Flexolt®, Innovative Sheep Lice Management with MSD Animal Health

This week on the podcast, we’re talking about Flexolt®, a revolutionary new oral treatment for lice control in sheep.

Our guests are Dr Jane Morrison and Dr Hamish Pike from our fantastic sponsors, MSD Animal Health.

Flexolt is the first-ever oral lice treatment for sheep, giving you the ultimate flexibility when it comes to treating your flock. It can be used rain or shine, with any length of wool, revolutionising how and when you can administer a sheep lice treatment.

Flexolt marks a significant leap forward in sheep lice treatment, offering farmers unparalleled flexibility and effectiveness in managing lice outbreaks. In the podcast, Jane and Hamish discuss how it works and how to get the best results from this great new product. 

Hamish and Jane also run us through the life cycle of lice, giving you a better understanding of what you’re treating and why clean musters and quarantine are so important.

Tune in to learn more about how this new product works, and also to gain a deeper understanding of the biology, and impact, of lice in your sheep. 

Flexolt is currently available through rural retailers in Australia and is expected to be available in New Zealand from April 2023 at your local vet clinic.

For more information on Flexolt, visit www.flexolt.co.nz.

ACVM No: A011971. Ph: 0800 800 543. www.msd-animal-health.co.nz

APVMA No.: 91565/132669. Ph: 1800 226 551. www.coopersanimalhealth.com.au
© 2024 Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA and its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, and Heiniger Australia and New Zealand.

These companies are leaders in their respective fields and it is a privilege to have them supporting the Head Shepherd Podcast. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.

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Transcript

Mark Ferguson: 0:00

Welcome back to Head Shepherd. This week we've got two guests along, and both from MSD. We've got Dr Jane Morrison, who's National Tech Manager in Australia for MSD, and Dr Hamish Pike, who's the Livestock Technical Advisor in the North Island over here in New Zealand. Welcome, jane and Hamish.

Dr Jane Morrison: 0:18

Thanks Fer. Thanks Fer, it's nice to be here.

Mark Ferguson: 0:21

Yeah, that's great to be having a chat about this product and, as people are picked up by the title of the podcast, it's we're talking about last control today and probably one of the more exciting days on. Well, one of the exciting things that's happened in last control for well, definitely for my career, it's always been poor on and it doesn't matter which farm I go to, there's always an issue with lice. It seems to be we all blame the neighbors or blame everybody else, but essentially it's a bit of a fact of life and I think the stats are pretty scary around the amount of lice out there. But we're here to talk about Flexite, which is the first oral treatment for lice. Pretty exciting, pretty exciting time for you there at MSD.

Dr Hamish Pike: 0:57

Yeah, so we're excited to be able to launch FlexAlt the name itself. If we break it down, it's a flexible oral lice treatment. So what I mean by that is that it's gonna allow farmers to choose when it suits them to treat and it's going to allow them to adapt to the common challenges associated with lice control. So what I mean by that is that, unlike many backliners and when chemicals are applied by a shower or jetting, for instance, because FlexAlt's an oral treatment, it's unaffected by rain before or after treatment. Therefore, weather doesn't dictate the timing and you don't have those cold weather exposure issues associated with dipping and jetting. And because it can be used in a sheet with any wool length, it gives great flexibility in its use.

Mark Ferguson: 1:46

Yeah, it's an awesome combo and, yeah, something's all they needed. Don, you've been FlexAlt's been around in Australia for a few months. We've all been released a few months ago. So what are we seeing? What are people saying in Australia?

Dr Jane Morrison: 1:58

Yeah, fergie, it has been in the market since about July last year, so we've had a good six months where it's been used in sheep and we're getting terrific feedback on it. And the biggest comment, I guess, that farmers and stores and everyone make about it is that it's a game changer, the innovation it brings to lice control as you mentioned, it's typically over here being backliners or dips to have an oral product that you can use in any length of wool so they can use it whenever it suits them and get terrific results. And certainly the reports have been very, very positive to this point. It's been working really well and people have been using it in all sorts of situations different times. They've broken away from just lice control at shearing. If they've got split shearing, they're able to treat those lots the ones they're shearing and the long-wall ones with an equally effective product. So that's where it really brings that flexibility and that absolutely any length of wool and you'll get effective lice control, which is excellent.

