Talking Dairy

The latest on facial eczema: Risks, research and real solutions | Ep. 115

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Facial eczema is one of the toughest animal health challenges facing livestock farmers. It’s estimated to cost the dairy and red meat sectors $330 million in lost production every year. As summer gets hotter and more humid, the risk rises – and research shows it’s not just a North Island problem. 

In this episode of Talking Dairy, Jac McGowan talks with two experts who bring both science and practical know-how. Dr Cara Brosnahan, principal scientist at Beef + Lamb New Zealand, leads the Eliminating Facial Eczema Impacts research programme. She explains what the team is learning about the disease, with results from a recent farmer survey and what solutions this research will deliver for farmers in the future. Mitch Cooper, DairyNZ senior technical and policy advisor and former dairy vet, shares practical steps to prevent facial eczema, from monitoring spore counts to planning zinc supplementation

Find out more about the research - B+LNZ Eliminating Facial Eczema Impacts programme 

View DairyNZ information about facial eczema 

Download the DairyNZ Facial Eczema Management Guide 

Get the 7 Steps to Managing Facial Eczema Using Zinc 


Have feedback or ideas for future episodes? Email us at talkingdairy@dairynz.co.nz

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SPEAKER_01:

Kiora and welcome to Talking Dairy. I'm your host Jack McGown from DairyNZ. It's so great to have you with us. Today we're talking about a challenge for livestock farmers that impacts their animal health and is estimated to cost the dairy and red meat sector$330 million in loss production each year, and that's facial eczema. As we head into January, the risk increases. So what can you do to protect your animals and your bottom line? And what's the industry doing to help? Joining me in this episode are two experts on the subject: Cara Brosnahan, who's a principal scientist at Beef and Lamb New Zealand, and the technical lead of the Eliminating Facial Eczema Impacts research program, or what we simply call EFEI, and Mitch Cooper, who's DairyNZ's senior technical and policy advisor, who'll share practical advice for managing facial eczema this season. We'll cover what the EFEI research program is all about, what the latest research is telling us about facial eczema, and the steps you can take right now to protect your herd from it this summer. Let's get into it. This might seem like an obvious question, Mitch, but could you help set the scene a little bit by starting us off explaining exactly what facial eczema in livestock is?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. First thing to consider is that it's actually quite a poorly named disease. It is a disease that impacts the liver primarily due to ingestion of spores in the pasture. And that liver damage ultimately results in photosensitivity to the skin and the extremities, and often the worst impacted areas can be the face, hence why it ended up with the name facial eczema. But actually it's the underlying liver damage that's the problem. And yes, it's a nasty sunburn, but a lot of the sort of clinical and subclinical impacts come from the liver not being able to function correctly. It sort of is an issue that we for a long time thought was probably just a North Island issue, though the more we research and the more we find out, and as things get a little bit hotter and more humid, we're finding it in more and more parts of the country to the point where it's very likely that it could become a real nationwide problem eventually. It affects sheep and cattle, but also a number of other species, but for obvious reasons we'll we'll just talk about dairy cattle today. And also it can be confused with other types of eczema. It can pop up at certain times of year when you might see photosensitivity related to certain types of turnip ingestion, or there can be a few other reasons why you might see sort of those skin lesions. So it can be quite a challenging thing to just look at something in a paddock and say, oh, that's facial eczema. And getting a proper agreed clinical definition that allows us to accurately sort of diagnose it and better understand it is quite critical.

SPEAKER_01:

Now you're talking about a clinical definition, and you said that we used to think it's a North Island issue, but now maybe it's present in the rest of the country as well. Is that because we've only been looking for clinical facial eczema or something else? Can you explain that?

