sheep October Photos by Richard Hilson

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1 sheep October 2013 Cobalt Deficiency Foot Scald Parapox Photos by Richard Hilson Make sure you don t miss this year s 150th Hawke s Bay Show which Vet Services Hawke s Bay is proud to sponsor. It s going to be a huge three day celebration! Save $4 off an Adult ticket by using the promo code to pre-purchase tickets, usually valued at $16, for only $12. But you must buy before 20th October 2013! PROMO CODE - VSHB150 To purchase tickets please go to or bring this voucher into the Hawke s Bay A&P Society Office, Showgrounds Hawke s Bay. Use the promo code when purchasing your ticket. An Adult ticket includes entry for one adult for one day at the 150th Show.

2 Cobalt/vitamin B12 deficiency Peter EBBETT The disease Cobalt is required by the rumen micro-organisms for the synthesis of vitamin B12. A lack of cobalt will therefore cause vitamin B12 deficiency in ruminants. Deficiency causes loss of appetite resulting in poor growth. The disease is therefore often referred to as a starvation or wasting disease even though the animals are usually grazing adequate feed. Cobalt/vitamin B12 deficiency - Effects on the animal Cobalt deficiency in soil and/or pasture leads to a lack of vitamin B12 in body tissues. Vitamin B12 is essential in energy and protein metabolism. Under deficient conditions, calves and lambs may thrive and grow normally until they deplete their vitamin B12 reserves in liver and other tissue. They will soon lose appetite and fail to grow. In severe cases anaemia, rapid weight loss and finally death will occur. Pastures that are marginally cobalt deficient result in low vitamin B12 levels in the dam and can cause birth of weak lambs and calves among which the death rate can be high. Even a marginal deficiency may cause poor production, particularly poor growth rates in young stock as they are most sensitive to vitamin B12 deficiency. Cobalt/vitamin B12 deficiency - The signs In severe cases, a watery discharge from the eyes may be seen and anaemia, rapid weight loss and finally death may follow this. In sheep, wool may appear white or washy with a reduced growth rate. In cattle, dull harsh coats may be seen. Commonly, impaired weight gain in lambs or calves will be the first sign of deficiency noted. Cobalt/vitamin B12 deficiency - Lost production and reduced returns Most animals do not show any outward sign of the disease unless there is a marked deficiency. The health and productivity of affected animals can, however, be severely affected with marked decreases in: growth rates in young stock, fertility and reproductive performance with more still births and early deaths, milk production, and fibre production. Vitamin B12 deficiency affects profitability through production targets not being achieved and reduced returns. Criteria to assess vitamin B12 status Cobalt deficiency is best diagnosed by measuring liver vitamin B12 concentrations. Preventing cobalt/vitamin B12 deficiency Increasing cobalt intake by application of cobalt in the fertiliser can prevent cobalt deficiency in grazing animals although repeat applications will be required, making this a costly method. The direct treatment of grazing animals with cobalt is difficult and labour intensive as large weekly or fortnightly oral doses are needed. Intra-ruminal cobalt bullets can be effective. Injecting vitamin B12 has been used for many years as a means of protection against Cobalt/vitamin B12 deficiency. While widely used, injections of vitamin B12 preparations at a rate of 0.05 to 0.1 mg vitamin B12/kg liveweight have been shown to only be effective for up to 4 to 6 weeks. Now, with SMARTShot, there is a simple cost-effective way of providing your stock with the beneficial effects of vitamin B12 over a sustained period. SMARTShot SMARTShot B12 offers an improved dosage form through its sustained action and convenience of administration. The release of vitamin B12 from the injection site is controlled to give sustained supplementation. Gives long term protection and peace of mind from knowing that SMARTShot B12 goes on working for you! In lambs a ½ ml dose will last 3-4 months, 1ml dose will last 6-8 months. No more hassles of mustering for repeat treatments at least every four to six weeks, as required with other vitamin B12 injections. The only decision to make is when to use SmartShot? A lot of farmers use SMARTShot at docking time for the convenience. However in the majority of cases we have found Vitamin B12 issues do not arise until after weaning in the late Summer/ early Autumn period, therefore a weaning dose is more appropriate. It is particularly convenient to give ewe lamb replacements a 1ml dose of SMARTShot and have the peace of mind that they are protected through the critical growing period of their life. August winners of the 1st draw for the picnic tables Waipukurau: Justin King, Brookwood Station Hastings: Pharazyn Family, Motere Station Dannevirke: Neil & Pam Hyslop Reminder: don t forget to put lambs aside for a FECRT Ram runs No excuses! The ram run planning is underway again for 2013/14. Please contact us at the clinic to get your rams checked this year so you get the best results next year!