Mark Ferguson: 2:58

Yeah, and obviously dropping down to six kilo minimum means it doesn't matter if you've got lambs of foot, everything is you can do the whole farm on a day and know you've got them rather than I don't know, I've never. I've been involved in a fair bit of dipping over the years but there's not once I've felt like we actually got them all, like you kind of hope you do. But you know, like putting backliners on and sharing people are tired, they're busy like it's I don't know. I don't see too many, too many go straight down the middle of the spine and all the rest of it that you're meant to do. And obviously we've got resistance to a lot of those products. Where are we at with chemical resistance in lice and which sort of adds to why this is so important? I suppose?

Dr Hamish Pike: 3:34

Yeah, so in terms of the backline treatments, most of the backline treatments for lice include synthetic polythroids and they tend to be. There tends to be widespread lice resistance towards those types of chemicals. We've got the IGRs, the likes of diphylococcus and triflumerum they. It's kind of unknown in New Zealand what the status is there in terms of lice resistance, but I know in Australia and Jane would be able to tell me this that they're pretty much abandoned the use of those sorts of chemicals over in Australia and there's new products on the market now that don't have any known resistance, and Flixtop being one of those products.

Mark Ferguson: 4:17

Yeah, I guess the only ones that we know kill them are organic phosphates, and they tend to kill the owner as well, so it's not good.

Dr Hamish Pike: 4:24

Yeah, they're not particularly safe, Right?

Dr Jane Morrison: 4:27

so the resistance profile over here is probably a bit different to New Zealand. So most products are effective. There is no unresistant sinew. Synthetic pyrethroids although they haven't been used for so long they do, on a one-off use, seem to work quite well. But the IGRs yeah, there is widespread resistance to IGRs so we tend to rely on all the newer groups. So you need nicotinoids your spinosomes, your OPs, are still working and used quite a lot over here Abomectin and, of course, flexalt. So there's quite a range of ones that don't have resistance here and Flexalt certainly going to be one of them.

Dr Jane Morrison: 5:05

And to your point, ferg, about treatment at cheering and backliners and missing sheep, that's one of the biggest reasons that resistance develops is you're getting half treated sheep because they're not putting it down. The backline Backliners are very convenient, which is why people tended to use them over dipping, but they're not easy to get right. So certainly being oral alleviates that application issue. It doesn't alleviate making sure you get every single sheep. So you've still got to get the muster right, you've still got to get them in and you've still got to put your hands on them and treat them. So we have been launching Flexalt with a crayon marker and a little neoprene sleeve and we really recommend that every sheep that you treat you just mark them on the head or somewhere so that you know who's been treated and who hasn't and you can check that race. If they've all got a mark, they're good to go to try and minimize missing sheep.

Mark Ferguson: 5:59

Yeah, that's it. That's another little crack in the renovation and it's in its own right that I need to get one of them Just for classing sheep little, and I don't need to be. I'm not doing too much last treatment, but yeah, that's a pretty cool little crown on the back of your hand you can whack along with absolutely.

Mark Ferguson: 6:14

Just to break down the acronyms IGR stands for insect growth regulator. Yeah, yes, just be careful of our news on this show, because everyone doesn't have to talk the same language. But the In terms of the active ingredient. Obviously people always worry like where's this magic thing come from? It's it's been around a while, just not in. Not not registered for sheep, is that right?

Dr Jane Morrison: 6:35

Yeah, it was.

Dr Jane Morrison: 6:36

It's been registered since about 2014 in dogs, so it's had widespread use globally in dogs and cats for fleas and ticks.

Dr Jane Morrison: 6:47

And We've always sort of said I've worked at MSD and dealt with sheep last for 18 years and we've always said, you know, it's got to be a contact chemical because lice don't suck blood and that's where the real innovation with flexol has come from. So flu Rilana, which is the active ingredient, actually gets into the Exudates on the skin and so, even though that the lice don't suck the blood, they don't need to. All I need to do is contact the skin surface and those exudates and they'll come into contact with the chemical. But then also They'll ingest it because it's coated on those skin cells they're eating, so they they sort of get a double hit of it. And that was all discovered, you know, through having it on the market in dogs and Discovering that it would actually kill parasites in dogs like Demidex and psychopties, which again aren't blood suckers. So that's why we sort of went down that path of looking at do we actually have something here that will control Sheep lice with an oral treatment? And and we do when it edit it's highly effective.