SPEAKER_02:

I think that's part of it. There's a lot of subclinical facial eczema. So for every sort of cow that you see visibly impacted, we expect there's probably at least 10 cows subclinically affected. And so there'll be big parts of the country where they maybe had don't think they've had an issue for a long time. You know, they've never seen a clinical cow or they've seen one clinical cow, you know, five years ago or something. But it's not to say it hasn't been impacting their herd productivity. But equally, we are also, I think, just seeing more clinical facial eczema around the country as time goes by. I think it is not just a case of a lack of looking, it's also a sort of change in weather patterns and climate patterns that is making it more prevalent in more parts of the country.

SPEAKER_01:

Cara, what exactly is the Eliminating Facial Eczema Impacts Research Program and why is it so important?

SPEAKER_00:

As Mitch just explained, FA isn't going away, and if anything, more areas will be affected because of that changing environment, making it the perfect condition for the fungus to grow. So this is one of the reasons why Beef and Lamb is leading this seven-year program. And it is co-funded by the MPI S triple F or Sustainable Food and Fiber Futures Fund. And it has the goal of eliminating the impacts of facial eczema and livestock. So it's important to know that the goal isn't to eliminate the fungus itself, it's those impacts that we want to eliminate. So we're wanting better prediction tools, clear guidance and awareness on FE, and new tools and solutions. But what's really cool about this program is we're working with representatives across the sector and also with a strong focus on farmer involvement as well, because FE affects all grazing livestock essentially. So we've got 14 in kind partners across the sector, including Dairy and Z. And Dairy and Z provide that really important input to ensure that any tools that we are developing will work for the dairy system as well as shoep and beef. And also important that the information from the program is shared to dairy farmers as well. So it's about getting those different perspectives across the sector to make these solutions practical and also so we can get wide uptake. So the program itself is taking a holistic approach, looking at the people, the animals, and the environment at that farm systems level. So the people are really important, and the stress that farmers do face with this disease really shouldn't be underestimated. And understanding this more will help better people-centric support to be provided. Animals, it's pretty obvious it is an animal disease, which there is no cure for, and prevention is the key. So some of the areas we're looking at here is better tests for determining those animals with FE tolerance for breeding programs. And other one is looking at early disease detection. So can we help people identify as early as possible that FE is occurring to provide those preventative management? And some of that is harnessing the newer wearable technology, seeing if we can do anything there. And in the environment, obviously the fungi lives in the environment and the pasture and the climatic parameters determine the growth and sporulation of this fungus itself. So understanding that better, what makes it produce the spores and therefore the toxin. Also looking into whether a biocontrol agent is feasible. So that's you know a bacteria or fungi that already lives in the same environment that can control the growth of that FE fungi or eliminate it or minimize it, as opposed to using those synthetic fungicides which are currently used. So the program's in its second year or just finished its second year. And yeah, we have such a great team of people uh passionate and dedicated working for the sector, which is super exciting. What do you mean by that? Once the, you know, that liver damage occurs, some regeneration of the liver may happen, but it depends on how much damage is there, and sometimes it can't fully recover. I mean, Mitch is probably better to answer this as the vet on the call. But yeah, it is really important to know that that can impact the life of the animal. And that is something that needs to be taken into consideration and why it's really important for that preventative management to occur.

SPEAKER_01:

Hearing that, Mitch, why should facial eczema be top of mind for dairy farmers right now?

SPEAKER_02:

