Worming Sheep

It is always difficult to determine the optimum time to worm sheep. This year has been particularly challenging as the long dry spell gave us a break from the worms and now the mild prolonged autumn has meant that some animals are carrying more adult worms than they can cope with. Often with wormers it is not the case that the flock has not responded to the dose, it is more likely that there has been too long an interval between treatments. Recently we have found that problems have developed six weeks after the last treatment. In some ways it is a similar situation to the one that we are more familiar with at the start of the year. Lambs have not had the usual exposure to gut parasites until recently and now they are faced with high numbers of larvae on pastures that have built up over the summer and are all becoming active as moisture levels rise on the grass. It is most unusual for us to get to December without having any frosts to check the progress of the parasites and it is inevitable that you will need to use more wormer now if you do not want to risk lambs loosing condition.

Lack of Developments

As time goes on our knowledge and understanding of most diseases improves and we are able to develop better vaccines and better drugs to treat diseases that were a real problem not so many years ago. If only it were possible to say similar things about bovine tuberculosis. Even now after all of the studies and all the research that has gone on we are now further than ever from bringing this disease under control. The controls and the tests that we use now would be familiar to practitioners that were working on farms sixty or seventy years ago. Forty years ago they were on the verge of eradicating this disease and most herds were being tested just once every four years. When it was first discovered that there was a wild life host they kept on and started to do something about it until politicians put a stop to it all. 

Surge of Infection

Every now and again there seems to be a surge in the numbers of farms affected by tuberculosis and with the numbers of animal on some individual farms that react to the skin test. It is by no means clear just why this should happen or if there is anything more that you could do to stop the spread of the infection once it has become established in your herd. In the past cows were tied up at the neck and most spent the winter months at the same place in a cow house. For much of the year there was no interaction with other cattle or calves and no possibility that they would salivate over some food that would eventually be eaten by another animal. During those times fewer animals were kept and there was less movement of cattle between farms. Also at that time in Shropshire the indications are that there were few and no infected badgers. Things are often distorted looking back, I know there were lots of problems with cows that were not properly identified but I get the impression that outbreaks of tuberculosis were resolved faster than they are now.

Contaminated Feed

It is inevitable now that farms are more specialised there are fewer mixed farms and with modern wormers many fields are kept as grassland for long periods and this would seem to encourage badgers as they like grass that is grazed by cows and is kept short. Badgers are opportunist feeders and are attracted to concentrate feed that they find on the fields. They are bold animals and will soon start to investigate farm buildings at night once they have got a taste for the feed you are giving your cattle. When badgers feed with farm stock they will often contaminate it with their urine and faeces. Cattle will usually avoid contaminated grass if they have enough space to be selective, but they will eat the entire concentrate ration with whatever has been added to it.

Physical Barriers

It would seem to me that if you are having problems with tuberculosis that are not resolving you should now be thinking about how to stop badgers spoiling the things that they eat. It should at least be possible to keep them out of the buildings where grain and feed is stored. Badgers are strong animals, if they can get their head under a door they will readily push their way in. The height of a badger’s head is just 3 inches so any gaps under doors and walls will need to be less than that. Badgers can climb and it is not realistic to keep them out of feeding troughs at night even if they are some height off the ground. If you have modern buildings it might be possible to keep your night time visitors out by solid physical barriers.

Ring Fencing

When the cattle are in for the winter you will spend most of your time in and around the farm buildings. It might be possible to protect this area with a low level electric fence making sure that the rest of the buildings are secure behind a solid barrier. Silage pits are difficult to secure as there will always be some feed spilt on the ground and the recommendation is that cows should have access to the feed barrier all of the time.

This does need some planning as you will have to find a way of keeping the wire tight over undulating ground and securing ditches and drains.

Living with the Disease

You may well be thinking that this is going to be a lot of work and that on your farm it would be difficult to keep the badgers out.

On many farms it is possible to live with Tuberculosis and continue more or less in the same way as you do now. Very few animals will get the disease to the extent that it affects their production. Animal Health are quite flexible about allowing stock to be purchased now to replace those that you might have lost to the disease as long as you do not get too far away from your normal buying pattern. Fat cattle and barren cows can still go to an abattoir with a license and even reactors will find their way into the food chain as most of them will pass meat inspection when they are slaughtered.

Making Provision for Calves.

Problems occur if you do not finish your cattle and on dairy farms that do not normally keep male and beef calves. These animals would not usually be affected by the disease and it might be possible to set up an isolation unit in a building on the farm away from other stock so that after two clear tests sixty days apart they would be able to be sold again.

Testing Days

At best tuberculin testing is always an inconvenience as it is a lot of extra work every two months. Usually we find that if you are having short interval tests the cattle eventually get more used to going through the crush. It helps considerably if they have at least one plastic tag.

Sometimes if you have good handling facilities and visible tags it is possible to measure and inject most of your stock in the race to speed up the process.

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