[steve_pr]

How are people doing?  We have fly strike with a vengeance on our Ryelands and Greyface Dartmoors (maoinly the lambs).


We treated them all with Ectofly (which our local supplier said was as good as Crovect but cheaper!_. Absolute rubbish! Just two weeks later have spent all the evening cruthing and picking out maggots (yuck!). OK, so the weather has been perfect for flys - damp and then really warm but this is getting silly.  We are treating now with Crovect to kill the remaining maggots and are going back to Clik as a preventative for the rest of them.


What are other doing, or are we just being unlucky?

[SteveHants]

Ectofly is crovect (its the same chemical). Maybe use that to get rid of the flies and then treat with something like clik or vetrazin?

[Bionic]

Steve,
You are making me worried now. I am in Carmarthenshire and have Ryelands.
I clik'd mine last Thur as its a month since they were shorn and I think their fleece is long enough now. Lambs were clik'd a while before that.
Going out to feed them all shortly so will take a good look at them then.
thanks

[SallyintNorth]

The thing with Crovect is that it is essential to apply it correctly for the cover you want.  You need to use the right head on the applicator, and, for fly prevention, spray it in such a way that you get a wide band (2" to 4") of pale blue over the areas you want to protect - typically from the shoulders to the tail head and an arc around the buttocks.  Up here we get head flies, so we also put a short strip between the ears, especially on lambs with horns or scurs.  (Doing that without getting it in their eyes takes some doing.)

I haven't any experience of using Crovect for fly prevention on very woolly sheep - I guess that GFD and Ryeland lambs are already pretty shaggy?

If I were in a flystrike hotspot, I think I would certainly expect to dag / crutch any woolly sheep thoroughly as well as protect with Crovect or Vetrazin.

[shep53]

You have to understand that Crovect  / Ectofly  applied with a fan spray only protects the areas sprayed , IT DOES NOT SPREAD

[Backinwellies]

Crovec is not preventative againt fly strike just treats.  Clik is prevention.

[Fleecewife]

Crovec is not preventative againt fly strike just treats.  Clik is prevention.

<< Crovect Pour-On is a versatile, easy to use synthetic pyrethroid pour-on for the treatment and prevention of blowfly strike and for the treatment and control of head flies, and…>>
 
This from the link above.

[Backinwellies]

appologies got it wrong way ..... Clik can't be used to treat just prevent

[Marches Farmer]

I treat my lambs with Clik the moment I see the first greenbottle.  This year it was 11th May and that should last until Autumn (but who knows what the weather's going to do this year ....?)  Numbers of flies have just exploded here over the last few days. Ewes will be Clik'd four weeks after shearing finished, so in three weeks' time, when the fleece is about 1cm long.

[Herdygirl]

All our flock (170 ewes and lambs) get treated with Crovect every 5 weeks as soon as the flies come out, late May here.  Black lambs, in our case pure bred Herdwicks, can be susceptable to flies, dont know why, maybe because if there is a 'strike it's harder to spot.
 
We get hold of them and check for maggots every two weeks. One tip we have been given is make up a solution of Battles fluid and water and pour a jug full over the backs and back legs of any you think might be itching too much.It kills the maggots and clears your sinuses! and then re-treat with Crovect.
 
We used Ectofly last year.... never again, we lost 6 lambs    despite the above regime.  mind you it was fly heaven last year, wet and warm.

[17AndCounting]

We have found a Romney lamb tonight with fly strike. He looked fine yesterday but looks awful tonight :-( He is scouring as well, so we've hosed him down to clean him up and then dagged where we could, then applied Crovect quite liberally. We've offered food and water up at the house but he wasn't particularly interested. Is there anything else we can do?

We've checked all the others tonight, our Hebs and BWM are almost impossible to check (too flighty to get hold of). Used the bucket and food to check all of the others.

[Herdygirl]

worm him as well,and then it's just a case of waiting to see if he picks up, if he doesn't, then get him put down... quickly. How bad has he been struck?

[17AndCounting]

To be honest he's the first one we've had with fly strike so I don't know how to measure whether it's bad or not. We found two 10p piece size patches of maggots on him, plus the underside of his tail had loads on. The Crovect seems to have worked on the maggots we can see and I must admit I applied it quite liberally.

Which wormer would you recommend?

[SallyintNorth]

Don't forget to check the feet of lambs that are lame and/or strucken.  Just had our first maggoty foot tonight  .  He feels better now, poor wee fella.

[Fleecewife]

There is a case for giving a struck sheep a long acting antibiotic if they are badly affected by the strike. The open sores are a way in for infection, and the maggots excrete a toxin (I read that somewhere on TAS....?) so rest, cool and calm, plus supportive nursing will help the animal recover from the shock.
17andcounting - I would say your strike was a medium attack.  I have seen sheep recover from much more severe maggots than that, but equally I have seen them die from less (we had a careless neighbour so there were always struck sheep about  )   I wonder if how deeply they go in has a worse outcome than if they are just on the surface of the skin?
 
Once the first maggots have hatched they give off a smell which attracts lots of other flies for an egg-laying fest as they do their best to kill the poor sheep.   I hate maggots with a vengeance.