I shear away fly strike from a relaxed ewe lamb, she almost falls asleep
I had a hard time catching her but once caught she relaxed into me as I knelt down to shear her. Though she did bolt away as soon as I rolled her up into her feet.
It’s very important to understand that I farm the way I do and look after my animals without insecticides unless required for an individual animal. Dung beetles are that vital for biodiversity.
Using dips and pour on insecticides kill other insects that are ecosystem and environmentally important like dung beetles. We are supposed to have over 40 different kinds of Dung beetles in Ireland but they’re going extinct due to these chemicals. The insecticide kill or disable many insects which eat the manure or urine from animals who have them on them. This includes a diverse variety of pollinators including bees and butterflies.
Zwartbles Ireland is a small company run from a farm in County Kilkenny in Ireland. We are a regenerative farm which means restoring soils health and regenerating its natural carbon and nutrient cycle with biodiversity of pasture sward with grasses, legumes, forbs and herbs. This also means we farm with nature. Healthy soils are important for healthy environment. So we encourage all life from the microbial to dung beetles, ants, pollinators to flora biodiversity, birds, hare, hedgehogs, rabbits, fox, badger as well as our livestock. This mean we farm in a style of mob grazing and giving fields long rest times between grazings. We have seen a huge increase and return of wildlife including woodcock and snipe in winter months foraging for dung beetle larvae, red squirrel, wood peckers and pine martens. We also have the rare natter bat and previously thought extinct Tawny Mining bees.
We sell, Zwartbles sheep, Zwartbles blankets and yarn made from the sheep, and calendars featuring Inca the World's Smallest Sheepdog and her coworkers. We also sell alpaca yarn spun for our own alpaca. Our yarns are 100 percent natural, grown by our sheep which grazing our small green Irish fields. This wool is naturally sequestered carbon which you can then knit into warm environmental friendly clothing.
I enjoyed the shaving off of the nasty fly strike. And I wish more people would do their farming like you do, thinking about the whole life cycle. ❤
I love watching them run toward you!
You are doing a fantastic job Suzanna you should be very proud of yourself. 😊
Great work Suzanna. Thank you for your commitment and your vigilance because ultimately you are helping protect us all.
I had a Yorkie pup that we trimmed twice a year. My husband and I found that hard. Didn’t know what hard was until I saw your video. Your sheep are so trusting and comfortable around you. Great work 🤩🥰🙏🏻
I loved watching the lambs arrive.
You explain this so beautifully.
Not really a "Disney Farm" is it? 🧚♀️ 😉 (referenence to a recent comment). Sheer (excuse pun) hard work - sweating buckets! Maggots look🤢😬 Great relief for lambs whilst treated and chance for afternoon nap😊 May your message and real life examples of biodiversity continue to reach out far afield. 🍀🦋
LOL!!!! Exactly not a Disney farm😄👍 I show maggots and all
Красивые у вас овечки🌻
Hello , thanks for this good nature vidéo see you later my friend
Hot and humid- fly strike heaven.
To hell with husbandry. You are managing your farm wifely. You are creating, not destroying.
😂🤣😄👍
Your lambs come running when you call them?! 😂🤣
The alpaca aren’t bothered by the flies?
Great work! Thoroughly enjoyed this!
I am always wondering what they did without all this insecticide. They servived and the ecosystem was so much healthier . Now adays people kill everything in there lawn except yhe green color. Thankyou .your farm is so beautiful. Good vidio .
Thank you
@@SuzannaCramptonIreland thankyou , I am so glad your vidios came up , I watch them every day for refreshment from the world .I remember as a kid all the bugs and pollinators in the fields , and those fields sre gone . So glad yours are alive .take care . Thankyou so much for sharing .
Thank you for explaining!! ❤
No fluffy bunnies here.
Probably it felt good to her to get them off her .
I'd been wanting to talk to a historian about old herbal flystrike treatments. We cut the tails vut I wonder of we could breed out of the problem combine with sheering and herbal spot treatment. Last resport the hard stuff but I never tracked down a historian who did those test. They have been testing out. Lot of older soluting testing out which work. Aome of which work very well but finding which acaemdic ar which uni is doing what were is the worst
Is it only 1 type of fly that does this, and what do you do with maggot riddled wool afterwards ?