Touch on the liver point again, because it's a useful one to consider. You obviously need a liver, but you really need your liver when you're a peat-producing dairy cow. When you have just given birth to a calf and you are looking at going from being completely dry to maximum production in a very short period of time, that is a massive metabolic process. To take all of that feed and turn it into milk requires sort of every cell available in that liver to make things as efficient and functional as possible. So even if you lose 10 or 20% of liver function through a you can lose more through a fairly significant facial eczema challenge and you never regenerate that, you've probably then got a permanent limitation on the lifetime productivity of that animal. It makes it harder for them to produce, it makes it harder for them to get back in calf, it makes it harder for them to maintain a healthy pregnancy. So it's really, really important to stop that liver damage from happening in the first place. And the better you can do that and the better you can make sure that's done every year, the better the chances of a cow that can produce to her maximum potential. It's really important to start thinking about it early in the year. We have certain summers that are really wet and really warm, and you know, sometimes climate conditions mean that those spores really start ramping up very early in the season. Often the peak crisp period for a lot of areas of the country isn't until sort of those later summer and and early autumn months. But I've seen years where, you know, the first couple of weeks of January we're already starting to get quite significant rises in spore counts. So it's really important to be mindful that you might need to start zinc or or however you're going to manage facial eczema quite early, and you need to be monitoring from quite an early point in the year as well. Because where people often run into challenges, they they get caught out. You know, it's something that's going to come around every year. It's going to come around at at particularly for farmers that live in high-risk areas. But even those marginalized areas where, you know, maybe some years they don't really see any eczema challenge and s but certain bad years they'll do, it sort of needs to be front of mind through a decent chunk of the year, and people need to be keeping an eye on spore counts and and sort of trying to make sure that they get to it before it becomes a problem. Because there's a, as we talked about before, once it becomes a problem, it's a real problem for the productivity of your animals and the welfare. Facial experiment is a nasty issue.

SPEAKER_01:

For the farmers who are listening who maybe haven't started monitoring or haven't started prevention already, what should they do?

SPEAKER_02:

Spore counting is a real big one. So that allows you to start identifying when the risk is starting to happen. And spore counting on your individual farm is absolute gold. You know, there's some value in regional spore counts, and often a lot of vet clinics will have a sort of a spore count chart or a board in their clinic and their newsletters and stuff to say, hey, here's what things are looking like around the region. But actually the real value comes from what's happening on your farm and what's happening on the parts of your farm that you're probably going into grazing next is really critical because there's so much variability between pastures and between sort of even areas and pastures. It's really hard to know exactly what's going on without actually having the data to work with. And sinks, it's not crazy expensive, but it is an added cost, and there is an element of toxicity to it, particularly at higher levels, where you want to be starting it at the right time. You don't want to just start it willy-nilly just because uh you might as well start it in January and just sort of go through till the end of the season. You should be looking to say, hey, I don't need to start this until I'm actually seeing some level of risk. And to establish that level of risk, you need the score counts, and then that's the point at say, right, okay, here's where I need to start intervening. And then continuing to monitor things as the season goes, because again, you don't want to give zinc way longer than you need to. So you might get near the end of April, May, June, depending on the season, and continue to look at spore counts and see what are they doing? Are they starting to drop off? Are they now sort of back to levels where I could safely stop Zinc?

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so it sounds like there's sort of a balancing act both at the start of the facial eczema risk period and at the end.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

We've talked about the scale of the problem. Cara, what makes facial eczema so hard to manage after all these years of having it on our radar?

SPEAKER_00:

We have alluded to a couple of these reasons, and one of them is that variability from year to year. It is caused by a fungus, and that's very dependent on the environment, so that will change year to year. Some years are higher risk, other years are lower, and many farmers do get caught out because they don't realize they're at risk. So backing up Mitch's point of that monitoring is really important both at the start of the season and also when you're thinking about stopping your preventative management, whatever that might be. And the other reason, which we also talked about, are those hidden signs. So you might not actually see any animals with the clinical signs of facial eczema, that photosensitivity, that sunburn and peeling skin, but you've still got a lot of animals that have liver damage and will be causing productivity losses. And if you're not realizing that, then you're not going to be planning for the next season either because you yeah, you think it's all good. So that's really hard to manage when it's such an insidious underlying disease sometimes.

SPEAKER_01:

You talked about how sometimes the effects of facial eczema on the liver can become apparent during the transition period. Is that when farmers who haven't seen clinical facial eczema through summer and autumn might first realise they have it?

SPEAKER_02:

Yep. That's when sometimes you start seeing cows that otherwise look fine through the summer months and through late pregnancy and the dry period. They've been totally fine and their sort of metabolic requirements haven't been sky high, and then all of a sudden you hit that period where you have really, really high metabolic requirements, and that's when they start really struggling. And so, yeah, you can get seasons where guys will have had a pretty good season, I didn't have any real facial eczema issues, and then all of a sudden you've got a chunk of your herds really struggling when it comes into that transition period and sort of early lactation, and it can be, you know, by then it's sort of too little, too late. Uh they those cows are going to struggle through that season and probably on woods.

