[Penninehillbilly]

Hi,  talking to neighbour recently, he was talking about crovecting and worming sheep/lambs. TBH, thinking back I thought he was talking about lambs, but crovecting them as well as ewes? He was offering to do mine.
I'm sure he was talking about worming lambs, is this necessary? Ewes look fat (too fat!), lambs I thought are looking well.
Most of the ewes were wormed soon after lambing, I have found they seem to go downhill a bit if I don't,
First lamb was born Apr 21st, last 9th May. Should I be worming lambs?
TIA

[twizzel]

Do a faecal egg count before you worm, you may find you don’t need to worm, you may find you need to, you may find you don’t need to worm but do need to cocci drench.


Adult sheep shouldn’t need worming at all.


If your neighbour is worming regularly you’ll probably find he has high wormer resistance. And clik/clikzin is much better as a preventative than crovect btw.

[SallyintNorth]

If you're lightly stocked and able to manage pastures so that lambs are mostly on fairly clean ground, you may well not need to worm all your lambs at all. 

We aim to always follow anything with a different species (so cows or ponies follow sheep), which massively reduces the worms for each species.  Now we only worm individuals who look like they need it, which most years might be one or two lambs around September time and probably one or two of the retained lambs (now hoggs) in March / April. 

If I felt we weren't managing to keep lambs healthy on this regime, I would use FECs to keep an eye on things. 

[SallyintNorth]

As to Crovect or Clik/Clikzin, it's a very individual choice on whether, which and when. 

Depending on risk factors, your ability and commitment to keep watch and deal promptly, your attitude to chemicals which harm the ecology, to chemicals which will be in the meat you eat, to chemicals on the wool you shear off, your willingness to accept any risk to sheep welfare, and so on.

Some risk factors you can reduce yourself - keep them on open ground, windy if poss, away from still water, keep them on clean ground, keep them clean (wormed and/or dagged if poopy), shear the adults, etc, etc.  If you hadn't chosen your breed / type yet, choose one that's less inclined to get struck.  Whatever your sheep, don't breed from a ewe that gets struck or a ewe had a lamb struck (unless you can see why it was struck and it's not a genetic factor or you can work around it.)  If you have sheep struck in a particular field or spot (especially if more than once), try to work out why, see if you can adjust something to reduce the risk, or avoid putting sheep in there at risk times. 

I won't use products disallowed by organic regulation, so Clik / Clikzin are not options for me.  Routine Crovect is also frowned upon at the very least, and you can't seem to get Vetrazin any more which was more acceptable  - but still shouldn't be used every year on everything under organic regs.

My flock has a high proportion of Shetland blood and almost all my sheep are polled.  Many of mine self-roo their backends before the main fleece is ready to be shorn, which is a fantastic attribute in my book! 

Most years I don't Crovect anything, but we do keep a careful watch and we do react instantly if we see signs suggesting flies or maggots biting.  We've had one bad strike in the last 5 years, which I put down to incompetent or missing checks (not me, we had a rota; I missed a lamb and went looking for it, no way had it been 100% fit and active on the previous check but nothing had been reported), and maybe average one a year caught when it was a few maggots in the wool, no skin broken, no damage done apart from losing some fleece.  (In at least half of those cases, we'd observed a sheep a tad mucky but not got them in for dagging yet...)  We do Crovect a sheep that's had maggots, to make sure they aren't a target any more.  And a mucky one if we can't get it completely clean behind. 

After shearing, I do preventatively Crovect vulnerables if I am going to be away and do not have faith in whoever will be caring for the sheep, or it feels like a particularly high risk time / conditions.  Here, vulnerables would be my black Wensleydale (no longer breeding) and her Romney x wether son, anyone I've had to dag more than once or in the last month and isn't completely clean, any lamb with Zwartbles blood in it.  Possibly all the lambs, depends on the conditions.  And I'd probably do the annual chelated mineral drench to make sure they're in the best possible shape.  And yes, worm and dag anyone who isn't clean behind.