Why rain is dampening sheep and cattle production

Spring rain is usually welcomed by livestock producers, but there are big animal welfare issues looming from this wet season.

Massive animal welfare issues are looming as floods and prolonged wet conditions impact livestock across much of eastern Australia.

Shearer shortages and wet, humid conditions are creating an ideal climate for flystrike, while a wet weather delays and logistics are preventing a host of animal management processes like drenching.

A sheep with flystrike. Picture: Supplied

Victorian Farmers Federation livestock councillor Simon Riddle from Violet Town said he had heard of stock losses, not only from floods but the relentless rain.

“The difficulty for some people is their most sheltered paddocks are the ones that have creek frontage, so they can’t use them,” Mr Riddle said.

“We will have long grass and humid conditions and that is going to catch people out – sheep will be getting struck (flystrike) on their bellies because they simply won’t be able to get dry.”

Not only will sheep be struggling with flystrike, but Mr Riddle said consistently standing in wet paddocks would cause feet problems, which could also affect cattle too.

“We have a fair challenge ahead of us as livestock producers and we will need to be super aware of a lot of things which could catch us out,” he said.

Thrive Agri Services Dr Andrew Kennedy said while there were short term issues including flystrike in sheep, the big wet spring had longer term impacts.

“Producers need to have a plan to deal with what they have coming ahead of them,” Dr Kennedy said.

“Feed quality will not be good later in spring which could lead to problems with joining percentages, we could see larger areas which don’t usually have barber’s pole worm getting this and we could see a shortage of grain and quality hay down the track.

“There is no point in scaremongering but producers need to be prepared.”

And a reflection of the soggy conditions, many vendors at last week’s Corowa first cross sale had stories of the difficulties in getting their ewes to the saleyards.

One of the major vendors, Bill Bott from Coreen, NSW, said he had to swim the 1227 ewes across two creeks to get them to the yards to be trucked while fellow vendor Pat Drum had to erect portable yards in the paddock so the sheep could be sent to market.