[Kitchen Cottage]

The sheep were crovected last month.  I dagged them week before last and last week had a small flystrike on one sheep bum which meant I topped up the crovect.  I check their little bums every day.

One sheep looking ill yesterday.  very clean.  Checked its bum and didn't seem to have flies on it.... not bloated.  Worms up to date so put it down to off colour.

Today seemed weaker and gave it electrolytes.  It was still up and around but just poorly.

Lunchtime (working from home) notice it has a couple of flies on its back..... cut away the wool and it is riddled with flystrike on the back. 

It was still blue from the crovect last week

Never had it on the back and only twice (caught early) on the bum....

two hours of wool and cleaning..... gave antibiotics and metacam.... it had a horrible afternoon..

Put in a quiet stable...... went out just now and it had died.

I feel terrible.

I checked it again and again and never noticed the flystrike 

[Thyme]

I'm so sorry   I haven't had any fly strike yet and am very paranoid that I won't recognise it when it happens.

[SallyintNorth]

   It happens.  You'll know now that it's not always on the bum, and that any sheep - particularly any lamb - looking sorry for itself during fly season should be assumed to be strucken until proven otherwise.

From the flyestrike page here on Accidental Smallholder:

A sheep that has been fly struck will display abnormal behaviour – it may be on its own, not grazing or cudding but looking preoccupied; it may be rubbing along a fence or wall; it may be stamping its feet, kicking or biting at itself. If you are at all concerned – don’t wait until tomorrow, catch the sheep and examine it closely. There is a distinctive smell associated with fly strike.

The smell is indeed distinctive.  The fleece is usually wet and white fleece may look greyish at the site of the strike. 

[Marches Farmer]

I agree, at this time of year flystrike is my first, second and third choice if a sheep's looking off colour.  Once the maggots have gone in they're excreting into the body (yeuch!) and can bring down a struck sheep within hours.

[Coximus]

Its also worrying that People are more and more talking about sheep taken down after been treated - I've seen sheep on neighbouring farms struck just a week after being done - so I do wonder if reistance exists?

That said - this time of year as everyon above has said - any suspect sheep are rounded up and checked - sometimes you panic and expect the worse as the sheep is nuts and scratching like mad, and its just a bramble stuck close to the skin - othertimes its the quietish one who's riddled. Just get them checked, get them sprayed and get them isolated and offered good high energy food;

I usually pen them up on grass about 20ftx20ft with;
Water,
Energy lick bucket;
Ad lib good hay;
Double ration of ewe nuts / rolls
If available some soft fruit chopped in with the nuts

I find this helps them get going again nice and fast - its amazing how fast strike knocks condition off

[Marches Farmer]

I think it's also worth getting some painkiller from the vet for bad flystrike - only time I've ever seen a sheep grind it's teeth in pain.

[plumseverywhere]

 We had one a couple of weeks ago, she was drifting away from the flock and despite three or four daily checks the maggots were quite established.  We were lucky to catch her when we did but I still felt terrible, she's back out with the flock now after 4 days of intensive nursing with high protein food and hay after a complete shearing and treatment.  Never fails to amaze me how little pockets of maggots just keep appearing the more wool you take off   
sorry to hear about your sheep KC. It's crap when it happens.

[bazzais]

crovect- may as well just spray yourself in it and have some really bad nightmares. Dont rate it at all unluss its 'aftercare'.

Bad stuff. Trippy as hell. - been some bad batches too as other things have superseded it now.



I would only use it after finding maggots and not as a mechanism to stop them.

[Remy]

The shepherd that sheared my sheep this year said that resistance IS building up to Crovect.  Which was confirmed to me when I had a wether who had really bad strike in his feet!  I Crovected his feet to within an inch of his life, at one time the maggots would have just dropped off the second the stuff hit them.  But it didn't seem to have the same effect as it had before.  A few weeks later he was off his feet again, I checked him - and he was riddled with maggots, with barely any foot left on his fronts  .  He'll be going off to the abattoir unfortunately 

[Fleecewife]

  Never fails to amaze me how little pockets of maggots just keep appearing the more wool you take off   

I think the smell of the first lot attracts every fly for miles around so they have an egg laying fest.  It's as if they are trying to kill the animal as quickly as possible so they can get down to the business of eating lovely rotting flesh.
I hate maggots with a vengeance 

Crovect here has been replaced with something else -same ingredients -  I'll have to go and check.  I think it's bound to be less effective on woolly sheep, as it needs to penetrate to the skin, and on primitives which are fairly narrow animals, so the applicator lets a lot run off.  We use a spray so we can check exactly where it goes, which works for a small flock, but you'd soon get RSI with larger numbers.

[Marches Farmer]

If we find flystrike I shear a circle around the struck area then use 100ml Jeyes Fluid diluted with 1 litre of water to flush 'em out - sterilises the wound at the same time but don't use it any stronger or it'll sting.  Just wait for the maggots to appear and pick them off with pair of tweezers and drop them in a bucket which is emptied into the old oil drum we use for burning garden rubbish.  (Yeuch, makes me shiver just to think about it!)  Haven't seen any this summer - I think the cold/hot/cold weather here has kept fly numbers very low.

[Coximus]

I was thikning that maybe like with wormers a traffic light system should be used, but it needs to be co-ordinated over a larger area - IE first treatment one chem, next one another, etc to prevent resistance building up.

I have used jeyes fluid, but used a sponge in a 50ml to 1 l mix and dabbed it onto the area by sponge after a very close shear with the electric clippers, it killed most maggots and most got out on the own damn quick, I was caught out on this one as it was last year in early November and jeyes was at hand and nothing else. Ewe made a stonking recovery and had triplets though

[Daisys Mum]

Every time I go to clik my 20 sheep it either rains or is forecast so have resorted to just calling them over into a pen and checking them every couple of days. The field that they are in is pretty open and windy. My problem will come when I have to wean the lambs as the ewes will need to move into the river field where it's a lot more sheltered. Hopefully I'll get a couple of dry days then.

[princesslayer]

An experienced sheep farmer told me a few days ago that it's possible to poison a lamb with crovect. Anyone have any experience of this? He might have been talking about a young lamb. I have to say it is tempting to overdose them when you find them riddled with maggots...

[SallyintNorth]

Well of course it is.  The pack gives dose rates for each type of use, including for treating a strike.  As with any med, exceeding the recommended dose rate can be dangerous.  You have only to read the Operator Warnings for Crovect to realise that this is a very dangerous chemical.

The guidance says, when treating a strike, to use 2.5ml per 100-150cm², which it says is approx. the size of a human hand, and that most strikes will need 5-10ml. 

The maximum dose for any other use of Crovect is 30ml for a 40kg lamb.  When treating a strike, 30ml would treat 1800cm², or the area of 12 human hands. 

If you've a lamb to 40kgs with more extensive strike than that, it'll be unlikely to survive anyway, and it'd probably be best to put it out of its misery.