James Atkinson
Know Your Flock Before You Know Its Problems
On a smallholding of a dozen or two dozen ewes, you have an advantage that large commercial flocks simply do not: you know your sheep as individuals. Bella with the speckled face, the ewe that always lambed a week early, the tup who gets a bit stiff on wet ground. That familiarity is a genuine health tool, and it is worth building on deliberately rather than treating as a happy accident.
Spend ten unhurried minutes among the flock every day, ideally at the same time. Stand still and watch rather than walking straight through them. Check that each ewe is cudding, has a bright eye and pink mucous membranes inside the lower eyelid, is moving freely and has a clean back end. Run your hands over the ones you are unsure about. Most serious sheep problems announce themselves quietly for days before they become obvious, and the smallholder who notices the quiet stage has already halved the battle.
Three problems cause most of the worry in a small Cumbrian flock: footrot, flystrike and worms. All three are manageable when you catch them early and keep decent records.
Condition Scoring: The Skill Worth Practising
Condition scoring is the single most useful hands-on skill you can learn. It tells you what the fleece hides — how much actual flesh and fat a ewe is carrying. You feel over the backbone behind the last rib and along the short ribs, assessing the spine and the muscle either side, then give a score between 1 and 5 in half points. A score of 1 is a bag of bones; 5 is fat and lumpy. Most lowland ewes want to be around 2.5 to 3.0 at tupping, holding around 2.5 through mid-pregnancy, and dropping to 2.0 to 2.5 after weaning.
Do it properly: catch the ewe, stand her quietly on level ground, and use your fingertips rather than your palm. Ask your vet to show you on a few animals, then score the whole flock at the same points each year — tupping, scanning, mid-pregnancy and weaning. Writing the numbers down is what turns a vague impression into a pattern you can act on.
Footrot and the Wet Cumbrian Field
Cumbria's rainfall is wonderful for grass and terrible for feet. Learn the difference between the two stages, because the treatment differs. Scald is a red, raw, hairless patch between the claws, usually in warm wet weather, and it responds well to a clean, dry field and a footbath. True footrot is more serious — the infection moves under the horn, the foot swells, smells foul and the sheep is properly lame.
- Move affected sheep onto dry, clean ground as soon as you spot lameness.
- Footbath with 10% zinc sulphate, standing sheep in it for several minutes.
- Pare very sparingly, or not at all. Over-trimming causes more harm than good.
- Severe cases need a long-acting antibiotic injection; speak to your vet rather than guessing.
- Record every case, and cull the ewes that break down repeatedly. Genetics matter here.
Flystrike: A Summer Emergency
Flystrike can kill a lamb within days, and it starts within hours. Greenbottle flies lay eggs in dirty fleece or around a mucky back end, the eggs hatch, and the maggots begin eating into the skin. Risk is highest in warm, humid spells, particularly on daggy sheep and those with foot infections or wounds.
Prevention is far easier than cure. Keep back ends clean by dagging and crutching at the right times, treat worms properly so sheep are not scouring, and apply a preventive pour-on product at the correct interval through the risk period — your vet can advise on what suits your flock and timing. Check every sheep daily in muggy weather, running your hand over the back and breech. If you find strike, clip the wool away, remove the maggots physically, and ring your vet, as antibiotics and pain relief are usually needed.
Worms, Fluke and the Case Against Guesswork
Routine dosing by the calendar is now understood to drive wormer resistance, and resistance is a real problem in Cumbria. Faecal egg counts, done on a pooled sample from ten ewes or a dozen lambs, tell you whether a dose is actually needed. Counts are cheap and your vet can arrange them.
Watch for the specific local threats too: nematodirus in lambs in late spring, haemonchus in a warm summer, and liver fluke wherever ground is wet and rushy. Weigh lambs or use a weigh tape rather than eyeballing the dose — under-dosing is a common and costly mistake. Quarantine any incoming sheep: treat on arrival, hold them on hard standing for forty-eight hours, and only then turn them out. Record every treatment with the date, product, dose and withdrawal period.
Records, Routine and Your Vet
A simple notebook or spreadsheet is enough. Note lambing dates, condition scores, every lame foot, every dose given, and every death. Over two or three seasons these notes become a genuine flock health history, and they are worth their weight in gold when you sit down with your vet for an annual flock health review. Bring the records, bring photographs of anything you are unsure about, and consider asking for a post-mortem on any unexplained death — it is often the cheapest information you will ever buy.
Get the basics right, week in and week out, and you will find that a small flock is remarkably robust. Most problems in a smallholding flock are noticed early, treated simply and never become a crisis — which is exactly how it should be.