SPEAKER_01:

Is that something that can be tested for? Because there's obviously other reasons that cows can struggle after carving.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it can be a useful consideration for if you're doing blood work on cows that aren't producing is to say, well, hey, let's have a look at their liver enzymes and see uh, you know, is their liver probably functioning at full capacity. And if it's not, it can be a little bit challenging because just using liver enzymes by themselves is not always is you know 100% diagnostic. So there's some nuance to at the interpretation, but yeah, abnormal liver enzymes at a time of year where there shouldn't be anything else causing it in cows that's sort of fit, otherwise sort of not doing well, can be highly suggestive.

SPEAKER_01:

Cara, what research breakthroughs or key findings have you seen so far?

SPEAKER_00:

The two most exciting ones, I think, are looking at the fungus itself. So, I mean, yeah, as we've talked about, this disease has been around for a long time, since the late 1800s. So you kind of think we know everything there is to know about, especially the fungus. But at the start of the program, we were working with researchers from Manaki Fenwa and Ag Research, and they actually identified that the spores that you see under the microscope actually come from two different species of fungus. So they look identical when you see them under the microscope. One of them, Pseudopithemyces toxicarias, if you want to get that, produces the toxin or can produce the toxin that causes Fe. And then the Pseudopithmyces chitarum doesn't have the ability to produce the toxin. So that is really exciting because now we can develop tools to target the toxin-producing fungus only. We can detect that Fe risk more accurately. But we are, you know, we're still learning about this. So until we actually learn more, the spore count as we standardly do it is still the way to go. So it doesn't change the fact that if you see spores, you should assume that they are toxic until we know more and have better diagnostics to understand that. But I mean, that's a good example of using newer technology than we had, you know, when the fungi was first described to be able to understand this better and then ultimately manage it better as well. And the other thing is that we've been running a study, it's just finished its second year of three years to understand where the spores are around New Zealand, called the Sheep Pooh Study. And I know we're on a dairy, dairy podcast, but it still applies. So farmers around the country are sending in sheep poo samples every fortnight from October to the end of May, so we can understand where those spores are. And also they're reporting when they see clinical signs of FE on their farm, whether it be in the animals they're studying or maybe it is cattle on their farm, so that we can build that picture. And also all of this information is being built into a predictive risk model so that we can better prepare farmers as well. But yeah, just because it is a sheep poo study, it still applies because if the spores are being found in the sheep poo, if they're ingesting it, then that risk is for any species that's going to be grazing in that area. So we're using sheep as kind of the sentinel species for that broader risk for all livestock.

SPEAKER_01:

And is that just because sheep poo is easier to transport around the country?

SPEAKER_00:

It's a bit easier to manage, yep. And, you know, cowpats are a lot larger, so you know, you're getting that reproducibility goes down if you're dealing with such a big thing coming into a smaller thing for testing. So what we've found with that is that spores have been found down to Otago for the last two years consistently. As they go down the country, they're at lower levels. We haven't seen any clinical facial eczema in that area or in Canterbury, but the spores are there. Clinical facial eczema had been seen from the top of the South Island, so West Coast, Tasman, Melbourne, Nelson, up to Northland and every region in between. And the risk for the last two years, we've still seen relatively high spore counts at the end of May. So again, going back to that point of making sure that if you're stopping your preventative management, you have checked that the risk is actually gone. Because, you know, you might have been for years doing your zinc on a certain date, starting it on a certain date and stopping it on a certain date. But because of those changes in the environment, need to really make sure that that is still appropriate.

