Post Flood Checklist

A few days on and the clean up is still continuing for farms affected by the weekend’s rain. Now that stock are safe, the priorities are turning to draining the water as fast as possible.  Clearing blocked culverts and pumping water over stop banks is on the job list out in the paddocks while cleaning up the damage from flooded buildings is starting indoors.

Feed:

Make sure that stock has sufficient clean feed. Crops may not be able to be grazed until they dry out and other supplements may have to increase quickly to offset this.  The risk of diarrhoea, particularly in younger animals, is higher in flood-contaminated pastures.  Check mobs regularly and take action early if you see animals looking unhappy or poorly.

Lameness:

Some races will have substantial damage increasing the lameness risk.  Take it slowly when moving animals over damaged races and start planning repairs so they can be done quickly when the conditions come right.

Mastitis:

Expect a lift in the environmental mastitis risk.  Increase the strength of teat spray to 1:4 with extra emollient, continue teat spraying every teat of every cow after every milking, and check cows for early signs of clinical mastitis at cups-on to reduce the impact of mastitis on the herd.

Facial Eczema:

If weather conditions warm up quickly, we will have a lot of dead material in the pastures and the facial eczema risk could ramp up very quickly.  Don’t overlook zinc supplementation where it is needed.

Call us if you need assistance with animal health, feed budgeting or farm systems recovery planning.