 in the productive landscape of the Limestone Coast in the southeast corner of South Australia. The concept arose from a Limestone Coast Development Forum in 2012 and in 2014 through funding from PERSA's premium food and wine innovation cluster, the group was formed and whose focus was to work in a number of areas to develop a deeper understanding of the region's red meat industry, build innovation, grow profitability and enhance skills. The overreaching aim of the red meat cluster is to increase the size and value of the red meat industry in the Limestone Coast. To do this, the red meat cluster brings together the entire red meat value chain and delivers collaborative projects that target barriers to profitability. By promoting collaborative solutions to common problems, the red meat cluster aims to improve business profitability which leads to more efficient, sustainable and ultimately more productive, valuable regional industry. The Limestone Coast red meat cluster is overseen by an industry-wide strategy group with representatives from across the industry, including producers, transport, banking, local council, processing, retail, research and extension. Tonight's topic which focuses on the lamb rip fracture project is a great example of how the Limestone Coast red meat cluster is collaborating with a number of different sectors of the red meat value chain to address a problem. Importantly, it is a problem that is impacting the bottom line of both processes and producers. The rip fracture project is a partnership between processes, producers, scientific and research institutions, industry bodies with the support of state and local governments. This is the value of a cluster approach in bringing together the supply chain to address a problem with an outcome that benefits all sectors. Our first speaker tonight is Dr Kirstie Cordon. Kirstie came from a farming background near Strathalb in South Australia, which has led her to a lasting interest in primary production, agriculture and animal health. As a result, she pursued study in agriculture science at CSU Woga Woga, New South Wales. On graduation, Kirstie pursued a passion for horses and managed thoroughbred stud farms and trained a few race horses. Curiosity and a thirst for further knowledge in animal health and performance and a continued passion for agriculture led her to return to tertiary studies at the University of Adelaide to pursue a veterinary medicine later in life. After working in private practice in southern Queensland and the Adelaide Hills, Kirstie decided to return to Strathalb and take on the role of the Enhanced Averture Surveillance Programme Manager with PERSA in early 2017. So tonight, Kirstie will present an overview of the Enhanced Averture Surveillance Programme, which she currently manages. Thanks, Colin. Thanks, Tiffany. It's Colin back again. Just before we hear from Kirstie, I just want to grab some feedback from the audience out there tonight and I'm just going to launch a few polls to get some feedback on. The first one I'd like your feedback on, simply do this by clicking on your screen. Where are you listening from tonight? So just take a moment to click those options and this will give Kirstie and our second speaker, Colin, some feedback on the audience tonight. So I'll just give you a few more moments to click on those options. Okay, so the results show that 50% of the audience is from that South East region and the majority of the rest is really from all within South Australia. And there's a couple of you coming from other parts of South Australia. So just another background poll question. What's your occupation? Primary producer, consultant, advisor? Are you an agribusiness sector? Are you a researcher or are you a student? Again, if you'd all just like to click on the screen and provide us with that feedback. So I can see that most of you are 64% of you tonight primary producers and 28% are consultants and the remainder of the group is made up by researchers. Okay, the last polling question as a bit of context for this evening is a question specific to the topic. Have you had a trace back or been aware of rib fractures in your lambs? Yes, no or unsure? I'll give you a few more moments. I can see that three quarters of you have clicked there. All right, most of you have voted so I'll close that one off. And the results there show that 33% of you have had a trace back and about 50% of you have said no and the remainder aren't sure. So what I'm going to do now, folks, is I'm just going to pass the button across to Kirsty and we will learn about her surveillance program. Thanks, Carolyn. I don't have anything on my screen here. Are you there, Kirsty? We can see your screen. We just need to see your PowerPoint. Have you got it there? Oh, it's up on my screen. Sorry, Carolyn. I can't see your... Nothing. That is not Kirsty. Can you see that now? Yes, away you go. Excellent. Thanks, Carolyn. And thanks, Tiffany, for the introduction. Good evening, everybody, and welcome. My name's Kirsty Corden. And I'm here today to give you a brief talk about the South Australian Habitual Surveillance Program. I'll give you some background information on the program, why these conditions that we monitor are important, and how the data is collected, and fed back to producers, and how to interpret the results. I'll also touch on areas where the data is used, and this rib fracture research is a very good example of this. It's also worth noting that each state monitors and reports on endemic diseases and conditions very differently compared to South Australia, and we are very unique in the data that we collect and the methods that we use to distribute this information directly back to the producers. So what are the aims of our program and why is it important? So, I mean, it's simply a direct feedback system from the processing plant to producers that just lets them know what diseases and conditions were