 Hi, I'm Dr Mary Carr, Chief Veterinary Officer of South Australia and I'm pleased to welcome you to the Red Meat and Wool Growth Programme production brought to you by the Department of Primary Industries and Regions, Livestock SA, Animal Health Australia and the University of Adelaide. Today we are exploring the Enhanced Abattoir Surveillance Programme with a focus on grass seeds. Enhanced Abattoir Surveillance tracks the health conditions of sheep found at the abattoir. These findings are provided to producers to assist with planning around prevention and management of prevalent animal health conditions. Grass seeds legions is a condition that comes and goes in South Australian abattoirs according to the region of origin and according to the season. Over the last three years, one in 10 properties in South Australia submitted sheep with grass seeds and one in 30 consignment had reported cases. At the animal level, approximately one in every 60 slaughtered sheep would have grass seeds. Since the late 2000, we had an increase in grass seeds frequency at the abattoir with a peak in 2012-2013. Since then, we observed a very strong but steady decrease in finding grass seeds at the abattoir suggesting that we have a very good management of this condition within the state. Grass seeds is very property and mob specific. Within an affected mob, you can find on average two out of five sheep having grass seed legions. Grass seed is also very cluster within the greater Southeast region and has a very strong seasonality where you're going to find most of the grass seed cases during the summer and autumn seasons. Grass seed contamination of the carcass is very common in South Australia and for that matter nationally, it represents something like $50 million a year annual loss to the sheep industry associated with a number of different grasses. So it can be spear grass, brown grass, barley grass, silver grass, wild geranium, chillian needle grass. So there's a whole lot of different penetrating grass seeds that can cause problems. So what happens is the grass seeds lodge in the wall and within a day or two they've worked themselves in through the lining of the skin and result in a significant irritation. So as little as 25 grass seeds can cause a significant production loss, apart from causing significant irritation. And so it's probably a bit like us having a toothache or a headache that puts the animal off grazing or eating and so they can once again lose several kilograms in growth rate over time. Grass seeds often also cause infections to track in with the grass seed through the skin. So you end up with abscesses, probably not dissimilar to for example, cheesy gland but some of those abscesses may appear different because it's an infection associated with grass seeds. So the primary welfare issue is that as little as 25 grass seeds per sheep can cause significant irritation, pain, discomfort and suffering. If they keep penetrating they can also cause internal abscesses as well. That's why we see a lot of production loss and of course it also results in significant carcass trimming when those animals go to slaughter. Some ways are a bit like cheesy gland in that in apparent infection most of the time. So if you see lambs or for that matter adult sheep showing discomfort it's not generally something that people pick up on in that it causes significant irritation rubbing. So you may see the animals have chewed their wool or rubbed and which would normally be associated with a lice infestation but it could be grass seeds. Producers should recognise that a paddock is seedy, a lot of grass seeds around if livestock are in that paddock and to I guess the feedback from the habitat. So sometimes people will send off a loot load of lambs for example for a sample slaughtering to see if there's any evidence of grass seeds and that will determine whether they can then send off a larger consignment. That sample consignment maybe the first way it might be recognised. Grass seeds present on the carcass always on the outside and they range from minor grass seeds to infected grass seeds which is considered a pathological condition. For the process of the impact of grass seeds is that they have to severely trim all the outside of the carcass which basically ruins nearly all of the primal cuts that they're going to try and recover. For the producer the impact on this carcass is that he will get less weight over the scales because of the heavy trimming the carcass will be downgraded so he won't get paid the premium price for it. The inspectors are trained to look for the presence of grass seeds and in particular infected grass seeds all of which go on to the retail and viral to be trimmed out before it goes over the scales. Our experience with grass seeds on this property is that they can be an issue every year if you're not vigilant on what you do so we've employed a lot of different techniques to try and beat grass seeds we do a lot of physical slashing we try and shear at seed drop and manage lambs so they're not on seed when it's flying because that period for us of eight weeks from seed drop through to just after Christmas are murder on lambs so unless you're really vigilant you can have issues. We haven't had issues here for 20 years but it certainly come up in the enhanced avatars surveillance prior to that. The underlying condition of cost in seed infiltration in the sheep's carcass can be as high as twenty five to thirty dollars ahead depending on the way of your carcass yeah that's that's painful when you think you're sending off clean lambs. There are a range of management options for dealing with grass seeds it may be a case of heavy grazing before seed set for example typically barley grass or silver grass doesn't have a chance to set seed so you're reducing the risk that way it may be just a case of avoiding cd paddocks where we do know that there's a lot of them of the common grasses present otherwise you may change your management to lamb earlier so that the lambs can be turned off before grass seeds become a problem so for example you may be turning your lambs off in September early October before grass seeds become an issue the next step is perhaps talking to your agronomist and looking at herbicides to control grass seeds by spraying it out preventing grass seed set you can also look at fertilizer regimes where you're encouraging the more productive non cd grasses to to get a better foothold in the paddock that might be including perennials if you've got that option in terms of treatment there's really no no options for grass seeds as I say often it's an inapparent infection because it's covered by the wool you won't see it until the skin and the wool was taken off and you'll see the grass seeds penetrating the carcass and you might see some micro abscessation or abscesses in the skin but and really there's little point in an antibiotic treatment at that stage because it's already too late having grass seed infestation in livestock is is not very nice and certainly dealing with it afterwards is not nice either having to share bellies and jowls off sheep that are just absolutely loaded with seed is not much fun and it's certainly not much fun for the lamb or sheep either between 2007 and 2021 the Department of Primary Industries and Regents managed the enhanced abattoir surveillance program at Lobothal and Murray Bridge with funding from the state and national sheep industry funds and national industry funding from meat and livestock Australia it was the EAS program that provided producers with the feedback discussed in this video although EAS monitoring has ceased there are plans in place to transition to entering South Australian data into the national system this national data can inform the development and funding of appropriate industry and government initiatives on the ground to better support South Australian producers to reduce losses caused by unnecessary carcass trimming and to take advantage of premium markets to assist producers animal health Australia has partnered with Persa to create the sheep health conditions carcass impacts tool a 3d digital tool designed to show the industry what six common conditions look like on a carcass and give them an idea of how much trim may occur at the processor livestock essay encourages all producers to talk to their processes about what carcass and disease and condition data they can access from their consignments thanks for watching we hope you have learned more about grass seeds and the importance of managing sheep health with the help of enhanced abattoir surveillance to find out more or get support with your business contact your local animal health advisor from the Department of Primary Industries and regions or the South Australian livestock biosecurity extension team through the livestock essay office the red meat and wool growth program is an initiative of the government of South Australia and supported by meat and livestock Australia the South Australian sheep and cattle industry funds and sheep connect essay