Will you play the Blowfly lottery this season?

With the blowfly season becoming more unpredictable, and reported to be lasting longer and starting earlier than ever before, a new campaign is warning flock managers about the risk of gambling with treatment.

The Don’t Play the Blowfly Lottery campaign, developed by Elanco Animal Health, launches this week and aims to raise awareness of the risks and potential consequences of inadequate or poorly timed treatment.

As part of the campaign, unique video content will be developed to illustrate the devastation that blowfly strike can cause. This will run alongside a dedicated advertising campaign, which will offer sheep farmers the chance to enter a competition to win a Suzuki KingQuad 400 quad bike and work wear worth over £5,500. The video is available to watch on the Farm Animal Health YouTube channel - http://bit.ly/1IANsWn

Katherine Openshaw Ruminant Marketing Manager at Elanco said: “Averting blowfly strike can be difficult due to the unpredictable weather in the UK and as a result many farmers get caught out by not treating their flock at the right time. Taking this gamble can cause great emotional and financial implications if sheep become infested as the animals will suffer if they are affected and a loss of production will often result as well.

“We wanted to develop a campaign that communicated the serious risk that many sheep farmers take each season, and the consequences of not using a preventative treatment product early.”

The FleeceBind Lottery campaign will call upon flock health experts and the stories of people who have experienced the effects of blowfly strike to provide farmers with information on how to adapt their blowfly control strategy to cope with the climatic variability and reduce the number of flies that are about to affect their sheep.

Fly strike can be prevented through the use of preventative treatment products. Using an Insect Growth Regulator with Fleecebind™ technology offers protection against fly strike. Fleecebind™ protects sheep by ensuring that the treatment first spreads from the tip to the base of the fleece, around the fleece and onto new wool growth; and then binds strongly to the lanolin in the fleece providing full fleece protection.

CLiK^® and CLiKZiN^® are the only products with FleeceBind™ technology. CLiK^® provides the longest duration of cover at 16 weeks, which minimises labour requirements for farmers and CLiKZiN™ offers farmers greater flexibility when marketing lambs with its 7-day short meat withhold.

To find out more information and to enter the FleeceBind Lottery competition, visit www.farmanimalhealth.co.uk/fleecebind.