Worms Not Foxes
Yesterday I noticed that one of the merino ewes had a small patch of flystrike on her rear end, so I arranged to have them crutched. My neighbour and shearer were very understanding and came to do the crutching today. With the sheep in the shed I realised that the two sheep that had died were both lambs. I mentioned this to the shearer and he immediately checked the sheep's eyes and gums. They had worms. The lambs that died most probably died from the worms and the foxes ate the carcasses. The condition of the sheep was so bad that he returned this evening with a drench for the sheep and with lots of help I drenched all the sheep. I think this possibly saved their lives. Time will tell. They are now in a clean paddock.
All this time I have been very careful to move the sheep to the next paddock after about four weeks, mostly less. I had avoided drenching for worms up until now and I had been lucky because I have been rotating the sheep regularly, but I think the worms have caught up with me. I will have to look into what drench to use and plan to check the sheep and drench as needed. This has been a very expensive lesson, loosing two very good lambs in the process.