Mark Ferguson: 7:46

Yeah, I hope someone got a pay rise. Whoever sitting in the in the meeting room and decide what habit we whack this into a sheet. That must have been a good day that when it started working.

Dr Jane Morrison: 7:54

Everyone was very skeptical on that first day. But First round of trials we were like, wow, we're really on to something here.

Mark Ferguson: 8:00

I mean, if we think about lice and I'm not sure how many people Do understand what I like they're up to on the skin and I actually sucking blood at all they're just cruising around adding Sort of skin cells and so that's just the irritation they cause rather than any other real damage I do the animal. But do like the damage they do the animals is More through a noise and rubbing and ruining the wool value than it is to the actual animal itself. I mean they don't look that happy when they lousy, obviously just through straight Sheref, shear frustration, I gotta imagine.

Dr Hamish Pike: 8:28

Yeah, so. So lice will feed on the skin scale, sweat secretions, fat on the skin, as well as bacteria that are on the skin surface itself. So that in itself will cause irritation, some of the other irritations due to the fact that the excretions that are put out by lice can actually cause. They have allergens and antigen in them, which which induce an immune response. So so that can cause further inflammation and and on top of the rubbing that's associated with with a lice infestation yeah, certainly you can. You can certainly. That's the reason you get both damage to the wall as well as damage to the skin.

Mark Ferguson: 9:09

Yeah, yeah, and I'm a. We've all seen when they start barring and get teeth ball between the teeth and also. So get out obviously, obviously uncomfortable. So nibbling away, yeah not something we can, we can want to farm with in terms of the market, is it? Obviously I've never seen them stay on like a wall of sheep. So obviously we're the big markets in, yes, a wall and I guess far more particularly, but also anyone wanting to any wall really to to help those animals out.

Dr Hamish Pike: 9:35

Yeah, there's. I mean I guess you know there's certain breeds that are quite susceptible to two lice. You know, even the, even the breeze, that shed wall, can be prone to lice. You know, including the Damaras and the Dorpas and the in the Walshers, they can still get lice. But yeah, and it can come down to individual Variation within those breeds as to individual which individuals get lice, because you know some individuals are quite prone to lice.

Dr Hamish Pike: 10:02

And and then other individuals you can try pretty hard and they still don't get infested with lice. So yeah, each and every one to themselves, in terms of breed, in terms of individual variation, I think yeah to that.

Dr Jane Morrison: 10:16

It is important to note that Any shedding breed of sheep will carry lice, that the thing about lice that's always fascinated me is they're actually the easiest parasite To kill because they don't like hot, they don't like cold, they don't like wet, they don't like dry. So what actually happens on those shedding breeds is that they'll definitely have a population of lice on them at varying levels, as Hamish said, you know, across the, the flock. But what the the shedding does is it keeps exposing those lice to the elements so it keeps the population in check. So they'll never get a population that blows right out of control. And obviously their fleece has Absolutely no value because it just falls off in the paddock. So it's of no real issue to them. They're rubbing anyway to get rid of their, their fleece.

Dr Jane Morrison: 10:58

Once you get into breeds where they're not shedding, the population of lice can Escalate because they're protected from the elements so they can balance their temperature and their humidity perfectly. By just being in the part of the Stake will wear their happiest. So their you know their population will explode in those breeds. So certainly, you know, in the, the fine walls and all your merino breeds, lice is really important because cotted fleece from the rubbing will reduce the value and the weight of that fleece significantly. So it has a huge impact when you get down to your crossbreeds that the fleece is worth less, but it still has a significant impact. A lot of people will have crossbreeds and marinos on the one farm so they want to control it in their crossbreeds to make sure that they're controlled in the marinos. The majority of people won't control lice in shedding breeds, unless they've got a neighborhood Issue and they try to help out the neighborhood so they're reducing the lice burden generally and or if they've got other breeds of sheep.

