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Update from Brian Keane's farm - dealing with Barbers Pole worm infection

Update from Brian Keane's farm - dealing with Barbers Pole worm infection

Brian Keane farms 96 hectares in conjunction with his father John, Uncle Aidan, brother Eoin, fiancé Blathnáid and baby Sean. Michael Gottstein, Head of Sheep KT, gives us an update on Brian's farm.

The farm is situated in Garr, Davidstown, Enniscorthy and is a sheep, cattle and tillage farm with approximately five hectares of commercial forestry and a further 10 hectares of land taken up by disused quarries, groves, rivers, streams and lanes.  

Tillage

Approximately half (40 hectares) of productive farmland dedicated to tillage. Barley, Beans and Oats are the crops grown this year. Forage crops (rape) are also sown annually after winter barley and this crop is fed to tail end lambs and ewes prior to housing.

What a difference a year makes. Having had a bumper harvest coupled with bumper prices in 2022 this year proved to be the polar opposite. Drought followed by persistent rain hammered the crops and between poor yields, lodged crops and straw breaking down due to bad weather Brian estimates his return to be approximately half of what it was last year. All straw not required for bedding sheep and cattle has been chopped under the straw chopping scheme. This scheme may have been the silver lining for 2023 Tillage enterprise. Approximately 10 tonnes of both barley and oats have been retained for feeding sheep over the winter.

Sucklers

A herd of 25 spring calving suckler cows are co-grazed with the sheep enterprise. Calves are sold as yearlings annually in the spring time. The 2022 born calf crop was sold last April and achieved good prices with bulls averaging €3.13/kg liveweight and Heifers averaging €2.97/kg liveweight.  Average prices / weights for Bulls €1,430 (457kg) and €1,230 (414kg) for heifers.

Sheep

The sheep flock consist of approximately 200 ewes which are predominately Suffolk, Belclare crosses. Unfortunately the sheep enterprise on Keane farm has just like the tillage enterprise been hit with a significant setback this year. A Haemonchus contortus or Barbers Pole worm infection developed on the farm and affect both adult sheep and lambs. This is a type of stomach worm that is becoming more common on Irish sheep farms in recent years. Haemonchus contortus is somewhat different from the ‘normal’ stomach worms that we see during the grazing season in so far as;

  • It affects both lambs and adult sheep – sheep don’t develop immunity unlike with other stomach worms.
  • It is a blood sucking worm so often the conditions are more like liver fluke (bottle jaw and anaemia)
  • It is a very prolific egg layer and lays multiples of the numbers that we would be accustomed to seeing with traditional mid season worm species. Egg counts are in the thousands rather than hundreds.

The big problem with Haemonchus contortus infection is the speed at which it developed. Lambs went from having a zero worm egg count in the faeces to having 15 dead lambs one month later. The egg count of one of the lambs submitted to the local RVL for post mortem was 21,500 eggs per gram.

All sheep on the farm have been treated with a closantel based anthelmintic (this is effective against Haemonchus) and faecal egg counts will be monitored fortnightly for the remainder of the grazing season.

At this stage only a small number of lambs have been drafted off grass. The remaining lambs are on good grass and receiving some concentrate feed and are improving rapidly. Brian hopes to move steadily through the remaining lamb with the intention of having most of the remaining 160 lambs drafted by early November with some stragglers to be finished in the new year. 50 ewe lambs have been selected for replacements.

Preparing for the breeding season

The ewe flock have also been prioritised after the haemonchus infection and are on good grass to aid in the recovery of body condition.  Body condition of ewes at mating is one of the key drivers of reproductive performance (pregnancy rate and litter size) and also impacts the ewes ability to rear her lamb(s) in the following lactation.