Manning-Great Lakes Sheep and Goat Group

Bringing landholders together to build sustainable small ruminant production skills

Manning-Great Lakes Sheep and Goat Group

Bringing landholders together to build sustainable small ruminant production skills

Stronger Together -

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The issue

The Mid North Coast of New South Wales is a challenging environment for small ruminant producers. Warm conditions and high rainfall favour parasitic nematodes and other internal and external parasites. Drench resistance is a widespread and growing problem in parasites of both goats and sheep. Over-use of drenches speeds the development of resistance, hurts producers’ bottom line and causes damage to soil food web components such as dung beetles. Another big problem locally for small ruminant producers is wild dogs, with dog attacks devastating whole flocks and threatening the viability of some small ruminant operations.

The solution

A Sheep and Goat Health workshop was held at Krambach, a location in between the Great Lakes and Manning Catchments, promoted jointly with Manning Landcare, with Manning-Great Lakes District Vet Lyndell Stone and Lower Hunter DV Kylie Greentree (a small ruminant specialist) giving presentations on Sheep and Goat herd health and preventive medicine. This led to the formation of Manning-Great Lakes Sheep and Goat Group, with an online email group to communicate and share within the group, the roll-out of DIY Faecal Egg Count workshops with KGLL LLC Joël Dunn, and FAMACHA anaemia scoring workshops with Drs Greentree and Stone.

The impact

The sheep and goat health day was well attended, and most attendees went on to join the Sheep and Goat Group. Our DIY faecal egg count workshops at Nabiac, Wingham and Johns River were fully subscribed, feedback was very positive, and know some attendees have already purchased microscopes and counting slides to inform their parasite management. We plan to continue to raise awareness of this tool. Our FAMACHA workshop at Wingham was also fully subscribed, and we intend to soon hold another in the Great Lakes. We raised awareness of wild dogs and LLS services available to help manage them.