When I moved to Guyra a friend told me, you’ll drench all summer and cut firewood all winter. Well fortunately, I don’t cut the firewood, but I do the drenching, and for the first years it wasn’t just summer.
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I used to drench five or six times per year, and still there were deaths and collapsing sheep; they’d barely go four to five weeks in mid-summer.
I now drench only two or three times per year, and despite this reduction, there are no deaths, no worries and it’s very easy to do. Give it a go with just one of your lambing paddocks.
If you lamb in spring on the northern tablelands, this WormBoss program, for the summer rainfall/tablelands and slopes region, is for you. But you must act now; autumn is a critical time.
Here’s the short version for lambing starting in early September:
• Don’t contaminate your lambing paddocks with worm eggs in just March and April.
• Give your ewes an effective short-acting pre-lambing drench as they go into the lambing paddocks.
• Don’t contaminate your weaning paddock for 3 months prior to its use.
• Give your weaners an effective short-acting weaning drench as they go into the weaning paddocks in summer.
• Give other drenches, as required, throughout the year on the basis of worm egg counts.
The key to success is preventing contamination of the lambing paddocks for the 6 months prior to their use.
However, you only need to do this for two months; Mother Nature does it for you in May, June, July and August. You can put wormy sheep in the paddock during these winter months, as it is too cold for the eggs to hatch into larvae.
Your options for the lambing paddocks during the other two critical “preparation” months are to leave them empty or growing crop or hay, graze with cattle, or graze with sheep in the period after they receive an effective drench (three weeks for a short acting drench or more for a long acting).
If you lamb at a different time, adjust your preparation months so that, combined with any cold months (May–August), you prepare them for 6 months prior to their use and drench your ewes into the paddocks just before lambing.
Start now by deciding on one or more paddocks to prepare for lambing, and plan how you will use them in those couple of critical months to avoid contaminating them.
In the meantime, you can use the WormBoss Drench Decision Guide for this region to decide when to drench, what length of protection is warranted and when to check again.
More information can be found at WormBoss.com.au, choose Programs.
