It's flystrike season again

The continuing wet and warm weather is the perfect storm for flystrike, and it is likely to be having an impact on lambs in the region, says farm advisor Garry Massicks from Feilding-based Stantiall and Keeling.

Shearing is behind where it would normally be because the wet weather has dampened wool, making stock unable to be shorn on some days.

"I think flystrike is a problem. Farmers are keen to get the wool off lambs, which solves a large part of the flystrike problem," Mr Massicks said.

He said that if lambs could not be shorn immediately, farmers needed to do preventive flystrike control.

"The two weeks of wind we've had were terrible, but the one good thing was it stopped flystrike." Wind helps to dry wool and dags and makes flying hard for flies.

He said the forecast was for more rain and warm temperatures.

"It's an ideal forecast for two things – disease in cereal crops and flystrike."

Farm advisor Greg Sheppard from Sheppard Agriculture, based in Dannevirke, said he hadn't heard of flystrike being a big issue in the Tararua district.

"It has been pretty cold, and the wind we've had has tended to dry lambs out." He said there was plenty of stock feed on pastures in the district.

"Sheep and beef farms are comfortable, but feed is more patchy on dairy farms.

"In some areas it is a bit dry and quality of feed is an issue.

"Some of the northern people have been missing out on the southeasterly weather coming through at the moment, and [pasture] covers are not as high as they'd like them to be."

Mr Sheppard said dairy farmers were not panicking, but they were a little concerned about the dry conditions.

In Central Hawke's Bay, there was a mountain of feed but no stock to eat it, and pasture quality was going off as grass went to seed and dried off, he said.

"You could put probably a couple of hundred thousand cows in there and they'd do a wonderful job."

He said that overall, though, the feed situation was "fairly comfortable", which was nice to be able to say at this time of the year.

- © Fairfax NZ News