At the weekend, I noticed a damp patch on Bramleys' right shoulder - now with the recent weather it's been difficult to find a dry patch, so it wasn't surprising, but it wasn't the usual knee or elbow joints, so at first I thought it a bit odd, but perhaps she'd rubbed or rolled on 'something' wet - I caught hold of her, rubbed it and smelt it and there was no smell.
The following morning it was still there, so I knew it needed to be dealt with - she is pregnant, and has changed from being everyones favourite to 'cuddle', to a complete 'madam', and she wouldn't let the two of us look closely at it without a fight, so I got our neighbour (who has sheep) to hold the back end - with a lot of spitting and shrieking (not my neighbour) we concluded it was fly-strike, however we could find no sign of skin damage - now my understanding, is that a fly lays eggs on a wound or damaged skin to feed the larvae - I thoought it might be the ADE injection site, but that was done three and a half weeks ago, and I believe that the larvae hatch in a day or two, so it can't have been that - anyway, we sprayed it straight away, nothing emerged, but there were some small objects like hay seeds, so we thought we'd caught it at an early stage, but I'm still puzzled that there seemed to be no damaged skin.
I do know there have been a few cases in alpacas this year, so wondered if anyone has any clues?
Monday 19 November 2012
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Hello Dave
ReplyDeleteI am no expert so am only recounting our experience! We saw three cases of fly strike this year - not on our animals but on those we sheared. One had no cuts at all but he had a stable with wood chipping on the floor and some of this had worked into the fleece and rotted and the flies had laid on this rotten material. We sprayed with crovect and a few tiny maggots dropped out so it had not gone very far. The other had a scratch under the fleece and was infested. A third had a similar sounding damp patch but no cut - we also sprayed and nothing came out but I too think it had just been caught in time. When we went back to check her a few days later she was fine. This weather had been dreadful for flies this year!
All the best
Thanks Rosemary - all our collective experiences help.
ReplyDeleteHi Dave,
ReplyDeleteJust read your post. I hope we can help with this. If we are right, it is confusing. We have seen this before, in November through to February. It can't be Fly Strike due to the time of year, and it turns out it isn't.
From our experience, this is a touch of bacterial skin infection, which weeps like fly strike, but has none of the nasty ammonia smell.
This is brought on by long periods of damp weather. So it's ideal at the moment.
There is a simple fix. Wash the affected area in a anti bacterial shampoo. Paxicutol is the one we recommend (Available at vets). Leave the foaming shampoo on the site for 10 minutes them wash it off with a hose. Repeat after a few days if not totally cured.
Hope this helps Dave.
Rob @ Wellground
Sorry Dave, I gave you the wrong shampoo name. For bacterial infection we use a product called Malaseb.
ReplyDeleteHope that helps
Rob
Thanks Rob, appreciated.
Delete