96 | Sheep expertise on handwith Vet South Veterinarian Donna Hamilton has honed in her knowledge and skills at the practice. Rosa Watson RURAL SERVICES » Vet South Gore Expertise in sheep health at Vet South in Gore is helping farmers in the area keep on top of issues and maintain production results. Veterinarian Donna Hamilton has honed in her knowledge and skills at the practice since arriving there after graduating 20 years ago. At around the same time she arrived, there happened to be a Beef and Lamb Monitor Farm running at Wohelo in West Otago which she became involved with. “We were looking at lots of different things but one of the big projects was lamb survival trials.” She carried out a number of autopsies – sometimes twice a week – from about nine different farms that were participating. The results showed differing factors on practically every farm as the cause of death. Some showed bacterial campylobacter, others showed trace element deficiency and there were a number of small-sized lambs which put them at higher mortality risk. The project had “sparked an interest” in Donna wanting to look into different areas of veterinary. She concentrated her continued professional development in the sheep space. She’d always had an interest in sheep having grown up on a farm, and now living on a sheep and beef farm in West Otago. She is also a Wormwise facilitator for Beef & Lamb New Zealand where she hosts workshops and collaborates with other facilitators around the country, sharing knowledge. Along with Donna’s expertise, the Gore practice offers annual consultations each year to farmers to go over improving health and production results, and ram and dog runs that also protect farmers’ assets and production outputs. “We work closely with farms on parasite management and navigating drench resistance, which has become more and more frequent, sadly.” This could be due to more intensive farming, but it varied from farm to farm as to the cause. “We look at the different options that are available to them.” Vet South has also set up a trace element monitoring programme and this year it had shown a high rate of selenium deficiency in sheep. This could be the result of a reduction in fertiliser used and the use of prills – free flowing pellets, Donna said. The key was getting onto it early, she added. “Knowing there’s a deficiency before the key part of the season.” Options to tackle this were to drench the stock with selenium supplements and then work out a plan going forward to manage it, or planning a supplement schedule and reducing the reliance on prills. PROUDLY AVAILABLE FROM YOUR LOCAL PARTICIPATING VETERINARY CLINIC See product labels for full claim details and directions for use. Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health New Zealand Limited. Level 3, 2 Osterley Way, Manukau, Auckland, New Zealand. ECLIPSE®, MARKS-MIN®, MATRIX®, EPRINEX®, are registered trademarks of the Boehringer Ingelheim Group. Registered pursuant to the ACVM Act 1997, No’s. A011151, A011687, A009270, A009390, A007191, A010131. ©Copyright 2023 Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health New Zealand Ltd. All rights reserved. NZ-MSP-0013-2023. The path to become future high producers futureproducers.co.nz Overall, Donna says general health in sheep in the area was good. “But we still do see sporadic infectious diseases and deficiencies are definitely still around.” Options to tackle selenium deficiency were injecting or drenching stock with selenium supplements. “Then work out a plan to ensure adequate levels are achieved throughout the year. There are lots of options that can be worked into your existing animal health plan.” She said to tackle the issues, work needed to be done to reduce the onset of resistance or managing the parasite so that they become more susceptible to the drench.
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