SPEAKER_01:

What do you know about the risk on sheep pasture versus dairy pasture if it's in the same area?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, if it's in the same area, then that environment is able to grow and sustain that fungus essentially. As Mitch said earlier, the variability from paddock to paddock is a lot. So you still can't assume that if there are spores in that region, it will be on your farm necessarily because it will depend on the pasture type you've got. But ryegrass pasture is one of the riskiest pastures for facial eczema, and that is predominantly what is used in the dairy industry. So yeah, we can assume that if we have these spores on the sheep and beef farms in that same area, then it is likely to be there for the dairy farms as well.

SPEAKER_01:

I wondered whether the way that we manage pasture on a dairy farm might influence the risk somehow.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, grazing management can have a reasonably significant impact on spore counts. The more dead matter you've got uh at the base of the pasture, the more risk there is that uh there's a nice environment to grow fungi in. So there is certainly an element of how you manage your pastures can have an impact. And it will probably be part of the reason why we'll also see some differences paddock to paddock and farm to farm. And even between farms of sort of different grazing species, sheep often eat down quite a bit lower than cattle. That sort of has its pros and cons for dead matter management. Pasture management is is can make a big difference. But there will also be farms where you've done everything right, you've got relatively little dead matter in the pasture and you've still got a reasonable amount of risk. Certainly some research done in the last well during my clinical career at least indicated that there are spores further up the grass ward than just the base. So it's not that the risk purely exists at the base. There is risk still, you know, even on reasonable length pasture.

SPEAKER_01:

Mitch, while the research that Cara talked about is happening, farmers obviously still need to act. Can you talk to us about what we should be doing to prevent facial eczema?

SPEAKER_02:

There's a couple of options out there. The bulk of what people use to manage facial eczema is zinc. I'll touch on a couple of other things just because they are things that people use and can be beneficial as long as you're careful with them. So we've talked a little bit about pasture management, but that's in order not to be all and end all of facial eczema, you've got to do more than just good pasture management. Some people use fungicide sprays and they can be really useful at stopping the fungus from growing in the first place. Once you've already got spores and once you've already got fungus growing, it's sort of too little too late. You know, if you spray a pasture with a spore can of 50,000, it's going to do basically nothing. It will just inhibit further growth, but the risk is already there. So when you are using fungicide sprays, it's really, really even more critical to look at spore counts because you have to be spore counting regularly and very carefully before you apply it to make sure that you're not just going to waste your money. Not only that you're going to waste your money, but that you think you've taken the risk off the table and you potentially haven't. You know, those things aside, the big thing is really zinc dosing. And there's so many different ways to get zinc into cattle, some of them much more reliable than others. So a lot of the research indicates that oral drenching in dairy sheds and boluses or capsules work a lot more consistently than some of the other methods. We know pretty well that zinc solely as a trough treatment through a through a dosetrone or sort of other inline dispenser. It's almost impossible to manage facial eczema risk on a farm just with that zinc source alone. You often need it in feed, you know, in shed feeding, or in some other form in conjunction. You can't really rely solely on water dosing alone. Drenching is sort of falling by the wayside. It's quite labour intensive and very few sheds have it. But certainly in you know, in in my experience, when I've seen farms and there was probably only a handful in the practice that I was at, of seeing farmers that do drink their cattle, their facial eczema control is really, really good because you can individually dose cows and make sure that every cow is getting every dose every day, and that's really, really helpful. Capsules are great, you know, they provide anywhere from sort of four to six weeks of protection, depending on the capsule, and but they can be a little bit more costly and a little bit of a logistical issue to use. It's often what people use for young stock, and and that's sort of understandable when you're not seeing them once or twice a day, every day through that time of year. You really need to work with your vet, I think, to design a good program and have that program in place long before the facial eczema season begins. It's no use, you know, rocking up to the front counter of your vet clinic in April and saying, Hey, I think I've got a real bad eczema problem and I haven't really been doing much with zinc or I've just been putting it through the water. What do you reckon I should do? You know, again, as we've talked about, prevention's better than cure. You you sort of want it's too little too late once you've gone past the point of no return. But it's also really important to get zinc levels right. You can go too high and it can be toxic in certain doses, but there's also a dose below which if you're giving it, it's probably not doing much. There's quite a tight range of effectiveness, and so it's really, really important to test your cows and make sure that you are getting the levels right to make sure that you're not wasting your money and that you're actually doing a good job and you're not causing toxicity.