Mark Ferguson: 11:59

Cool and this is probably not that answerable, but the Like that difference between animals. I remember back on 2013, I think, but it doesn't matter, but we had, yeah, mobby sheep. We had a field day, farmers coming to see all of these sheep from different side groups, sort of get them in the day, for one of them is like filthy with lice and we can't find a single louse or any other animal. What is that? Do we know anything about that variation between individuals? Is there something that obviously some are just more prone to do? Has anyone ever done anything around the genetics of susceptibility?

Dr Jane Morrison: 12:31

No, there's never been any genetic susceptibility done, but I always think of it. You know, in a kindergarten of kids at school, so there'll be lice in the kindergarten. Some kids will be riddled with it. Some kids will have quite a lot of lice and not be itching at all. Some might only have one or two lice and they've got that allergy so they itch a lot. There'll be kids in that kindergarten who just never get lice. So it's about the host, so it is about the sheep, for whatever reason. You know, they're not prone to the burden or they don't have an allergy and it's also, I think, a bit to do with the lice. There's particular wool types or skin types that perhaps they like more than others. No one's really looked into it, but it's definitely within a population. There's significant variation in susceptibility.

Mark Ferguson: 13:14

Yeah, definitely have strong memories of that tea tree or shampoo or whatever you have to give on your kids to drop a few lice off. Amazing how quickly those populations could spread. In terms of making sure, when this does get in the hand of Kiwi farmers, which is not far away and already obviously on the market in New Zealand, in Australia, sorry, what are we asking farmers are supposed to do with this product to make sure it is 100% effective and what are the, I guess, critical success factors for running with flex up?

Dr Hamish Pike: 13:47

Yeah, okay. So obviously, before you start, it's really important to be making sure you're delivering the right dose right. So you want to make sure you weigh your sheep to get some idea of the dosage. Secondly, calibrate your gun to ensure that it is accurate and delivering the full dose. And thirdly, check your boundary fences, make sure they're secure to ensure that the sheep are contained within the property and in stray sheep are kept out and either from other mobs or from neighbouring properties.

Dr Hamish Pike: 14:21

So, as sheep lice only live and breed on sheep, it's really important to be treating 100% of sheep on the property at the same time. So, like Jane said before, it does require a full master. So, and if any escape, it's always good to treat those as soon as possible, and if you can't treat them on the same day, you need to be quarantining them from the from the other treated sheep until the time that you're happy that they are free of lice. And then it's always good, following treatment, to make sure that you're not mixing your treat of sheep with untreated sheep, because obviously there is a chance that lice will transfer from the untreated sheep to the treated sheep.

Dr Jane Morrison: 15:05

Yeah, and it's also, you know, as Hamish said, it's really important to get the dose right and that's certainly something that everyone should be focusing on. And so every sheep, making sure they get the correct dose. So I sort of refer to as treat 100% of the sheep, 100% well, and that's really what you've got to do every time you're treating for sheep lice. So, as I mentioned before, marking those sheep to make sure that they've been treated is also very important.

Dr Jane Morrison: 15:30

One other thing is you know it does have a very high safety margin. So you know, at five times the dose we've seen absolutely no effect. So it's definitely safe to five times the dose or more. And that's important to know because if you think that you haven't dosed the sheep properly, if you think it's spat the dose out it coughed the dose out, you weren't sure it went down, you weren't sure whether you treated it do it again. Make sure that you get that dose into every single sheep. So if you're concerned it didn't get the dose, re-dose it. It does have that safety margin and getting lice control needs every sheep to get the right dose.

Mark Ferguson: 16:07

Yeah, no, excellent Farmers being farmers, they're going to want to be whacking this chemical in with something else that's going on the day. I'm imagining that it's not a good idea to mix this with your drench and just whack it into both of them. But can you do both those jobs on the same day, or are they different days to do?

Dr Hamish Pike: 16:21

Yeah, so currently Australia's done some trials looking at FlexOx concurrent use with Wyrmdrench so it's looking positive. But MSD will update with advice on concurrent use and due course. So at the moment what we're doing is recommending separating the treatments by one day.

Mark Ferguson: 16:42

Yeah right, cool, excellent, and obviously yeah. I mean, if we're going through a farm, you're not doing every mob on the same day. How long is it like? How long does it work? For how long does it take to kill everything? And then how long have you got until they could be reinvested by lice?