You can use cydection cattle pour on orally or cydection injectable. The ingredient moxidection does not kill dung beetles.
Thank you. It’s not just dung beetles I’m worried about. Concern for microbial organisms which we internally share with soil so if meat and milk shouldn’t be eaten after a dose for a period of time I would question its safety. As it’s also a wormer I don’t need my sheep to be wormed because plant tannins have been doing an excellent job. Vets came and tested my flock and there was no evidence of any worms. It does say - Do not use less than 56 days before slaughter for human consumption. Milk: Do not use in lactating cows or within 80 days of calving where milk or milk products may be used for human consumption.
@@SuzannaCramptonIreland well you said you use an insecticide, why not a partacide. Aren’t the ivermections made from microbes from the ground.
Is there nothing you can do as a preventative
If you don’t want to spray for fly strike and the weather is hot why not shear then completely and eliminate the problem?
I have a neck injury that has taken years to recover and doctors have said I’m not to do heavy work that can effect its recovery. I have tried to get people in to shear but there’s a huge shortage of shearers in Ireland so larger flocks have taken president and people like me are at the bottom of the queue.
I had actually heard that on other channels. Didn’t put two and two together. Well there’s an opening for some young enterprising young people.Not me and my bad back.😜
But if you shave them right there in the pasture, would that not infect the other sheep?
No because birds will eat the larvae or they die of starvation
Is flystrike worse on undocked sheep?
No it doesn’t make much difference
@@SuzannaCramptonIreland , thank you. I always wondered.
@@SuzannaCramptonIrelandwhat brand is your shears?
try to keep chickens with sheep pre and post grazing they will eat the maggots and its less chance of insects landing in sheep with chicken Reference. I am from India's southern part We have sheep with fleece we never sheer them during grazing The egrets and other birds eat the insects landing on animals and at the farm, the chickens do their work so in rural parts we mostly don't use insecticides in animals. "Just saying"
I suppose you would need the right type of native bird. One that is attracted to forage on an animal's back plus attracted to that species of insects. Nature is so intertwined. I'm fascinated by how different Ireland is to my Australia. Our 400 species of native dung beetles don't eat dung from pasture animals. Australia had to trial introduced dung beetles to reduce blowfly damage. Sometimes, hands-on farming is the kindest and fastest way 🙂
I would love to have egrets but we don’t. I can’t have chickens loose with sheep as we have to many foxes and they’d have a feast eating chickens. Occasionally we have magpies who sit on the sheep’s back and eat insects. Some years we have no fly strike problems and we sometimes go for years without fly strike.
Yes native species are needed for native problems but now with so many invasive species of flora & fauna we have to figure things out without killing everything.
For me Its harder to tell whether the sheep with dark colour whool had flystrike or not..same time goes to rabbit.. my last dark whool sheep died 4 years ago(bitten to death by my stupid neighbor's untrain wolfdog)
Poor thing
She didn’t get them all.
i think u need a race while the sheep is standing you will find it so much easier so u can clip the sheep its more control of the animal ,and you put click all over and maybe do all the sheep,,,A Race is more control.
Click is an insecticide which kills dung beetles which is why I do not use it. Dung beetles are essential to how I farm and most of the time dung beetle mites eat fly and worm eggs and larvae. It is a small price to pay to keep dung beetles thriving rather than going extinct.
This is what happens when you dont use fly spray.them sheep must feel horrible,im sure you dont want maggots all on you
Using dips and pour on insecticides kill other insects that are ecosystem and environmentally important like dung beetles. We are supposed to have over 40 different kinds of Dung beetles in Ireland but they’re going extinct due to these chemicals. The insecticide kill or disable many insects which eat the manure or urine from animals who have them on them. This includes a diverse variety of pollinators including bees and butterflies.
You need to hire a man and buy Good sheers I’m thinking you’re a great business woman! Less labor more $$