Farmers are continuing to move away from mulesing in their management of flystrike in sheep and adopting new short term and long term strategies to fight this major pest which costs the industry an estimated $280 million per year.
Recently, a toolkit, produced by the Kondinin Group and Sheep CRC, has been released to assist farmers if they decide to move away from mulesing.
Lu Hogan, Project Leader Industry Training for the Sheep CRC, said the toolkit is a practical guide for producers who have decided to cease mulesing and would require changes to the management of their flocks. This particularly applies to merino producers.
“Producers need to develop an annual flystrike management plan that brings together their short-term and long-term strategies.
“They need to take a year-round approach to tackling the problem and to prepare their sheep for the high fly risk time of the year,” Ms Hogan said.
A recent national survey of more than 1400 randomly selected sheep producers indicated that 24 per cent of merino lambs were not mulesed in 2009 compared with two per cent in a survey carried out four years earlier.
“This is a significant increase and shows the rate of change that is occurring within the industry,” Ms Hogan said.
Sally Martin, Sheep and Wool Officer with NSW I&I at Young believes farmers need a strategic plan when phasing out mulesing.
“The decision on mulesing is based on animal welfare issues and if farmers stop mulesing, they must have a management plan for their non-mulesed sheep.
“Assessing where they are with their breeding plan for plainer bodied sheep, their calendar for shearing and crutching and the amount of breech and body strike currently seen in their sheep is important,” said Ms Martin.
Each farmer will need to assess their own situation and devise a plan that works for them.
“There is not a single recipe for all farmers,” said Ms Martin.
New technology from industry groups continues to provide more options for farmers.
The Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBV’s) for breech wrinkle allows farmers to identify, select and breed from sheep that have improved natural resistance to flystrike and the development of Skintraction, a needleless intradermal injection is showing promise.
Rick Baldwin from Bundilla Merino Stud at Young believes there are positive moves within the merino stud industry towards eliminating the need for mulesing.
“There are still many trains of thought but there is a definite move toward breeding bare breeched sheep.
“After recently speaking to 70 per cent of merino ram breeders they believe that by 2016 most merinos will be have breech values of two or one and with the use of Skintraction this will greatly reduce the risk of breech flystrike.
“Breeding bare breech and plain breech sheep can be achieved in a relatively short time and this will have a great impact on the need for mulesing,” said Mr Baldwin.
There will still be some cases of body strike in sheep, depending on seasonal conditions.
“In the last two months there has been quite a lot of body strike in sheep in southern NSW due to the wet weather seen this year.
“Our property has had close to 20 inches of rain this year already,” said Mr Baldwin.
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