Dr Jane Morrison: 16:58

Yeah. So it's an interesting question for and everyone always wants to know you know what's the protection period. How long will it keep the lice at bay? Basically for a protection period to keep the lice away, as Hamish said before, you've got to have your fencing and make sure you're doing everything and prevent reinvestation. You've got a long time to keep the lice at bay.

Dr Jane Morrison: 17:17

As far as flexult it all act, we know that we've got serum levels for over two weeks so it's going to be acting in the fleece for a couple of weeks. So you do have a couple of weeks to get your shearing done and get everything treated. And the important thing about that is we know that it's active in the fleece long enough to kill any nymphs or anything that hatches from the eggs in the fleece at that time. If it didn't kill those, it wouldn't get to be to five months with 100% lice control. So we know it's active long enough to do all of that and to get you through that sort of couple of weeks shearing.

Dr Jane Morrison: 17:50

I don't know in New Zealand whether you have many people that shear over a month or more. We do have some of them here and so we sort of recommend that they, I guess work on them in two week lots. So they keep that two week lot separate to the next two weeks because some of them will shear over four to six weeks. So we sort of break that up into two week lots. But generally a shearing might go more than that, except in those circumstances where we've got really big flocks. So there's plenty of time to get everything treated.

Dr Hamish Pike: 18:18

Yeah, well, I'm from the Manawatu so generally shearing is pretty much done and dusted over a week. Maybe in the other bigger sheep areas like down south or even in the Gisborne Wilder area that could be a lot longer, but yeah, normally about a week around the North Island.

Dr Jane Morrison: 18:35

And of course with Flick, so they're not tied to shearing anyway. So they can do it any time they've been getting everything in.

Mark Ferguson: 18:41

Yeah, I guess it's more our mental state that has linked last control with shearing, whereas in reality, like preg scanning or something else, where every sheep's coming through or whatever, like this other times of the year where they're coming through at a much more rapid rate that you would have them all through in two or three days, and so, yeah, Absolutely.

Dr Jane Morrison: 18:57

You're preg scanning, free-lamming, all those sorts of times you can use.

Mark Ferguson: 19:01

Yeah, yeah. So I'm presuming the fact that you're going to market this stuff works. So you've said it's been well received. But the effectiveness in all the trial works. They're very, very high as close to 100% as you're allowed to publish, I imagine.

Dr Hamish Pike: 19:14

Yeah, if I can, I probably can't talk for Australia, but it's been extensively trialled in Australia Looking across different sheep operations, different breeds, different ages, different sexes, on different locations so those with high and low rainfall and those on sheep with with differing wool lengths as well and it's been shown in Australia to be greater than 99.9% efficacious. In most situations it was actually 100% efficacious by day 140. In New Zealand the trial was done down in Southland just recently and that was performed in Romney course wool sheep with six and a half months wool and again it showed greater than 99.9% efficacy. So it's highly efficacious and we're pretty excited about the fact that it's going to work pretty well.

Mark Ferguson: 20:08

Excellent. And in terms of withhold, let's get into the nitty-gritty what's the when, what are the withholdings? I suppose it's the easiest way to ask that question.

Dr Jane Morrison: 20:16

Yeah, look, it's got very good withholds. The meat withholds are domestic withholds, only 14 days, but the ESI, so the export slaughter interval, is 54 days. Apparently, in New Zealand you prefer to round things off to two weeks and so you've got 56 days because that's a nice neat eight weeks. But yeah, so it varies slightly, but just because of the little differences between the two countries. Well, we're quite happy to just use days, we don't need to go to weeks.

Mark Ferguson: 20:44

Just depend to invent the path.

Dr Hamish Pike: 20:46

Well, I just think it's Australia, doesn't know what. Seven times 80 is in the time of the table.

Dr Hamish Pike: 20:50

So yeah so in New Zealand it's 56 days meat, like Jane said, and we have made it a bit more complicated. So we've got an inutero withholding period as well, which just basically means when user treated during pregnancy that the lambs that are born from those years can't be slaughtered for 56 days. But yeah, it still has a mill wall harvesting withhold, like Australia, and we're on the label it's saying not to be used and actually use producing milk for human consumption.

Mark Ferguson: 21:23

So 56 days from the treatment of mum.

