[NewLifeOnTheFarm]

Exciting times are afoot at Mains of Cults, we have sorted out our starter flock of white Ryelands, who will be coming to us in June/July with lambs at foot. Been doing a lot of research about what equipment etc I need to get in advance, just wondered what everyone would recommend.

We have indoor shelter and hurdles, then a few things that have been given such a dagging shears, elastrators.

So I need to get some fly control sorted, thinking clik or crovect, plus applicator. They are on the heptavac program, so that should be sorted before I get them. Would you buy wormer is advance or as and when? Also what do you all use, combined wormer flukicide or separate?

All advice welcome

Thanks

[twizzel]

Speak to your vet with regards to wormer and fluke treatments as they will know about local resistance and which group wormer to use when. Buy it as and when you need it then the expiry date will be longer than if buying now ready for 6 months time. I bought my first breeding flock last year and my Jakoti hand shears were definitely worth buying, as was the 8ft covered hayrack which has definitely reduced hay wastage this winter. We bought 10 6ft hurdles which even though we haven't lambed yet have been used countless times already. Other than that, check whether the lambs have had any heptavac treatments and whether the ewes will be shorn before coming to you (if not, find a shearer now). A small trough for the field would be useful especially if they aren't tame- mine were wild when they came but have mellowed somewhat now they know what a bit of cake is. Don't forget to sort a CPH if you haven't already and notify Defra that you're keeping sheep.

[Fleecewife]

Make sure your new flock has been wormed (and given flukicide if appropriate) the night before delivery and kept in a barn or on hard standing overnight at the seller's.  That way, you start with a worm-free flock and from then on you can use FEC to inform your decision as to whether wormers are needed or not.  Also make sure they have been shorn and treated with an anti-flystrike product.  Ask your seller to write down treatments, including Heptavac, given this year to your date of buying, so you have an accurate medical record for your flock.  With a good start like that you will not need to do anything for a while, so you can get to know your sheep.


How much it's worth getting in in advance depends on the numbers.  If it's a small flock, it may be best to get things in 'as and when' you need them, otherwise you can end up with stuff you don't need, or are not ideal for your exact situation.  It is exciting getting your first flock, but beyond water buckets, good fencing (especially as they will have lambs) and maybe hurdles to make a catching pen, all you need is grass.

[Marches Farmer]

A copy of Tim Tyne's book on sheep keeping for smallholders should set you on the right path.

[Womble]

Make sure your new flock has been wormed (and given flukicide if appropriate) the night before delivery and kept in a barn or on hard standing overnight at the seller's. 

Yes, as FW says, if your land hasn't had sheep on it for a year or so, it won't already be contaminated with worm eggs. So, if you do a really good quarantine worming, you may be able to avoid introducing them at all. Not all wormers are 100% effective these days, so it would be well worth getting signed up with a vet now, and asking them to advise which wormer(s) to use for that initial dose. The important thing to recognise is that this will probably be different stuff to what the person selling you the sheep usually uses.

I only mention this because we messed this up when we first started, and gave ourselves problems that were in hindsight totally avoidable.

[Black Sheep]

Hijacking this discussion a bit, I'm slightly confused. Elsewhere on the forum I've seen advice (and hopefully not misinterpreted it) that you shouldn't worm and move sheep to a new field as all you will do is then fill that field with the resistant worm eggs that survive the treatment, whereas if you worm them and keep them on the same pasture you reduce the impact of this as the eggs they pick up will not just be resistant ones. So wouldn't this apply similarly to moving to a new field that just happens to be on a new holding too?

But on the other hand I can understand that you may not want to bring animals with a heavy worm burden or a worm burden that already has known resistance issues to a new holding, or to introduce worms to a pasture that is worm-free (if it hasn't been used for sheep for sufficient time).

However what I'm struggling with is how you reconcile these two seemingly opposing needs. Really interested in thoughts on this.

[twizzel]

Hijacking this discussion a bit, I'm slightly confused. Elsewhere on the forum I've seen advice (and hopefully not misinterpreted it) that you shouldn't worm and move sheep to a new field as all you will do is then fill that field with the resistant worm eggs that survive the treatment, whereas if you worm them and keep them on the same pasture you reduce the impact of this as the eggs they pick up will not just be resistant ones. So wouldn't this apply similarly to moving to a new field that just happens to be on a new holding too?

