AgriSearch Sheep Farmer Co-Researchers meeting to discuss latest results

Farmers involved in AgriSearch funded on-farm sheep research met at AFBI, Hillsborough, Northern Ireland recently to be updated on the latest results by Dr Ronald Annett.

Looking first of all at Lameness Dr Annett report that the findings to date had indicated that the main problems were scald, foot rot and shelly hoof, there were some granulomas and injuries with no CODD or white line abscesses being found.

Prevalence of shelly hoof, scald and foot rot differs between farm type (hill and lowland), farms, season and genotype.  The reoccurrence of footrot and shelly hoof suggest repeatability.  Links have also been found between foot problems in ewe and foot problems in their off spring (heritability).

Ronald Annett told the meeting that data collected over the two years will allow the relative merits of culling for foot rot to be explored.  Also looking at repeated scores between years will allow issues with breeding strategies to be identified.
In addition farm specific intervention strategies are being looked at including feeding biotin and footbathing.   Table 1 below shows the incidence of foot rot and scald before and after footbathing with Copper Sulphate and a commercial product.  Both healthy (control group) and infected sheep were treated.  These initial results indicate that footbathing is reasonably effective as a treatment for foot rot but is of limited use for preventing it.
    
Table 1.  Incidence of scald and foot rot in healthy and infected sheep before and after footbathing with copper sulphate and a commercial product

The research has also been looking at breeding strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from hill and lowland sheep flocks. 

Two replacement breeding strategies are being compared on the hill – a simple criss-cross between the Scottish Blackface (B) and Swaledale (S), and a 3-breed rotation using Highlander (H), Lleyn (L), and Texel (T) to produce a white-faced composite ewe.  Table 2 outlines how the various hill ewes performed in 2011.  The work shows clearly that ewe fertility is the main driver of lamb output and is key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.       
 

Table 2.  Performance of hill ewes within a criss-cross and rotational breeding policy  

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