Keds

Ok, I have had it. Today I picked up several of the lambs and they are infested with keds. The keds are wingless flies that live their entire lives on sheep. They suck the blood, much like ticks, engorging their bodies with the meal. They mate and then a single larvae is formed in the uterus of the female. At the stage of the larvae they are impossible to squish. When they are engorged they pop like balloons. I know that is a gross thought, and it is gross but I have been picking keds off the lambs for a while now and I have the hang of it. I know when a female is about to lay her larvae because she is not engorged and the larvae is live and bit in her abdomen and appears white. There are two or three females in the picture of thiese keds, but none are ready to lay. The small cocoon looking ked is an immature ked, recently hatched and fed. They pop like baloons with little pressure. The small black bits and digested blood and are not very visible to the naked eye. The kids leave these feces in the wool and enough of the feces can stain the wool a dark reddish brown colour. No one wants to spin wool that is infested with bugs, even if they are dead, so basically it has to be burned. The wool can be put in plastic bags to kill the keds and the larvae, but that takes about 5 weeks in total and the carcasses of those bugs are still there and if the wool was used, they have to be picked out. Another gross. 

So, I am going to pen the sheep and administer a drug which I do not like to use, Ivermectin. Since the keds suck blood, the systemic drug will kill those that feed. It does not kill the larvae or pupas. These will have to be killed with a second and possibly third dose of the drug. I do not like to administer any drugs to the sheep, but when the infestation is as bad as it is, then something must be done. Since I have not been successful getting a shearer to come, I will have to treat the sheep with a drug rather than a pesticide. The pesticide can only be administered properly after shearing. So the sheep are not shorn and must be treated systemically. I guess I will have to takle shearing as well since they do need to be done. I have said all this before, but today, after picking too many keds off the lambs, I know I cannot wait any longer.I have the Ivermectin and will go ahead with the plan tomorrow. I bought a marker to put a dot on each sheep that has been treated, until all of them have the coloured dots. The lambs are too young to treat and must be wiped down with the pesticide instead. Some of the Ivermectin will pass through the milk, but likely not enough to kill the keds on the lambs. I will consult a veterinarian first, to be sure there is no other way to handle the situation without shearing. This whole think is horrible. Gross. I hate it. Yuk. But it does have to be dealt with now. NOW.