Our weekly monitoring of spore counts shows a trend of rising spore counts across the region.
These spore counts are not particularly relevant to your farms actual spore load but highlight the fact that the local farming environment is currently a good environment for growing fungal spores.
Animals can be affected two ways by ingesting spores; A long period of ingesting low levels of spores or a large short term dose of spores. Either way causes non reversible liver damage, symptoms seen in affected animals may not be obvious and there is no definitive treatment.
The biggest financial risk to farmers is in your ewe flock. This will show up as a poor scanning result and potentially a higher death rate over winter but particularly around lambing.
In beef systems you may see suboptimal growth rates which may not pick up as the weather cools and feed quality improves again in late autumn.
Spores only develop on grass based pasture and prefer dead matter. With the increase in dead matter in the pasture at this time of year, any morning dews, high humidity or light rain bursts can cause rapid increases in spore development on this dead matter. Alongside this, the animals are now likely to be eating to a lower level in the grass sward, which can result in eating more spores.
Preventative oral dosing ruminant animals with a zinc product or applying fungicide to paddocks prior to significant spore counts are the main strategies to mitigate a challenge.
Limiting exposure through grazing management and spore count monitoring are the management strategies to help avoid a problem, but in reality there will still be some risk.
Please talk to your local Production Animal Vet to discuss the best options for you.
Dave Warburton, (06) 876 7001