3 Foot scald in Lambs Lameness in lambs can be an issue especially if they are due to be slaughtered as sending lame sheep to the freezing works can result in penalties. Also lame lambs will not generally grow as fast due to a reduction in appetite and therefore energy intake. A common cause of lameness in lambs in New Zealand is Foot Scald or Interdigital Dermatitis. This disease is caused by wet conditions leading to the skin between the claws becoming macerated and allowing bacteria to enter the dermis/skin. It is also aided by any form of trauma to the interdigital skin such as caused by long grass or rough fodder. Heavy stocking densities combined with wet conditions will also predispose to the disease. Foot scald can lead to foot-rot and foot abscesses. This happens if the right bacteria are present to cause the more severe lesions seen with foot-rot. The bacteria in isolation will produce mild disease but when they work in synergy the severe disease will be seen. Simon Marshall Up to 90% of a mob can be seen to be affected with foot scald and it can affect all ages. Ram hoggets in their first winter are perhaps most susceptible due to their behaviour once puberty is reached. When the foot is examined the skin between the claws is red and swollen and can sometimes have a white film covering it. The characteristic smell of footrot is absent. Foot scald will recover spontaneously if the mob is removed from the wet pastures onto dry areas. If this is not possible due to the wet weather then foot bathing once a week is necessary. Zinc sulphate in a 10% solution should be used in the foot bath. A contact period of 1-2 minutes is recommended. Once they have been through the bath they need to stand in a dry area to allow the solution to dry to the feet. In very severely affected sheep a treatment of antibiotics is advised. If you think that you have an issue with lame sheep it is best to get advice from a vet and an examination of affected sheep. This will lead to a correct diagnosis and correct management of the disease being put in place. Growing good two tooths Richard Hilson This is a critical issue for good long term performance from your ewe flock and it is something that is usually under rated. In the Old Days when no one mated hoggets, it wasn t so hard to grow out a decent two tooth and there was always a period in spring when the mob could be put in a corner while all the ewes on the farm got the attention over lambing. With hogget mating now part of mainstream sheep breeding, there are few opportunities to make up lost ground so emphasis should be on making every post a winning post. One of the most significant bits of data that came out of the Bearing Study about ten years ago was the influence of weight on ewe performance. Condition matters too but simply put, heavy ewes have more lambs- across fully recorded ewes the data was incredibly strong. The issues with two tooths is that we often see disappointment with scanning results and much of this comes down to weight. If we accept that size does matter then what your two tooths achieve will set them up for the rest of their productive life. How to do that? Best Practice for a start- ensure animal health is all correct by reducing losses through vaccine use and minimising parasite effects by careful integrated grazing and/ or chemical options. While we are wary of drench resistance, capsules in hoggets (especially twinners) are a good idea to avoid any sort of check during lactation. There are plenty of clever options to achieve various degrees of refugia and if hoggets must lamb on country that older ewes lambed on then they will face huge parasite challenge. Feed, feed and more feed. When docking, cropping and weaning is going on it is easy to forget to keep focus on the lambing hoggets as they are a smaller mob. Shift them and give them a decent pick. And wean early at 70 days too- leaving lambs on beyond this is a great way to shrink their dams. Don t do it. What to aim for? Weigh them and get some idea where they are. Most farmers weigh hoggets before they join the ram so we have a starting point. Weights thereafter are hard to come by. What did they weigh at hogget scanning and, really importantly, what did they weigh at weaning? There has been plenty of publicity about weaning ewes at the weight you want to mate them at the next autumn. Do your rising two tooth ewes do that? If you don t lamb hoggets, what do your hoggets weigh now? When we have weighed two tooths rather than guessed at their weight or said that they looked great, we nearly always find they are too small. Weighing sets targets and creates desire to do better- we have several clients who can testify to that and their results show what happens when those targets are set. What target? Every breed is different but the best way is to weigh and condition score at weaning (say two tooth and MA ewes) to see where you have to go with summer feeding and to repeat the exercise about three weeks before mating to see what you need to achieve during the flushing period. We have done regular weighing and condition scoring on several clients farms and I believe that they now have a very good idea of what represents the Perfect Ewe on their farm. It may be a 62 kg composite MA ewe or a 69 kg Romney four tooth but until you weigh the ewes and relate that data to their scanning result you will not know what you are missing out on. We see the disappointment in the performance of many two tooth flocks. Don t buy nice new rams full of the latest genetics then under-do the offspring. Plan ahead now and place emphasis on this most valuable of age groups and you will reap the rewards. Want to work out what your Perfect Ewe looks like? Let us help.

