Sheep and Goat Newsletter – November 2013 Betsy Hodge, CCE Livestock Educator From the Extension Learning Farm in Canton Everyone is gorging on apples…what a bumper crop there is this year. Apples will not harm your sheep or goats and they will go to great lengths to get them. A few years ago one of our ewes even got her head stuck in a stone wall while fishing for apples. Apples are mostly water with a little energy thrown in so they don’t add a lot of feed value to your ration but the animals certainly enjoy them and they have all kinds of vitamins in them as well. The heavy apple diet can cause some non-infectious diarrhea but it should pass as the apples get eaten up. Parasites on the other hand are also abundant this fall and should be treated. The most common internal parasite around at this time of year is stomach worms which can cause diarrhea, weight loss (or lack of weight gain) and unthriftiness. De-worming now that it has gotten colder or waiting until it is really staying cold and de-worming is not a bad strategy. Sheep and goats that are still allowed out on the pasture will be grubbing the forages down close and picking up more worm larva – the one downside of the three weeks of warm weather we had this fall. The only animals I have seen showing signs of the Barberpole Worm (anemia) are ewes that are nursing lambs. We de-wormed just those ewes last week and we may do it again once it is cold. The Parasite Management/FAMACHA class is being offered in Westport (over by Lake Champlain) on November 16th. I am teaching the class and would be happy to take producers that want to ride over along with me. The class teaches you about the different types of internal parasites, how to manage your operation to minimize them, what to treat them with and why. We will also look at manure samples under the microscope and at some live animals to practice the FAMACHA technique for finding those animals with anemia. The class starts at 10:30 and you should register with Tiffany at 518-962-8225. While you have your calendars out, save December 4th at 7:00 pm for our Sheep and Goat Week meeting in Canton at the Extension Farm (see the Calendar of Events for other dates and times). tatiana Stanton from Cornell will be here to talk about the copper oxide wire particle study done on two North Country sheep farms and one North Country dairy goat farm. I will also talk about the sheep AI workshop and other news. At the Extension Farm, the sheep are back to the sheep barn and barnyard and all the rams lambs are off to New Holland. The ewe lambs are still being fed in the barn and those staying with the flock will be put back out with the main flock soon and the rest will be sold as lamb for the co-op, direct to the consumer or to the auction. Soon the ram will be put in for breeding the ewes to lamb in April. We will separate the ewes we want to save for fall lambing so they don’t get bred now. All of our animals are benefitting from a good quality hay year and enjoying nice second cut round bales and sheep minerals. We recently culled four big ewes that did not lamb this year and had a bad record of lambing in the past. They were easy to pick out of the crowd due to their rather rotund body condition. The two other cull ewes, pushing ten years old, had the opposite problem and were on the thinner side. The fall born lambs look good except for a set of triplets. Their mother is heavy and has a big udder but they look hungry and cold. Time to separate them and feed them and flip the ewe and check her udder. She seems to be caring for the lambs but they are definitely not getting enough to eat. Two loads of lambs, sheep and goats have gone to New Holland. Most people were happy with the price per pound they received but surprised at the weights of the lambs they sent. Even those that weigh their lambs thought they weights were very low. We experiencing a lot of shrink or drift because of the trip to the auction. Here is a good summary of shrink from the Sheep 201 class from the Maryland Sheep and Goat on-line class (sheepandgoat): Shrink (drift) Shrink is an important component of lamb marketing, especially when negotiating price. Shrink is the amount of weight that a lamb loses during transport to market. Shrink is mostly loss of stomach contents or “gut fill” during the first 20 hours off feed. After the first 20 hours, the lamb’s body compensates for restricted water and feed intake by drawing moisture and nutrients from carcass tissue. Shrink due to trucking is highest in the first 50 to 75 miles. Length of transport increases the amount of shrink. Lambs lose more weight in hot weather than cold weather. Lambs consuming grass or forage diets will shrink more than those consuming concentrate diets. Young lambs shrink more than older lambs. Five to 8 month old lambs usually shrink five percent or more from farm to market weight. Some buyers will apply a pencil shrink to lambs: 3 to 4 percent of the scale weight will be deducted from the lamb. When lambs are sold on the rail, shrink is not important, as gut fill is removed before the carcass is weighed. When making marketing decisions, shrink needs to be considered as a cost. Shrink can be reduced some with proper handling. The summary mentions 5% shrink but we have regularly experienced 15-20% shrink! I talked to our trucker who assures me that the lambs and goats are getting fed and have water in the pens. Many of our lambs and goats are fed on high forage rations which makes them shrink even more when they lose their gut fill. Some have suggested going to New Holland on Friday to give the animals more recovery time before the Monday sale. I don’t know how this would work for many people who work during the week but it might be worth a try some time. Johnes is a disease that sheep and other ruminants can get. It is pronounced Yo-nees. I wanted to mention it because I think it is more prevalent than most people realize. It is a bacterium that settles in the intestine and eventually makes the intestine incapable of absorbing nutrients and the animal basically starves to death. Lambs are infected from milk, manure or contaminated water in the first few months of life but the symptoms don’t show up for years. An FAQ from the National Johnes Education Initiative describes the symptoms like this: When sheep finally do become ill, the symptoms are vague and similar to other ailments: rapid weight loss and, in some cases, diarrhea (scouring). Despite continuing to eat well, infected sheep soon become emaciated and weak. Since the signs of Johne’s disease are similar to those for several other diseases— parasitism, dental disease and caseous lymphadenitis (CLA), laboratory tests are needed to confirm a diagnosis. When an animal with signs of Johne’s disease is discovered, it is very likely that other infected animals—even those that still appear healthy— are in the flock. Control of the infection requires that you and your veterinarian address it on a whole flock basis rather than on an individual animal basis. In addition, since it is usually older sheep that are getting thin and weak it is easy to think it is their age or worms and in many cases that is the problem. Ewes or rams with Johnes will eat well and remain bright while losing body condition. However, Johnes should be considered. There is now a good blood test so testing for Johnes is not as hard as it used to be when an incubated manure sample could take 6 or 7 weeks to give results. Left uncontrolled, Johnes can spread throughout the flock and also contaminate the ground and water around a farm. Left untreated a flock could lose up to 10% of their flock each year in addition to poor performance of affected ewes. Many times flock owners do not realize they have the disease and therefore spread the disease unknowingly. This happened to me in my home flock when we bought several flocks and put them together. We have since culled all the ewes and their offspring from the affected flock and contacted the former owners who had no idea they have Johnes. The fact that the disease can masquerade as so many other common ailments makes it easy to miss. The vet will be testing all the animals in my home flock this fall to try to eliminate the disease from our flock. Hopefully it did not spread to any of the mature ewes we mixed with the Johnes flock. Time will tell! In the meantime, we can’t spread any manure on the pastures which means all the nutrients we brought in with hay cannot be used to benefit the sheep but will instead have to be spread on the corn fields. Needless to say, I am washing my boots when I get to work before I enter our sheep barn at the Extension Farm! Talk to your vet if you suspect you have had a case of Johnes on your farm. Quick action can save contaminating your pastures. Hopefully you will never have to deal with it but I am hoping that my making people more aware of the disease it won’t get spread from farm to farm unwittingly. For more information go to sheepandgoat.org and johnes.org.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 20:12:06 +0000
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