Facial Eczema Risk Bulletin
for week ended 16 February 2020
| Manawatu South | Manawatu North | Tararua | |
| No. of sites monitored: | 16 | 10 | 9 |
| Highest Spore Count: | 10,000 | 20,000 | 85,000 |
| Lowest Spore Count: | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Last week the highest spore count of 85,000sp/gm was recorded at Dannevirke. This site has been retested yesterday and dropped to 30,000. Counts of this level will cause damage to animals that are not protected by some form of zinc treatment. Damage to the liver can occur with one off counts of 40,000 or more or with counts of 20,000 repeated over several weeks. As you can see from the Sentinel farm results below, the Ballance site is also a hot spot.If you are considering spraying pasture to protect stock, this needs to be done before spore counts rise. Spraying does not kill the spores that are there, it just supresses them, so stock can still be at risk.
Check the table below for all site results and to open the full report as a pdf scroll down and click on the link.
Click here for advice on facial eczema prevention.
Click on the link to download this bulletin as a PDF: 
2020 FE Risk Bulletin #5.pdf (0.32MB)
Spore counts can vary greatly between properties and even between paddocks. We encourage farmers to bring in grass samples to get a more accurate idea of the facial eczema risk on their own property. Contact us if you would like more information on bringing in your own samples for testing.
