Sheep Veterinary Services

Anexa vets are here to work with you to ensure your compliance needs are met. 

Parasites – the word itself indicates they are unwanted guests, they reduce live weight gain by reducing the animal’s ability to absorb nutrients. They can also cause your sheep a lot of discomfort. Anexa Vets can create parasite programme specific to your farm.

We can also check that the drench you are using is working. By performing a FECRT, will discover if there are any worm resistance issues on your farm, and allow us to formulate a drench plan for all classes of stock for the year.

Ensure that your vaccinations are done at the right time to protect your flock, ask about a vaccination programme. Popular vaccines include abortion vaccines, (toxoplasmosis and campylobacter,) clostridial (5 in 1) and Androvax.

Anexa Vets provide emergency care 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We recommend having a fully stocked lambing kit, that is topped up when needed.

Your lambing/calving kit should have the following (Just in case…)

• Gloves, lubricant and calving and lambing ropes
• Injectable Metabolic treatments – injectable calcium ‘Calpro250’, injectable glucose ‘Glucalphos’
• Oral metabolic treatments – calcium preparations for cows eg. Headstart gold, calol, and energy drenches eg. acetol/ketol
• Antibiotics, painkillers, needles and syringes
• Bearing retainers, or needles and tape
• Rubber rings and applicator
• Iodine navel spray
• Calf scour treatments, rehydration (electrolyte) sachets and drenching tubes for lambs and calves
• Heat lamp or hot box for reheating hypothermic lambs and calves
• Lamb covers/jackets
• Powdered colostrum and milk powder

Rams should have a soundness exam several months before mating to ensure they are fit for purpose. Brucella ovis is often what we are looking for when we palpate rams but any condition that causes a fever or increased testicular temperature in a ram will reduce its fertility for up to 90 days, which could dramatically affect production. Anexa Vets offer palpation, soundness exams and fertility testing services, along side vasectomies for teaser rams. For further information please contact your local vet.

Vasectomised rams (teasers) will increase early lambs born in ewes by synchronising them and increase ovulation rate in hoggets by helping to bring them on heat. Rams should be given time to heal before being used and can still have fertile semen 6-8 weeks after surgery. In the ewes, teasers should be put out 18-21 days before the ram but in hoggets they should be put out just 17 days before. A ram ratio of 1:50 in hoggets will increase pregnancy rates as hoggets are shy breeders. To find out more about this production management tool, contact your local vet.

Is feed always tight in the Winter or Summer? Knowing what feed will be available over tight periods, in advance, allows you to make management decisions sooner rather than later. Buying feed before prices rise, selling excess stock, putting on some nitrogen are some of the options when you know feed will run out. Making these decisions ahead of a feed pinch will not only save you money but will prevent a dip in productivity. We can develop a simple feed budget for you, covering short ‘feed pinch’ periods or longer eg ‘over winter’ periods.

We have a new tool available that calculates the added turnover a farm can make by increasing different productivity goals. We perform a consultation, collecting the productivity data for the farm and looking for areas of potential improvement. The value calculator shows the increased dollars earned by increasing eg lambing percentage or live weight gains etc. This exercise is very useful to help identify the most profitable areas of productivity and where best to concentrate management changes.

Using Farmax Pro we can load your farm information onto the software which then gives you the ability to record all liveweights, sales, and productivity figures. This allows you to perform accurate feed budgeting and test management decisions to see the impact on production and profit. This way you can understand exactly how your farm is performing, and can act early to stay on target. The software produces customised reports for consultants, bank managers, and staff.

Body condition scoring is becoming increasingly recognised as a quick and easy way to assess the condition of your stock and alter feeding accordingly. This practical skill takes less than 20 minutes to pick up if there is a group of mixed condition animals to learn from. We are available to train all farm staff on this procedure.

Using information gathered during the sheep productivity consultation we will  formulate a productivity improvement plan with tasks assigned to the appropriate date and member of the team. Collecting more information on productivity will allow monitoring and assessment of improvements.

Need help bolusing, weighing or drenching? We’re here to help, call your local Anexa clinic or request a booking online here