Livestock should be going into winter looking good after a bumper autumn. Following two droughts and last year’s cold winter, many animals this year will have had a welcome opportunity to put on a few extra kilos.

Keep cattle well fed and healthy over the winter months. Photo supplied.

For every silver lining, though, there’s a cloud, and the ones that provided the warm, wet autumn have been kind to those nasty spores that cause facial eczema.

Vets advise the FE season has been particularly severe and long this year, with carcass pickup and pet food trucks busy collecting casualties.

Even stock that look fine now need monitoring.

The stresses of bad weather or pregnancy can make unseen sub-clinical infections flare up, with possibly fatal results. The young and the old are especially susceptible.

Cold, wet conditions are more than just unpleasant, for stock and farmers alike.

Lack of sunlight brings the dangers of metabolic diseases, including grass staggers and milk fever, so magnesium supplementation should be starting now.

Feed off new grass or brassica crops with caution, as these too can cause sudden deaths from nitrate-nitrite poisoning. Supplying plenty of hay or silage will help to mitigate these problems.

Hungry animals will test electric fence systems, and find holes in fences you never knew existed. 

Neighbours tend to lose their sense of humour when uninvited animals decide to dine on carefully saved pasture, so boundary fences need to be well and truly stock-proof.

Be especially vigilant of road fences; long, dark nights and large, dark animals are not a good mix on country roads.

No one on the land needs to be reminded how wet the ground becomes in winter. Once-dry areas become waterlogged, and wet areas turn into bogs.

Keeping stock out of wet places can become a bit of an art form, but making every effort to do so will save soil damage, minimise hoof infections and prevent stock losses. Sheep, in particular, have a suicidal urge to get themselves stuck wherever they can.

Standing stock off pasture in feed pads, races or even yards can help and your stock will thank you for any shelter that can be provided.   

Sound like all gloom and doom? Winter’s a bit like that.

But in the word of the poet, Shelley: “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”