- Location
- Montgomeryshire
I've been meaning to write this for a while, but hadn't got round to it. First, a bit of background.....
We lamb our pedigree Charollais ewes in 2 flocks, between a third and a half of them inside in December, the rest inside in March. The December mob (usually 80-100 ewes) stay inside until weaning, in the same shed that they lambed in. We then use the shed for scanning our April lambing flock, before cleaning it out and littering well before the March mob come in. Those March lambs go out onto grass as soon as they are mothered up OK, much like any other Spring lambing flock would. It's the same system that I've been running for years now, and makes good use of the buildings and available labour (me).
In our first mob, we rarely see any joint-ill at all, and hardly anything would see any antibiotics. However, it has always been a menace in our March lambs, which I've always assumed was caused by contamination in the shed. All ewes have been vaccinated against Erysipelas for years, which works very well in all flocks but that one. After a couple of bad years of having to treat over half of the lambs once they were out in the field
, I had resorted to giving everything 1ml of Betamox LA as it left the shed. That worked very well, almost eradicating the problem, but is obviously not a sustainable practice. It will only be a matter of time before it's no longer effective.
Our April lambing ewes lamb outside, and I wouldn't have more than half a dozen a year get mild joint-ill in that mob, pointing quite conclusively to the shed as the problem IMO.
So, on to my trial....
Last year I had heard about a chap called Aled Davies, who did his Nuffield Scholarship on "Alternatives to Antibiotics in Agriculture". He has since set up a company called Pruex to promote the ideas. I spoke to him just before Christmas, but the first mob had already lambed (and building contamination in the shed) and I never got round to following it up. Roll on February and Aled came up to give a talk to our Sheep Discussion Group, with Farming Connect sponsoring some test swabbing. I spoke to Aled again afterwards, arranged some swabbing and ordered a couple of drums of a probiotic product that he was selling.
It was quite a leap of faith, as it's not cheap stuff and the cost would certainly buy a few bottles of antibiotics. However, it's not just a cost issue that was concerning me. That product was PIP Water Plus. I also bought a Micron ultra low volume sprayer (straight from Micron) to apply it.
What is it? It's basically a probiotic product that you apply to the environment. The aim is to colonise the shed with good bacteria, so swamping out harmful bacteria such as E.coli. To do that, you apply the probiotic product to the environment (rather than any surfaces particularly), by walking through with a fine sprayer every day, as well as squirting a bit in the water drinkers as I went past. In our 60' by 60' lambing shed, I was applying 1 litre of product each day for the first week or so, then I changed to spreading the same volume over the shed and the lambing pens in the adjoining building. I kept this up right through lambing, using about 25L in total.
Aled did some follow up swabbing too, which clearly showed that the healthy bacteria had completely dominated the environment (bedding, walls and water swabbed), with very few pathogens evident, despite having lambed in the shed for 3-4 weeks, which would already have been heavily contaminated from the previous mob (shed cleaned out but not washed or disinfected, lambing pens not cleaned out, just littered well between sheep).
The end result.....
None of the lambs received any prophylactic antibiotics this year and we only had a single lamb that had a mild case of joint ill. That was a small cade lamb that possibly didn't receive enough colostrum. In short, a pretty damned amazing result IMO.
Other testimonials espouse similar results with reductions in watery mouth (I never have much of an issue with that, but am normally very careful about colostrum intake), and drier bedding meaning less litter is needed.
Sorry for the long winded post, and I have no connection with the company or Aled, but I would urge anyone that has been struggling with similar problems to look into it.
https://www.pruex.co.uk/
We lamb our pedigree Charollais ewes in 2 flocks, between a third and a half of them inside in December, the rest inside in March. The December mob (usually 80-100 ewes) stay inside until weaning, in the same shed that they lambed in. We then use the shed for scanning our April lambing flock, before cleaning it out and littering well before the March mob come in. Those March lambs go out onto grass as soon as they are mothered up OK, much like any other Spring lambing flock would. It's the same system that I've been running for years now, and makes good use of the buildings and available labour (me).
In our first mob, we rarely see any joint-ill at all, and hardly anything would see any antibiotics. However, it has always been a menace in our March lambs, which I've always assumed was caused by contamination in the shed. All ewes have been vaccinated against Erysipelas for years, which works very well in all flocks but that one. After a couple of bad years of having to treat over half of the lambs once they were out in the field
, I had resorted to giving everything 1ml of Betamox LA as it left the shed. That worked very well, almost eradicating the problem, but is obviously not a sustainable practice. It will only be a matter of time before it's no longer effective.Our April lambing ewes lamb outside, and I wouldn't have more than half a dozen a year get mild joint-ill in that mob, pointing quite conclusively to the shed as the problem IMO.
So, on to my trial....
Last year I had heard about a chap called Aled Davies, who did his Nuffield Scholarship on "Alternatives to Antibiotics in Agriculture". He has since set up a company called Pruex to promote the ideas. I spoke to him just before Christmas, but the first mob had already lambed (and building contamination in the shed) and I never got round to following it up. Roll on February and Aled came up to give a talk to our Sheep Discussion Group, with Farming Connect sponsoring some test swabbing. I spoke to Aled again afterwards, arranged some swabbing and ordered a couple of drums of a probiotic product that he was selling.
It was quite a leap of faith, as it's not cheap stuff and the cost would certainly buy a few bottles of antibiotics. However, it's not just a cost issue that was concerning me. That product was PIP Water Plus. I also bought a Micron ultra low volume sprayer (straight from Micron
) to apply it.What is it? It's basically a probiotic product that you apply to the environment. The aim is to colonise the shed with good bacteria, so swamping out harmful bacteria such as E.coli. To do that, you apply the probiotic product to the environment (rather than any surfaces particularly), by walking through with a fine sprayer every day, as well as squirting a bit in the water drinkers as I went past. In our 60' by 60' lambing shed, I was applying 1 litre of product each day for the first week or so, then I changed to spreading the same volume over the shed and the lambing pens in the adjoining building. I kept this up right through lambing, using about 25L in total.
Aled did some follow up swabbing too, which clearly showed that the healthy bacteria had completely dominated the environment (bedding, walls and water swabbed), with very few pathogens evident, despite having lambed in the shed for 3-4 weeks, which would already have been heavily contaminated from the previous mob (shed cleaned out but not washed or disinfected, lambing pens not cleaned out, just littered well between sheep).
The end result.....
None of the lambs received any prophylactic antibiotics this year and we only had a single lamb that had a mild case of joint ill. That was a small cade lamb that possibly didn't receive enough colostrum. In short, a pretty damned amazing result IMO.
Other testimonials espouse similar results with reductions in watery mouth (I never have much of an issue with that, but am normally very careful about colostrum intake), and drier bedding meaning less litter is needed.
Sorry for the long winded post, and I have no connection with the company or Aled, but I would urge anyone that has been struggling with similar problems to look into it.
https://www.pruex.co.uk/
= 540 lambs @1ml = 6 bottles = £90 + a fair bit of time jabbing 'em.