Farming Diary by Jasmine Smith, Yan Farm Health, Old Hutton:

WINTER is one of the busiest times for vets.

Stock are housed and close to hand, so it’s a good time to carry out any routine monitoring, treatments and tests.

On the sheep side of things, we’ve been blood sampling ewes due to lamb in spring to check their trace-element levels. Sheep may be deficient in trace elements such as selenium, cobalt, copper and iodine. Low levels can cause reduced fertility in the ewes and affect their unborn lambs. Low copper levels during gestation can lead to a disease called swayback in lambs. Their nervous systems do not develop correctly, causing weakness in the hind limbs. Unfortunately, the condition is not curable, but it is easily prevented by supplementing in-lamb ewes with copper. Low levels of iodine can cause lambs to be stillborn or weak at birth. Interestingly, it’s recently been discovered that giving too much iodine causes binding of the antibodies in the ewe’s colostrum, making them unavailable to the lamb. Therefore, it’s important to take blood samples and only supplement with what is required.

We’ve also been busy collecting blood samples and muck samples from cattle and sheep to check for signs of liver fluke. If you haven’t heard of this parasite before, it’s a leaf-shaped worm that migrates through the liver until it reaches the bile ducts and gall bladder - where it reproduces. The eggs are then shed onto pasture where they go through multiple stages of development, including one inside the mud snail. The parasite causes anything from sudden death to ill thrift, depending on the numbers ingested by the animal. It’s a constant battle against fluke here in Cumbria because the climate is very favourable to both the fluke’s development and the mud snail host it requires. Thankfully, the hot weather in summer means there are generally less mud snails about, and so less fluke. However, the warmer wet days in autumn may have increased the infection risk. We test blood samples from lambs for antibodies, and muck samples for coproantigen (secretions from the liver fluke) and fluke eggs.

By the time you read this article, it’ll be 2022! This year will bring many changes, including the introduction of the Sustainable Farming Incentive. This scheme will pay famers to produce public goods such as improved water quality, increased biodiversity, improved animal health and welfare and climate mitigation. As mentioned in last month’s article, we are hosting workshops (Covid permitting) to assist farmers’ improvements in these areas. If you’d like to find out more, please give us a call, we love a chat!