Dr Hamish Pike: 21:26

So, yeah, you're not going to get that coming to you, yeah, and that's normally not going to be a problem anyway, because most lambs aren't going to be reaching slaughter weight by that time.

Dr Jane Morrison: 21:34

I was going to say that's a pretty small lamb chop that we're talking about right there.

Dr Hamish Pike: 21:39

Absolutely.

Mark Ferguson: 21:40

Excellent Love, a bit of love, a bit of Kiwi, aussie banter, I guess. The obvious question how do I get it from? If I got a loss, a loss outbreak, what am I? Where am I going to get some?

Dr Hamish Pike: 21:52

Yeah, in Australia it's sold through the rural retailers. In New Zealand it's going to be sold through the vets, and the decision to market flex salt through the vet channel was based on market research with New Zealand farmers as part of flex salt development. So, given that it's a novel product and has novel features which are quite different from other life's products, new Zealand farmers actually indicated in the research that they wanted guidance from their vets on how to best use the products. So and this is an unusual, it's just how it is in Australia they tend to sell these products through the real retailer. But you know the difference channels for the same product between the two countries is it's quite common to have different channels with a number of our products. So, and the two countries are governed by different regulators and, as is the case with the market research, new Zealand farmers just asked for it to go through the vet channel.

Mark Ferguson: 22:59

Excellent. The other one that people will want to know obviously some of our sometimes women being dipping, we get a bit of a fly control. Result of that as well is, I'm assuming that flex salt's got no impact on fly control?

Dr Jane Morrison: 23:12

Yeah, that's correct, Mark. There's no impact on flies, flies or worms. It only impacts on the lice. So there's no added benefit, and if there was, we'd be shouting from the rooftops.

Mark Ferguson: 23:26

So clearly, clearly we're not hiding that from anyone.

Dr Jane Morrison: 23:29

It just doesn't work against flies.

Mark Ferguson: 23:32

We're still waiting for silver bullets, and they don't tend to turn up.

Dr Hamish Pike: 23:35

No.

Mark Ferguson: 23:36

What would it be worth? Just maybe running through the life cycle for people Like I'm not sure I understand what it is. So, in terms of how important it is for how long you got between Wednesday and Egg hatch and all that sort of cave, what's the time taken?

Dr Hamish Pike: 23:50

Yep, so the minimum time from the egg stage through to the egg stage so that's the time when the female louse lays an egg onto the wool fibre to the time that those eggs hatch through to three nymphal stages, back to the adult and then she's laying eggs is a minimum of about 34 days.

Dr Hamish Pike: 24:13

So it's usually about five weeks. So when the female lays the egg onto the wool fibre she cements it with her secretions, usually within 12 millimetres of the skin level, and that's because the temperature is quite stable down, lower down at the base of the fleece. So she'll lay the egg in about nine or ten days. The egg will hatch. A first stage nymph will emerge from there and then about a week after that a second stage nymph will emerge from the molt and then about five days after that the second stage nymph will molt and then a third stage nymph will come along and then about nine days after that you'll get another molt and an immature lice wool will emerge from that, and it's about four days to maturity. So well, if you do the calculation it adds up to about 35 days. So about five weeks.

Dr Jane Morrison: 25:13

And the key things you know from a practical point of view on farm about that life cycle is that it does take 35 days, so the five weeks for that life cycle to go around.

Dr Jane Morrison: 25:23

But the the key thing is that they don't lay a lot of eggs. So they actually only lay two eggs every three days, so they're not even laying an egg a day. And the reason that that's really important is because it's telling you that the population build up is really slow. So if you get neighbor sheep in or you get an incursion of lice, you're not going to notice it next week or the week after. You're not going to notice it for probably four months because sheep will need between two and five thousand lice before they start rubbing. So to get to that level of lice is going to take a long time when you're taking 35 days to do your life cycle and you know two eggs every three days. And so if we I often sort of refer to it you know against something like the barbers pole worm and they can lay 10,000 eggs a day and take 19 days to do the cycle, so that their population explodes almost overnight, whereas lice, yeah, it's going to take up to four months before it's obvious.

Mark Ferguson: 26:18

Interesting, the often I sort of think about. The other day we're loading up rams and it'd be a nice little insurance game for the ram selladale. Give my whack of flexile as they go out the gate as they. They then like as it kill everything that it hatches, sort of on the spot, or is it? They are rid of a risk until they've had a couple of weeks to knock out. Yeah so you need to you need to leave them.