SPEAKER_01:

So blood testing cows, uh obviously they'd work with their veterinarian on on that. But like how many cows, how often?

SPEAKER_02:

It's a hard question to answer. Most clinics will say a minimum of 10 cows every time you're going to test. It depends, you know, if you look at the statistics of the variability in some of those tests, more would be better. 20 or 30 cows, particularly for larger herds, I think, is a more appropriate representation. Uh so it's sort of, I think, something that you should very closely work with your vet. There is the zinc milk check offered by Fonterra, and that can be a useful sort of baseline screening tool for uh that will sometimes help outline I'm either really, really low or really, really high in my zinc levels, but shouldn't be used as the only source of information. Blood testing is the far more useful source of that information because blood testing can also help tell you if you've got any liver damage as well. It's not just useful for identifying zinc levels. You can also say, well, hey, where's my zinc sitting? But also do I have any liver damage in the first place?

SPEAKER_01:

Cara, you talked about sort of the mental health impacts. You surveyed farmers recently about the social impacts of facial eczema and how that's impacted farmers. What did you find out?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so we really want to understand or want, because it'll be a continuing thing throughout the program, how FA affects farmers personally and how this stress may shape their on-farm decisions. So we want to move from people just understanding the disease to helping them make decisions and take action because there are a lot of great resources out there, but you know, sometimes that's great information. But what am I actually going to do? So earlier this year we ran a survey to give us some insights on this, and 325 farmers and rural professionals completed that, which is always great because it's difficult to get people to fill in surveys. So we understand that, but really appreciative of those people who did. So a couple of the key insights that really stood out was that lived experience really matters. So what I mean by that is farmers that have been through FE outbreaks and haven't had that experience-based knowledge to be able to read those more subtle signals and signs, they can confidently prepare and manage FE well. And it's generally not until someone has actually been through that outbreak that that does happen. Partly probably because it's, you know, it is a pretty horrible thing to experience. So you're making sure you don't go through that again. And also the stigma around having FE on your farm was still present, which again may be surprising considering it is such a disease that's been here for a very long time. And that stigma is more present on those more non-traditional FE areas, I guess you'd say. I mean, partly because there is no cure, so that awareness and early action are critical. And if those signs are missed, farmers can feel embarrassed or guilty about the fact that it is too late now. And I guess that also goes back to why FE is not easy to manage because the decisions are really complex. So in our program, we're really wanting to ask how do we make these decisions clearer and easier for farmers? It's also about knowing that they know where that support needs to come from. So they don't feel isolated if they do experience an outbreak. So that adoption part of the program is really important. So not just the survey, but we have a whole nother extreme of the program dedicated to that. And it started at the beginning of the program and runs alongside all the more traditional science-y stuff, I guess, to ensure that we do get that co-development and input from the end users. So thinking about how we make people more aware to ask the questions they need to, thinking about that cycle of adoption, how we go from awareness to having that light bulb moment to making it actually embedded in their farm system and to make them curious to enable that change to happen. Yeah, another thing that we've found outside of the survey, more through discussions with farmers and vets, is that we did make the assumption that there's widespread good understanding of FE, but that's not actually always the case. And particularly around that understanding of the subclinical or hidden signs of the disease. So that's a really important part to bring more awareness to that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I remember when I first heard about the research regarding, and Mitch mentioned it earlier, regarding, you know, using water as a way to get zinc and not being very effective, feeling quite sick as a, you know, as a herd owner that I hadn't been protecting my cows effectively.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. And that's really important to help with those.

