Liver fluke: This week’s sheep feature reports on a hill farm walk in Sligo. The feature covers breeding advice, but there was also important information delivered on flock health. Michael Gottstein of Teagasc advised farmers that those on marginal soils in particular are entering a high-risk period for liver fluke.

He said each year the Teagasc sheep specialist team get calls in the coming weeks from farms where deaths are recorded as a result of liver fluke despite dosing taking place.

He said the cause is sheep being treated with a product that treats adult liver fluke when the greatest threats from September to December are early immature and immature fluke parasites.

He urged farmers to be cautious when selecting products and to select a product that at least treats immature liver fluke.

Full benefit should also be made of following up the health status of livers in slaughtered sheep and faecal egg counts to determine if treatment is successful.

On the latter subject Michael said now is also an opportune time to check on the efficacy of anthelmintics for treating worms with the worm burden on swards likely to be high at this stage of the grazing season. Again a faecal egg count reduction test is the advised route.

Crossbreeding: The article also touches on the potential of crossbreeding in hill flocks. This will depend on the system in place and the overall quality of the ewe flock.

Where the flock is suitable to breeding high-quality hill ewe replacements, there is a growing market in some areas that can be capitalised upon.

This is partly resulting from a higher percentage of crossbreeding as some flocks target the lowland replacement market. The level of crossbreeding will depend on the litter size as detailed in Table 1.

Tag subsidy deadline: The deadline for purchasing tags under the Department of Agriculture’s sheep tag subsidy is Monday 30 September.

The once-off payment is calculated on the basis of €1 per single electronic tag or electronic tag set, meaning that for a producer to get the maximum subsidy of €100, they must purchase either 100 single EID tags / EID tag sets or a combination of the two tag types. The minimum subsidy is €10 or a minimum of 10 tags. The subsidy is paid on the first order of EID tags made between 1 October 2018 and 30 September 2019. The final payment takes place in October 2019.