4 Disease of the Month: Parapox in deer Richard Hilson This is one you may not know much about. We see this maybe once a year on velvet stags and it is a significant cause of lost income and animal discomfort. The disease is caused by a parapox virus. This is a hardy virus which can survive well in the environment by virtue of the thick outer wall of the viral particle and this assists in the spread of disease. The spread is helped by wet skin (summer rain), thistles and even long grass- all features of early summer in HB most years. Parapox infection in a two year old stag. We see disease in summer in stags with growing antlers (usually called velvet by virtue of the feeling of the short hair on the sin of the antler). It is most commonly seen on younger age groups, usually spikers or two year old stags. It is so contagious that basically every animal in the group is at risk and on occasion we have had to discard nearly the entire crop of velvet antler from an affected group. The virus causes small blisters (vesicles) on the skin, filled with millions of new viral particles. These spread when the vesicle bursts and obviously contamination can be potentially massive. We don t see the vesicles- we just see the scabs that result. What to do? There is no vaccinetand the aim is to ensure you get the various age groups to cross-graze regularly if you know you have parapox on the farm - this should ensure natural infection, hopefully outside the antler growing season. If infection occurs during the antler growing season you will need to work through the implications with your vet because some animals need their antlers removed as the intense itchiness can make them damage their antlers even more. The affected velvet antler is worthless and must be discarded- we have seen outbreaks that have resulted in over $10,000 lost income in a single week. It is important that these animals do not contact other at-risk groups of younger animals until the antler can no longer get infected (it is hard or has been harvested). This can make dealing with an outbreak very complicated. Once animals have had contact with the virus they get excellent life-long immunity and there are parallels with the well-known sheep disease, scabby mouth. Scabby mouth is a pox virus (so not the same virus and not able to be shared with deer) and causes lesions on the lips and feet of young lambs in particular. To vaccinate lambs we scratch them with a live vaccine at docking and they get the lesions on their inner thigh, thus getting immunity without the debilitating effects of lesions on their lips or feet. It is possible that a vaccine could be developed for deer but as this is a sporadic disease that affects generally small numbers of animals it is something deer farmers live with usually. Be assured that this is a deer-specific disease too - you are not at risk. Orf is the name given to the disease of humans when they catch the scabby mouth virus and it is not an uncommon skin disease for farmers, shearers and wool handlers. But it is very unlikely you ll catch anything similar from your deer! Orf in a vet s finger - an occupational hazard when sheep scanning! Shearing considerations If you plan to shear your ewes with lambs at foot, spare a thought for the potential to set off an important annual animal health issue. Drafting off lambs and holding them apart overnight (and maybe for a significant part of the next day) is basically a good way to start off the new season of lamb pneumonias. These are young animals which will mill about and do a lot of mouth breathing. Mouth breathing short cuts the nasal passage, which is a better air filter than the mouth- it is much easier for airborne pathogens to get into the lungs that way. And that is what is likely to happen, as dust carrying various bacteria and viruses can enter the airways of young, susceptible and somewhat stressed animals. The perfect way to create disease if that is the plan! Richard Hilson Some consideration could also be given to lamb shearing at the point of weaning too, for similar reasons. It would be better to try to do this after lambs have all settled after weaning and there will be less stress and less dust in the yards or shed. And less animals around to either provide or catch the bugs. It never seems like a big issue at the time but when lambs start coughing and stop growing we find ourselves involved and the best way to treat pneumonia in sheep is actually to reduce the risks, not try to fix them later. We appreciate that there are many reasons for the various shearing patterns employed but we can also help plan other shearing patterns, especially where lamb pneumonia is an ongoing issue. Please think long and hard before shearing ewes with lambs at foot - the implications for lamb growth reduction in summer are huge.

