Facial eczema risk 'insanely high'

Okato variable order sharemilker Anthony Neil has a lot on his mind.

Facial eczema on the farm where he is milking has killed four cows and has made half the 330-cow herd ill. It has all happened just as his partner, Nicole Beattie, is due to give birth.

The baby has yet to arrive. "It's waiting until things on the farm settle down," she said yesterday.

At least nine dairy cows in the Okato area have died of facial eczema this week.

Neil said almost half the herd he was milking had lost a lot of condition. "Hopefully they'll recover, but [the disease] could affect calving and cause milk fever next season."

He knew facial eczema would make skin raw or make cows' udders sensitive, but he had seen no symptoms. "It was full-blown eczema in two days. There was nothing I could do."

A count of 540,000 facial eczema spores on the farm last week rose to 770,000 by Tuesday. "That's insanely high," said Neil, who is Okato Young Farmers president. Spore counts above 50,000 are considered to be the trigger for the disease in unprotected stock exposed to that level for a length of time.

He had been putting full doses of zinc in the water for two months and half doses for the previous six to eight weeks. But water treatment was only 70 per cent effective and was insufficient when spore counts were extreme.

He is now spraying the pasture and hopes yesterday's rain will lower the spore count.

Neighbours had helped him administer zinc to the entire herd and to herds on nearby farms.

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Facial eczema risk 'insanely high'