Author Topic: Maggotty foot (Read 3570 times)

Hevxxx99 · « **on:** July 15, 2016, 05:55:16 pm »

Picked up a lamb today with a foot crawling with maggots.

I'd seen her on 3 legs a couple of days ago and knew I had a problem. Yesterday, she outran me: she and her mother are very wily, but got her today, thank goodness.

She's now in the barn with a footful of pour on, antibiotics and a jab of painkillers so fingers crossed she'll get better. I noticed she has some eggs laid in her fleece on her belly as well so she'll get a goodly dose of Crovect too.

Poor little blighter. The weather has made perfect conditions for scald/footrot and flystrike. All the sheep will be in tomorrow for a thorough going-over as there are several footy ones. Hopefully no more maggotty ones though!

Fleecewife · « **Reply #1 on:** July 15, 2016, 06:33:17 pm »

If a sheep has footrot then maggots aren't such an awful thing, briefly. They clean out the foot before they get down to flesh, so if you find them early then you will have had help to clear up the footrot. Maggots were an ancient treatment used to clean out infected wounds before antibiotics were developed.

As you've discovered, the maggots rapidly crawl up onto the belly when the sheep is lying down, and can go un-noticed there.

A couple of days ago we realised all of our lambs, but no ewes, were being mightily bothered by flies. We rounded them up for Crovecting, and fortunately not one had been struck

It was 6 weeks to the day since the Crovect had been applied previously.

It's just so horribly muggy and perfect fly strike weather.

Hevxxx99 · « **Reply #2 on:** July 15, 2016, 08:26:02 pm »

Yep. Foul weather. I'm starting to feel winter has a lot going for it.

Checked her again and the maggots are now all out and she's even walking on it again already!

I'll be crovecting tomorrow if it isn't raining, after a thorough foot-check!

Marches Farmer · « **Reply #3 on:** July 16, 2016, 08:49:53 am »

We found a small patch of maggots under an even smaller area of soiled wool on a newly shorn sheep last week. They'd also gone into clean wool on her hock which the shearers had missed. I'm Cliking this weekend, even though the fleece is too short for them to cling onto. It's cool and breezy here but as soon as the sun shines the humidity goes through the roof.

Hevxxx99 · « **Reply #4 on:** July 17, 2016, 02:41:55 pm »

Nasty, tricksy things. Hates them.

Found another lamb with freshly hatched maggots in his foot yesterday, so got him treated as well and checked and crovected all the rest.

I think I'm going to start running them through a weekly footbath as a pecaution - there are a few lambs being a bit footy at the moment.