5 Seasonal Update Hastings/Napier It has been a very mild winter with good pasture growth overall. Most people have a good supply of feed although there are a few struggling with feed shortages. All of these are a result of a lack of early destocking and planning last summer. Lamb survival has been well above the average due to the good weather. Our early lambing farms started to wean early September in readiness for the first pick in October. At weaning many of these lambs were weighing in at over 40 kg already. This is the payback for the aggressive supplementary feeding these farmers employed during the summer allowing for pastures and crops to recover fully providing high quality feed in the spring. From an animal health point of view the main problem has been parasitism especially in yearling cattle. We have diagnosed clinical lungworm infections on a couple of properties where yearlings have been dying. It seems the mild winter has allowed Waipukurau Another easy month to write about - plenty of feed and good reports from the calving paddocks and lambing beats. We have not been rushed off our feet with calvings as the good weather means we get less calls (that s right, when it is rainy and cold we get more calls!) so that is positive. There have been a lot of metabolic problems in dairy cows, usually simple milk fever. However we are also concerned about similar problems for beef cows and the potential for grass staggers in later spring as well. There are some very fat cows about and if they milk well they are at risk of low magnesium as they head towards peak lactation. There is a definite shortage of store cattle as a result of the Dannevirke As expected the unusually good weather did not last into September that long with quite a few cold wet days plus some extremely strong winds causing havoc on our farms. I hope that lamb survival has not been affected too badly as the ewe body condition was outstanding in general and should have led to fit lambs with plenty of colostrum to drink. Docking won t be far away by the time you read this so make sure all the required bits and pieces have been checked, especially the Thermos! There is no lamb vaccine available this year so 5 in 1 will have to be given to any lambs born from ewes Mark Matthews lungworm larvae to survive when normally they would die. Ostertagiosis in yearlings has also been active, reinforcing how important the Spring drench of yearlings is. Lungworm in deer has also been an issue. Bloat in cattle has also been commonly reported this season. Pastures with a high metabolisable energy (ME) and protein content in combination with low fibre content are sitters for bloat. Many modern pasture species have these attributes so no longer is clover in the sward a prerequisite for bloat. Even using bloat capsules some farmers are still experiencing difficulties with bloat. The dairy farms have had a dream start to the spring with milk production well above average on most farms. One dairy farmer in our area looks like he will crack 400kg of solids in his first year on the farm. Richard hilson drought and prices have reflected that. Docking reports are just drifting in and we suspect the droughtinduced lamb shortage may be corrected marginally by an improved lambing result. Producers are cautiously optimistic but it would appear that traders are keener than that if the store price is anything to go by. Here is hoping that hogget lambing gets a good spell of weather too. Watch out for bloat if this spring kicks off properly- there will be plenty of fresh grass and not enough mouths to control it soon (wind permitting). Simon Marshall that did not receive a 5 in 1 pre-lambing. A reasonable number of ewes were left un-drenched pre-lamb due to being in good body condition with low faecal egg counts so a pre-docking FEC would be advisable to see if a docking drench for the ewes is required. The new Vet Club building is almost finished so keep an eye and ear out for further details about potential opening days and an open day to be held not long after we move in. This is going to be an exciting and rather crazy time for us as we attempt to move a fair bit of gear into a new building in a short space of time! Have a great spring. Lighter note... A tough old cowboy from south Texas counselled his granddaughter that if she wanted to live a long life, the secret was to sprinkle a pinch of gun powder on her oatmeal every morning. The granddaughter did this religiously to the age of 103 when she died. She left behind 14 children, 30 grandchildren, 45 great-grandchildren, 25 great-great-grandchildren, and a 15-foot hole where the crematorium used to be. Dog Vaccination Run Yes it is nearly that time again! Yes we will come to your place, to vaccinate your dogs. Yes we will contact you from the 17th Oct-14th Nov to confirm a time. If you have not heard from us by the 14th Nov you may not be on our runs so please call us at the clinic: Waipukurau (06) Hastings (06) Napier (06) Dannevirke (06) Dannevirke runs begin second week of December

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