SPEAKER_01:

Mitch, in the decade you spent as a dairy bear in the Waikator, what experiences have you you had with supporting farmers through facial eczema?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so I want to talk about a couple of farms that come to mind. But before that, I do want to talk about the individual cow. We sort of talk a little bit about the production loss and the the impacts on production repro and and sort of herd efficiency in general. But actually, from an individual cow basis, when they get clinical facial eczema, we have really bad subclinical facial eczema can be quite a significant welfare impact. And so making sure that those cows have basically permanent access to shade, you can apply sort of zinc-based cream to exposed areas, providing them with pain relief, you know, like it is really important that if we do get cows with facial eczema, we take really, really good care of them because it is it it you know has the potential to have quite significant welfare impacts. From a farm level, we'll use two farms, I guess, opposite ends of the spectrum to probably highlight some of the challenges and and some of the reasons why we've talked about testing of cows being really, really important, is certainly worked with one quite large farm that thought they were doing a pretty good job of facial eczema management. Most of it was through the water, and there was a little bit going in through the fears and not really checking, and things kept grumbling on. And then all of a sudden we get into the late summer months and there's a couple of clinical cases starting to pop up, and we think, okay, well, these guys do have a facial energy problem. And then, you know, went in and tested a number of the cows in the herd, and and all of them came back with elevated liver enzymes, and so we thought, oh, maybe we'll test a much larger portion of the herd and found out I think it was something like 30 or 40% of the herd had a degree of impact. What happened for those guys is they did end up with some pregnancy loss, sort of late pregnancy loss, and those cows they never really come into milk, and they're just empty at that point. But when we got to carving, they really struggled. You know, they really, really struggled with metabolic issues, and they really, really struggled to get to peak productivity, and then it just has that flow on impact of well, then your repro season the following years not as good, and that impacts your repro results, and it's just this sort of vicious cycle. So uh they're really, really good example, I think, of a farm that thought they're doing anything right without sort of actively checking, you could quite easily assume that that's the case, but the flow on impacts can be years in the making if you're not careful. On the opposite end of the equation, a farm who was giving lots of zinc and was definitely giving lots of zinc, but it turns out they were giving too much zinc. And low-level zinc toxicity can appear quite similar to subclinical facial eczema. So you just get cows that are sort of dropping production and they're not doing very well and you know something's going on, and it can be very easy without testing to just say, oh, we'll just give them more zinc. But in the case of this farm I can think of in particular, actually they were already giving too much zinc and it was an issue with sort of feed calculations and how much zinc had been put in the feed, and they ended up with quite a significant portion of their herd with zinc toxicity, and they did end up with a few deaths as a result of that. But until you test, you don't know. And it's really, really important. As I said, zinc is a very effective management strategy, but the range between sort of effective and toxic is quite a small range, so it's really, really important that we keep right on top of doing diagnostic tests and making sure that your zinc is performing as you uh would expect.

SPEAKER_01:

And what about young stock? How do you make sure the future of your herd, often grazed off farm, is protected?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, this is a really big issue that a lot of people run into. Often because grazing is done at an external grazier and you might not be in charge and you might not see those animals for lengthy periods of time. It's very easy to send your animals off to grazing and you know, come May, you're gonna get a bunch of animals back and hope that they are at the right weight and in the right health. And sometimes they're not. And sometimes one of the big things, you know, there's there's obviously a a various issues that can go on out of grazing, but one of the big things that I have seen problems with is facial eczema. And it's not necessarily a uh uh a negligence issue or you know, or uh an issue with a grazier. Sometimes zinc dosing has been done, but maybe it's just been done at frequencies which were a little bit too long. So you've been bolusing and and and it's a bolus that's supposed to last about four weeks, or maybe it's sort of been extended out to five or six weeks. And so you've had four weeks of really good protection and two weeks of risk. And so, you know, every six-week period they're they're getting absolutely handled by facial eczema, but you wouldn't know. One of the really important things I would often recommend to farmers is obviously if you're managing them yourself, you can keep a much closer eye on them. But the big thing is to make sure that you are consistently and frequently making sure your animals get sink and don't rely on water alone. But for guys who are sending their animals out to grazing, particularly if it's practical, sometimes going out there every four weeks and helping them with the bolusing can make a huge difference in terms of, you know, making sure it does happen and it happens at the time that you want it to happen and everything sort of goes smoothly and everything gets their bolus and and it's also a good opportunity to check on the future of your herd. You know, being able to cast an eye over them every four weeks, using bolusing as a way to to get in there and sort of helping your graze ear out can be a really, really good way to keep on top of your young stock because you know, ideally at the end of the day, they are the future of your herd and you want them to come back in really good condition, really good health and and at target weights to make sure that they are the you know most productive animals that they can be.