But on the other hand I can understand that you may not want to bring animals with a heavy worm burden or a worm burden that already has known resistance issues to a new holding, or to introduce worms to a pasture that is worm-free (if it hasn't been used for sheep for sufficient time).

However what I'm struggling with is how you reconcile these two seemingly opposing needs. Really interested in thoughts on this.

I was advised to worm and keep the ewes in for 2 days when we bought our new sheep, and before the ram we hired went back he was wormed and then kept in as well- so as not to contaminate new fields/holdings with resistant worms?

[farmershort]

Get some good fly repellent with applicator gun (with changeable nozzles to change spray pattern). Spray one of the more expensive types (vectrocin, clik, etc) as a deterrent, and repeat as often as it say on the package (8 to 12 generally). Then get yourself some crovect for treating the ones that actually get maggots. Crovect only lasts 6 weeks when used as a deterrent, but it's the best thing to use to kill the maggots once they're there.

Get your vet out as soon as the sheep arrive to do the 'intro look' at them. From this point on you'll be able to have drugs issued with a phone call. Get some teramycin foot spray as soon as you can, and a bottle of pen strep and teramycin for your stock. Pen strep I'm thinking for joint-ill if they have lambs at foot. Teramycin for a whole raft of things, but bad foot rot for starters.

And have a think about what you want your driving aims to be.... welfare,  flavour, productivity, etc etc... when it comes to feeding, worming, injecting etc, each aim might send you down a slightly different path.

Finally... plan for winter. Save plenty of grass, and make sure you have space to make hay. My 30 in Devon are on 2 bales of hay per day, ever since the start of December really. This will carry on until the grass starts growing again. Mostly because we made an error on the allocation of grazing late in the summer.

[Womble]

However what I'm struggling with is how you reconcile these two seemingly opposing needs. Really interested in thoughts on this.

The 'don't dose then move' advice is because you want to preserve a population of non-resistant 'in refugia' worms (i.e. those that are already on the pasture, and hence not killed by the treatment). Because those worms are then able to compete with any resistant worms present, this slows the development of resistance.

If you 'dose and move' the sheep, then the only worms present end up being those that survived the treatment. This accelerates the development of resistance. I think this link explains it very well.

HOWEVER, if you have clean pasture with no population of worms already on it, you can bring out a combination of the really big guns to nuke any worms present in the incoming sheep. You only get one shot at this of course, but if you were to do that and then maintain a closed flock, you may never have a worm problem in future. The reason we don't use the big guns on a routine basis for established flocks, is that if we did, they'd lose their effectiveness much more quickly.

Well, that's how I understand it anyway. I'm sure folks will correct me if I'm wrong!

[Rosemary]

Our vet recommended using "Zolvix" which is a orange wormer, in terms of group, with monepantel as the active ingredient, for our recently purchsed tup. We kept him in isolation for three weeks (with our wether for company).

Good advice here too:
http://www.scops.org.uk/anthelmintics-quaratine-treaments.html

Agree with previous posts re the Jakoti shears and the covered wheeled hay rack - just make sure you clean out the tray at the bottom daily, or it will make a huge mess that's a nightmare to clear up at teh end of winter (trust me, I speak from bitter experience). You'll need to allow about 50cm per sheep for access. Yes, buckets / water troughs and hurdles. Get a bag of sheep nuts - if they are anything like our Coloured Ryelands, rattling some in a bucket will get them in pdq.

I would NOT recommend buying in bottles of antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem and as a new sheepkeeper, you would be better advised to take vet advice if any of yoru sheep are unwell, rather than taking it upon yourself to administer ABs.

Ryelands have excellent feet and have a natural resistance to footrot anyway - we've kept them for 10 years and have rarely had any foot problems, and if we have it's been individual animals and, with the exception of one ewe, sorted by trimming and a spray of AB spray.

I've thrown many bottles of ABs in the bin, unused but past the use by date, so now I get them on an as needed basis from my vet. Now he knows us, he's happy to put up individual doses for us to collect.

