Sheep and Flystrike

This post has been wanting to be written for a few months.  At the same time, I haven't wanted to write it.  However, I am hoping that my painful lesson may help someone else.

During our humid summer, flies were a huge problem.  I'd been waiting for the shearer to come and shear my sheep and he was very busy - it was put off twice taking an extra two months.  As February rolled on with temperatures in the high thirties, I was worrying about my sheep - especially my hoggets which had never been shorn.

Then one afternoon, my neighbour called and told me that my lambs had flies.  He dropped in with instructions and a bottle of dip.  He told us to clip their dags and legs but leave about 1cm of wool and liberally pour the dip over.  He said to leave that layer of wool for the dip to soak into and keep working.

I cleaned up the two lambs with flies and dipped them.  I caught the other two and although they had no sign of flies, I dagged them anyway.  I caught my two hogget ewes, checked them and dagged them too.  No sign of flies on them either.  It was quite obvious with the lambs because the flies were hanging around them, but not the other sheep.

I was quite surprised about one of my hoggets, I'd noticed her across the paddocks, spending a lot of time lying down while the others were up and around.  I'd been sure she had flies, but she seemed clean.

I had a hard time sleeping that night.  I kept seeing the maggots eating the lambs.  It's a nasty thing to see.

About a week later, the neighbour rang again (apologising profusely for 'interfering') and said we'd missed one.  I went back to check, I thought it was the same hogget I'd been worried about as she was still spending most of her time lying down and listless.  She got up and ran, it was very hard to catch her, but catch her I did and I could find no sign of flies or maggots on her this time either.

Perhaps it was the heat?  That was all we could think of and the shearer was supposed to be coming that weekend.  On Saturday, we penned the sheep up ready for him.  The ram we'd borrowed nearly a year earlier was going home after shearing.  We'd just gotten back to the house after penning them up for a cuppa when we got the message that he'd called and won't be able to make it today.  The place he was going to just before us had considerably more sheep than he'd expected and it was going to be too late by the time he finished with their sheep.  Give him a call during the week and he'd come out one evening.

We managed half a cup of coffee before the ram's owners arrived.  So we went back to separate the ram from the others.  Getting him onto the trailer was fun - it took four of us to drive him half the way and then a flying tackle from the owner as he was charging at me before we finally got him under control. It was a good thing that he hadn't been shorn because fistfulls of wool at scruff and rump was the only way to move him.  I warned the owners that we'd had issues with flies, they checked him over and said he was fine and rams rarely suffer from it anyway.

While I still had that hogget penned, I checked her over again.  I checked between her toes, I pulled apart the wool to see her skin for at least half of her body.  I found nothing.  It was bugging me that she seemed unhappy and lethargic, I worried that I was missing something and that my sheep was unhealthy.

The shearer didn't come that week, I left messages and didn't get a call back.

A week or so later, I saw her lying down in her paddock with a heron picking over her wool.  She wasn't moving and I was afraid that she had died.  We went to have a look, as we opened the gate for that paddock, she got up and ran away with half her wool hanging off her and dragging on the ground.

We managed to get her into a pen to check her over.  Her entire rump and back legs was bald.  No wool attached at all.  Around her middle was a wide band of scabs and maggots.

How did I miss this?  How could I check her over thoroughly a week earlier and not see a single wound, fly or maggot?  I clipped the rest of her wool with my dagging shears.  The neighbour came down with some fresh dip and to check her for us.  He thought she'd survive since she was up and eating when he came over.  He said to be sure that she had shade because sunburn could be an issue.  He also said that once the shearer had been, give him a call and he'd drench all of our sheep and give them a pour on.

I went away on holiday for a week.  It's a trip I make every year.  The shearer came while I was away.  The neighbour did his thing and iodined that hogget's healing wounds.

She went down and wouldn't get up.  Hubby and Miss Ten made a sling for her to hold her up.  They rang and told me about it and sent me pictures.  She survived the night, but still wouldn't stand on her own.  The next morning, they found her.  She'd gotten out of the sling, but had put her head through the wooden railings and broken her neck.  They figured she'd given up and wanted to die.

I beat myself up for it for weeks.  It didn't matter how many stories I heard about experienced farmers getting caught out with flystrike this year, that it could have only been a few days and it takes them that fast.  It didn't matter that I'd checked her over three times in as many weeks.

While I know that if you have livestock, you have dead stock and that's how it is, I still felt responsible for the suffering of my sheep.  Death by flystrike is a brutal and truly dreadful thing and I blamed myself.

Then I told a friend who is a vet.  I think it was part of my self-flagellation.  I told her and sat back waiting for the accusations of negligence and the telling off that I was sure I deserved.  Instead, I got an explanation about how sometimes the maggots burrow inside the animal instead of staying on the surface and eat it from the inside out. I was told the chances of finding the tiny entry point early enough to save the sheep are very slim to none and how there is nothing you can do when this happens.

It helped.  After a while.  At first I was disbelieving, I thought she was trying to make me feel better.  Then I thought about the kind of person that friend is.  She's not going to lie to anyone to soothe a guilty conscience, if I'd been negligent, she would have given me both barrels like I'd thought I'd deserved.  What she'd said about the maggots going internal was also later backed up by others.

I'm still upset about my sheep, but now I'm okay with it.

Dear Weather Gods,

I wish to lay a formal complaint.

I understand that weather is variable and that there are never any promises or guarantees regarding what kind of weather we will get.  I've always had faith however, that the weather will at the very least suit the season and time of year.

It's the first of May today.  We're supposed to be approximately halfway through Autumn.  We can usually count on the first frosts around now.  In any normal year, they're not too surprising as nights are usually getting colder over the previous month.

28 degrees for most of the day, dropping to 25 just before the sun disappeared behind the mountain is not a normal temperature for May.  It's almost as though we're getting a normal (if short day length) Summer finally after the Summer on steroids that we've just escaped from.

I became rather excited last week when I saw that we were forecast for rain this weekend.  The ground has gotten drier than it was all Summer.  Imagine my disappointment on Friday night when I saw that the forecast had changed and the rain was no longer coming (and sadly, the forecast was accurate) and we're still left high and dry.

Normally, I prefer the heat, Summer is my favourite time of year.  I will confess that the Summer we've just had challenged that somewhat.  I found myself hiding from the sun and the heat rather than revelling in it.  I am enjoying still wearing t-shirts without an extra layer and hardly ever getting the fire going even though that is not normally possible at this time of year.

I do find myself wondering whether there is some sort of shenanigans going on up there.  Have there been staffing changes or a new quality system that no one really understands and doesn't seem to make any sense but the management believe in it so you just have to go along with it?  Is this some kind of hold out for more prayers or rain dances?  Has the sheep mortality rate due to new and nastier flies encouraged by the unseasonal weather not been sufficient sacrifice to you?  Do you have it in for North Canterbury farmers so much that we have the wettest January ever but the driest Autumn?  Did someone forget to flip a switch or are you all drunk up there?

Please get it sorted before we feel compelled to try another company for this service,

Yours sincerely


Most of North Canterbury.