Country Life: Beef and Lamb's sheep poo study

As is often the case, especially in farming, "fresh is best" when hunting for sheep poo it seems.

Country Life joined Wairarapa sheep, beef, and deer farmer Paul Crick while he was out collecting samples to be analysed as part of a study by Beef and Lamb New Zealand that aims to better understand facial eczema.

He's one of almost 300 farmers involved in the nationwide study.

"I've done a lot of things, but I never thought I'd be called a poo hunter," he says with a laugh.

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What is facial eczema, or FE?

It's caused by a toxin-producing fungus found in pasture which affects grazing livestock including, sheep, cows, deer, alpaca and goats.

The toxin impacts the liver, leading to significant health issues such as reduced fertility, weight loss, decreased growth, lower milk production, photosensitivity, sunburn, and in severe cases, death.

There is currently no cure for FE, which costs New Zealand farmers an estimated $332 million annually, according to Beef and Lamb.

"It loves warm, moist, humid conditions. It's in the sward, animals come along, graze the pasture, ingest the toxin," Crick explained.

From October, farmers collect about 10 samples from the same mob around different paddocks every couple of weeks. FE remains present in the paddocks until about late May, Crick said.

"What we're trying to do here is build up a bit of a database and knowledge about where the spores are and hence that's why we're collecting the poo samples because we'll find it in the poo samples themselves."

There's an art to finding the right samples as Country Life discovered.

Apart from freshness, it's important to differentiate smaller lamb poo - more like Smartie pellets - from that of the mature mob. More liquid-like samples are difficult to collect but that's what the blue gloves are for.

"The ewes tend to like camping in their spot," Crick said as he hunted around for the perfect specimen.

He got it, and it's even warm.

"That's hot out of the oven that one."

FE is particularly challenging for farmers because "you can't see it" and there's no cure - zinc can be used as a preventative measure.

At Glenside, Crick also breeds his own FE-tolerant rams as part of Arahura Sheep Genetics.

He said they wanted to "front foot" the issue and saw that farmers can make good progress quickly through bringing these traits into their flock.

"Good genetics is one tool in the toolbox and there's other tools that farmers can use."

It's the third season he's been involved in the study.

FE is prevalent in Wairarapa but farmers don't know how much so.

"It's here down through the North Island and they've actually found spore counts down in Otago."

Twelve farms in Wairarapa were involved in the first year and all detected spores.

The next season one farm went through the season with none, while one of the 11 that did have spores even presented with clinical signs of FE.

Crick said his first season results came back with no spores detected and he worried it was a "waste of time", but he said knowing where FE isn't is just as important as knowing where it is and the conditions that surround it.

"We took our last sample at the end of May and I thought 'God there's going to be nothing'.

"It came back with a spore count of over 100,000. It really made me think."

Beef and Lamb principal scientist Dr Cara Brosnahan said there's already been some interesting findings from the study which revealed early signs that elevation, pasture height, and even neighbouring farm's spore counts can impact FE.

She said this year, the final season, is "critical" to building on their understanding.

Beef and Lamb covers all testing costs, including sampling kits and prepaid return courier packaging.

As part of the study farmers also receive regular fungal spore count results, along with an anonymised nationwide map that tracks FE spore levels.

It's the work of parasitologists like Sarah Riddy.

She and her team at Awanui Labs in Palmerston North process up to 260 samples sent in by farmers each fortnight during the peak FE period, the results of which, along with forms detailing things like breed, grazing, height and type of pasture, inform the nationwide FE map.

"Each of the farmers send in 10 samples per mob and that allows us to give a sort of overall pool value," she explained.

"It gives them an idea of what's happening in the mob rather than in each individual animal."

At the lab, she weighs out one gram from each of the different samples to add up to a total of 10 grams, which is then mixed and diluted with 90 millilitres of water and spun to allow the sample to distribute evenly.

It's then loaded onto a chamber and analysed under microscope - a grid helps her count the number of spores manually.

"One thing parasitologists are good at is microscopy, we spend our whole days on a microscope counting. So we're very good with numbers."

Learn more:

You can learn more about the study, here.

You can find more about FE-tolerant stock at Arahura Sheep Genetics, here.