SPEAKER_01:

Cara, looking ahead, how do you see this research changing the way we manage facial eczema in the future?

SPEAKER_00:

In a nutshell, the more you know, the better you can manage. So we want to be able to give farmers that ability to plan confidently and not just react. We now have data to show that FA isn't just a problem in those traditional hotspots and it is spreading. And to manage this, farmers need consistent diagnosis and using the current tools, but also hopefully the program will develop better tools as well. And one key tool for that prediction is the prediction model, which is going to be built from the three years of the sheep pood data, but also, you know, 30 years plus of bet service weather data. So that's being built by a company in Dunedin called Ingenim. And we hope that it'll be ready before the 2027 FE season. And that will really help farmers answer, you know, well ahead of time. Will this be a bad season in my area? And if yes, then act and plan early. So update the FE management plan. Maybe you need to think about some different safer pastures at risk times or secure that supplementary feed, ordering zinc, having it there just in case. And then closer the season, it would be that standard monitoring of the pasture spore counts and then activating their plan when you've done the counts on your own farm. So I guess it's that shift to more widespread proactive management is really key for facial eczema.

SPEAKER_01:

Where can farmers go to learn more about this research and stay up to date?

SPEAKER_00:

So you can go to the Beef and Lamb website and if you type in EFEI, it should come up. There is a webpage there. And also if you're on the DairyNZ site as well, I'm pretty sure there's a link through to the EFEI program as well.

SPEAKER_01:

And Mitch, what DairyNZ tools and resources are available for anyone who wants to find out more or access more information support?

SPEAKER_02:

So we've got a few tools available. The sort of the easiest first thing to do is just search Facial Eczema on the DairyNZ website, and that will take you to all the information and all the links to all the tools, including some information about EFEI. We've got a couple of resources other than a webpage, one sort of a standalone document, a quick reference cheat sheet, you know, steps to managing facial eczema using zinc, and we've also got a larger management guide talking about managing facial eczema and zinc usage and fungicide usage. So from a, I guess, an information point of view and a practical how do I actually do this point of view, everything's there. Equally, as I've said before, you've got to talk to your vet. This is an sort of animal health management issue, and it's really, really important to have them involved in designing the management strategy. For farmers who haven't tried it yet as well, you can also use Daisy, which is our AI DNZ chatbot, and it'll pull the answers from all of our DNZ resources. You know, that's what it's trained on. And so if you want to just know, you know, a very specific piece of information about uh fungicide ore zinc, then ask it and it'll give you a great answer.

SPEAKER_01:

That's it for this episode of Talking Dairy. A big thank you to Cara Brosnahan from Beef and Lamb New Zealand and Mitch Cooper from DairyNZ for sharing their insights. If you want to learn more, check out the DairyNZ website for resources on monitoring spore counts, zinc dosing, and pasture management, and visit Beef Lamb New Zealand's Knowledge Hub for updates on the EFEI program. And we'll link to these in the show notes. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time. Matiwa. If you'd like to get connected with DairyNZ's latest advice, research, tools, and resources, whether it's reading, scrolling, listening, or in person, you can visit dairynz.co.nz forward slash get connected, and don't forget to hit follow to keep up to date with our latest episodes. As always, if you have any feedback on this podcast or have some ideas for future topics or guests, please email us at talkingdai at dairynz.co.nz. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time on Talking Dairy.