We use Crovect. As a previous reply said it can be used as a preventative and a treatment - I *think* it's the only one that does both, so we just use that one product. It's hard enough to avoid wasting one product - having multiple products that do more or less the same thing just results in more wastage. Yes, it needs applied every six weeks, but if you only have a small flock of sheep, it's not that much of a hardship to spray them every six weeks. I worked it out last year that Crovect was the cheapest option, even taking into account the frequency of application - and we haven't had an incidence of fly strike for years ( ). The frequency of application is a big deal if you have to gather hundreds of sheep but for a small flock? Not so sure.

[farmershort]

Our vet recommended using "Zolvix" which is a orange wormer, in terms of group, with monepantel as the active ingredient.

Good advice here too:
http://www.scops.org.uk/anthelmintics-quaratine-treaments.html

Agree with previous posts re the Jakoti shears and the covered wheeled hay rack. You'll need to allow about 50cm per sheep for access. Yes, buckets / water troughs and hurdles. Get a bag of sheep nuts - if they are anything like our Coloured Ryelands, rattling some in a bucket will get them in pdq.

I would NOT recoomend buying in antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem and as a new sheepkeeper, you would be better advised to take vet advice if any of yoru sheep are unwell, rather than taking it upon yourself to administer ABs.

Ryelands have excellent feet and have a natural resistance to footrot anyway - we've kept them for 10 years and have rarely had any foot problesm, and if we have it's been individual animals and, with the exception of one ewe, sorted by trimming and a spray of AB spray.

I've thrown many bottles of ABs in the bin, unused but past the useby date, so now I get them on an as needed basis from my vet. Now he knows us, he's happy to put up individual doses for us to collect.

I wasn't advocating self-determining use of AB's Rosemary, it's just that if you get a case of pnuemonia or something of that order, it pays to be very very quick with that first dose of AB. It's often quicker to ask the vet the question over the phone, and then go to your (unopened) bottle, than it is to wait for the vet to be able to come out. each to their own and all that, but the massive concerns around AB resistance seem to be far more focused on prophylactic use (in animal feeds in china, etc) and on giving a single jab where a full course is needed... This last point being just as big an issue in humans of course.

It's very difficult for us to get on the anti-AB bandwagon when everyone and their dog is advocating using Teramycin injection as the 2nd stage cure for foot-rot. This leads (I believe) to a lot more single-dose uses.

anyway, calling a vet is always a must, but having an unopened bottle ready on hand seems sensible to me.

[Sbom]

Zolvix should only really be used when new stock is bought as it kills everything, but we have been advised to use it carefully as sheep in many areas are building a resistance to it through over use. I believe some areas in wales have sheep resistant to it...

[Dans]

We used zolvix as a quarantine treatment when we got our sheep. We had clean pasture and wanted to preserve it. Had to really convince the vet that we weren't wanting to use it regularly and that you can quarantine treat to protect the land when you don't already have animals but we got there.

We haven't had to worm yet (we have been doing FEC to check) so can't say about buying in wormer but if your vet will do them by the dose for you like ours does then that is better. Wormers can be affected by frosts so not having lots stored can be a bonus.

We used click and a cleaned out kitchen spray bottle to administer it. Hurdles have been amazing and used everywhere.

We also bought some second hand hay racks, a plastic feed trough and some foot shears. Oh and some purple spray for any wounds.

I second Tim Tynes book as well

Dans

[Black Sheep]

The 'don't dose then move' advice is because you want to preserve a population of non-resistant 'in refugia' worms. Because those worms are then able to compete with any resistant worms present, this slows the development of resistance.

If you 'dose and move' the sheep, then the only worms present end up being those that survived the treatment. This accelerates the development of resistance. I think this link explains it very well.

HOWEVER, if you have clean pasture with no population of worms already on it, you can bring out a combination of the really big guns to nuke any worms present in the incoming sheep. You only get one shot at this

Thanks for the link, this was my understanding too. So the only way these two opposing aims can be balanced is by "nuking" worms in any oncoming livestock (if you have worm free pasture to preserve) - which requires the use of very specific products rather than just what would commonly be used in the area the livestock are coming from. Useful to know to enquire about this specifically if they are being done before they arrive.