Your Key to Healthy Lambs
To get the best possible start in life, lambs should be:
- Drenched;
- Vaccinated; and
- Topped-up with essential vitamins and amino acids
Virbac, the maker of Prodose Orange and Multimin, understands this and have developed a range of solutions just right for you.
Lamb health treatments
At 5 - 6 weeks of age, there are many health treatment factors that sheep producers need to consider. Given that no one season, farm, or lamb flock is the same, there is no ‘one size fits all’ protocol.
Nonetheless, at a minimum, sheep health experts recommend that you:
- Drench your lambs strategically to protect them from internal parasites
- Vaccinate for diseases relevant to your environment (i.e clostridial etc); and
- Top-up young lambs with essential elements (i.e vitamins and amino acids) to boost general immunity and recover from the negative effects of health or nutritional challenges.
The first and most important decision is drench selection. Once you have determined the drench to use, your vaccine and mineral treatment options will flow from that.
Drenching
Lambs are particularly susceptible to attack from gastrointestinal worms. This is due to:
- Lambs being too young to have a robust immunity to parasites; and
- Weaning causes stress which affects the lamb’s immune system and its ability to respond to threats of disease and parasitism.
To drench lambs there are two important factors to consider:
- Are lambs prone to persistent attack?
- Will lambs be put into a contaminated paddock?
- Are you are expecting conditions conducive to an increase in parasite numbers for the next couple of months (i.e normal to high rainfall, higher temperatures)?
- Will the lambs be exposed to tapeworm?
- Some drenches are more effective in killing all types of tapeworm (not only milk tapeworm) and also to remove the whole parasite.
Prodose Orange is the farmers’ favorite drench: a broad spectrum, long acting product to use for control of roundworm, nasal worm and tapeworm parasites.
Virbamax First Drench: the powerful comprehensive lamb drench with broad spectrum roundworm, nasal worm and all 4 types of tapeworm control.
Supplementation of essential vitamins and amino acids
Carmino+ provides a range of vitamins and amino acids, as an aid to boost the immunity of young lambs and to help them to recover from setbacks from health related issues or parasites.
It is recommended to consult your Virbac Technical Sales Advisor on these considerations to choose the products and a programme most suited for your farm and production system.