Dr Jane Morrison: 26:38

So you'll notice on the labels there's a period between treatment and lambing, and that's nothing to do with the safety of the lamb, that's all to do with lice control, and so you need to have four weeks between treatment and lambing, and that's to ensure that all the lice and all the nymphs that hatch and everything's gone. We know from our trial work that we were at 100% control before that four weeks, but there's always outliers and lambs always come early, and so we stick with that four weeks as our recommendation and that's what's on the label. And similarly for quarantine treatments. So if you are quarantining the rams or you're quarantining any other sheep that you bring on to your place, which you should be doing, then you've got to isolate them for four weeks.

Dr Jane Morrison: 27:19

That said, one of the golden rules of lice control is don't mix treated sheep and untreated sheep, and indeed most people think that that's you know. They're worried that the product won't have worked on the treated sheep and it will infest the others. The biggest concern, actually, is the other way around. Flexile will control the lice on the treated sheep, but we're not sure whether those other sheep are lice free. So unless you're 100% sure that the others are lice free. You shouldn't ever mix them. But yeah, if you're bringing rams in, certainly treat them and wait that four weeks before you join.

Mark Ferguson: 27:51

There are no, and probably getting towards the final question. But if I am looking for lice on a sheep, where's the best place to inspect first to try and find them, because it's not always easy to find, just particularly in low numbers.

Dr Jane Morrison: 28:04

Yeah, it's when you're looking for lice. There's a couple of key things. One is to observe the sheep in the yard first and pick the ones that are rubbing to look at, because you'll have the best chance of finding it on those. The other two things are make sure you've got good eyesight or where you're reading glasses and make sure you've got good light, because light not only helps you see but it makes the lice move, and when they're one millimeter long and they're moving they're a lot easier to see than when they're stationary. So make sure you've got good light.

Dr Jane Morrison: 28:33

Generally along the neck or down around the rump area you'll tend to find more, but you can find them anywhere If they're on the sheep. You should just do 10 to 20 partings per sheep of 10 centimetres long and start at the neck, work all the way down and figure out how many lice you've got, because that helps you plan your program of getting rid of it. It also helps you work out how long the lice have been there and where they may have come from. Generally, I think the neck's quite good, but that's often with the merinos because they're not particularly well shorn there, so the lice will hang out there a bit better.

Mark Ferguson: 29:10

Yeah.

Dr Hamish Pike: 29:12

Yeah, which is important when it comes to treatment too, with the likes of backline treatments. So you know, it's always recommended to apply backline treatments from the pole, which is the top of the head, right down the midline of the back to the tail. So if that's not done, then lice are able to hide from these backliners and they can hang out at the lower parts of the animal flex sold. Because it works from the inside out, it's going to obviously get to those areas where lice will, conventionally, they might escape from those types of treatments and so, yeah, it should be really effective in those situations where, where lice are able to hide, you know they won't be able to hide from this product.

Mark Ferguson: 29:58

Yeah, and that's the that's exciting thing. So that's that's been great to learn a bit about these linsex and also great to understand that we've got this new chemical coming. Obviously, we'd. I don't know if we have a defined date yet in New Zealand, but we know it's, we know it's close.

Dr Hamish Pike: 30:13

So we expect to see C-Flex Otavarval in April 2024. So yeah and that'll be quite timely. So, given that lice control has traditionally been linked to sharing, it'll mean that farmers can get access to this product prior to lambing so they can actually treat the lambs, treat the use sorry, pre-lamming, which will mean that the lice are removed from the use before the lambs at the ground. So and that'll remove the need to treat the lambs for lice if the use were lousy pre-lam, obviously.

Mark Ferguson: 30:44

Excellent, awesome. Well, thank you both for your time and yeah, it's been been really good to have a chat and look forward to hearing the stories of people loving the product here in New Zealand as much as we're hearing in Australia. But yeah, I'll let you get back to back to whatever happens at MST on a Friday.

Dr Jane Morrison: 31:02

Thanks, ferg, it was a great chat.

Mark Ferguson: 31:03

Thanks, ferg, it was great chatting Cheers. Thank you.