stands for Paul Keable.)

The most important thing is that the main elements are chelated, otherwise the initial effect doesn't last.  Carrs do a very similar one, called OviThrive.  I compared the ingredients once and they were very close in terms of constituents and quantities.

[Fronhaul]

Thank you.  Going to try this. 

[Dougal]

Lamb making a recovery but it won't make market on Friday. Ho hum. Now decided it wants to have sore feet now. I suspect that was the problem in the first instance, sore feet, lay around too much inbelow the trees. Who'd keep sheep!

[Corrie Dhu]

Treated ewes and lambs once with Vetrazyne after shearing and have not had a single case of maggots for two years since I started to use Vetrazyne.  You must be careful to apply it as per the manufacturers instructions and use the correct gun.  Also making sure sheep are sound, maggots can start in the feet and transfer onto a clean body, and are clean at the back end is important too.

[mmu]

This is all very sensible stuff, I have never used a mineral drench to help keep lambs clean on fresh grass, but would like to try it.  The only thing I would say is the first of our ewes to get struck this year has a fleece like wire wool and was clean all over, not a sign of any muck or dampness, and her feet were sound as bells.  There's just no telling.  Maybe she smells funny or something, or maybe she was the exception that prooves the rule!

[feldar]

We have had some very strange fleeces this year as well, we just sheared off our store lambs that will have to run on for a bit longer, and a few of these were very dirty on their backends. We had already fly sprayed them so no maggots but their fleeces were like cardboard really hard to shear full of dander and grease took twice as long to do, poor OH was glowing when he finished! language wasn't too goog either!