found in their line of sheep with the ultimate aim of improving stock health and welfare and to maximise productivity, and in producing a consistent quality product just like cancer coca-cola, which means improving everyone's bottom line at the end of the day. And this cannot be achieved without the knowledge that the conditions exist in the first place. And indirectly, the program assists the sheep industry broadly by reducing waste within the red meat value chain, increasing information for research projects, and is also there to support market access into the future. The conditions monitored are not notifiable, and there are no compliance or fines associated with what we do. The program is a collaboration between a few different parties, and it's been operating since 2007 at both Thomas Foods International Exporting Processing Plants, where there's one located at Lobethall in the Adelaide Hills and the other one is at Murray Bridge. We are the only state in Australia enough to be predominantly funded directly by industry. That is, the South Australian Sheep Industry Fund, which is managed by SAFSAG, or the South Australian Sheep Advisory Group, with a smaller national contribution from Animal Health Australia. So the program looks at 21 different diseases or conditions that are detected at Slaughter, and we provide feedback to producers consigning these lines. So just to let you know that South Australia is currently the only state collecting information on rip fractures. So it is not known how common and widespread it is in other parts of Australia, but we suspect it's not just a South Australian problem. The reason that we're finding it here is because we're actively looking for it and reporting on it, but we just don't know to what extent interstate lambs are affected at this point in time. And without this data, we would not be aware that the conditions such as rip fractures are such a significant issue that warrants further investigation. So on your screen you can see these are some of the conditions that we monitor. On the far left-hand side, you've got a grass seed abscess, which would require a significant amount of trim that would lose that entire brisket, depending on how far that abscess tracks. In the middle, we've got some dog bites, and on the far right-hand side, some bruising. So the grass seed abscesses you might not be aware of. The dog bites, they are quite obviously severe, but quite preventable, and the bruising until they're processed, that produces are unaware that these conditions exist. So I'll just go a little bit into how our program works, and we'll just highlight how we collect the data on the processing floor and get the information back to the sheet producers. So the program provides an additional meat inspector on the ground, covering both shifts at Murray Bridge and the one shift that's operated at Lobosaw to help collect the data and feed it back to us so we can pass the information back to producers within just a week or so after they've been processed. So on the processing floor, this team of meat inspectors work together inspecting and checking the red and green awful trays and each carcass as it moves along the chain. At the end of each individual consignment, they record an estimated percentage of each of the conditions present within the line. The meat inspectors are asked to record this estimate starting from 5% and in increments of 5%. As we want to provide feedback on flock issues, not individual condemnations or very low prevalent issues where just a few sheep are affected and the condemnation information is given directly by the processor. So we feel as though we don't need to provide that again. All lines are monitored. However, we only request that lines over 100 head at Murray Bridge and more than 50 head at Lobosaw are reported back to the producer. And for any of you who have had the chance to be on the processing floor, we'll appreciate how fast the chain moves. So it becomes extremely difficult to accurately estimate a trend in a small line when the line starts and stops in a matter of minutes. And of course, if there are major issues in these small lines, it is recorded, but it's just not necessarily, these lines just generally aren't reported back. These estimates are information collected and the information collected by the meat inspectors is then emailed to us at Perza where it is validated, which basically means that the PIC numbers match the owner or the trading name supplied by the processor. And the purpose of this is to ensure that the correct information is sent to the correct owner of the sheep. This client confidentiality is a critical aspect to the integrity of this program and we are very fortunate to be in the positions to cross check with the PIC information held by government where we hold the database information for the state. So in regards to feedback, a producer receives a letter with all the information relating to their line. The number at the bottom is the percent of the line affected. So in this case, 5% of the line was found to have rib patches. That's not five animals affected. That's a percent. And bladder worm 10% sheep measles 5%. Feedback is only provided when a condition is detected in 5% or more. And we currently do not provide information on clean lines. And likewise, feedback is not sent if a producer does not consign the sheep directly to the processor. And although sale yard lines are monitored, there is no trace pack. And just to let you all know that clean lines and results will soon be available via email notification in the near future in addition to postal letters. So clean line information will soon be available. And just an example of our fact sheets that we also send out. So for any positive conditions, a fact sheet is provided with each letter which describes in limited detail what is found. So the fact sheet tells you about what the condition is, why it's important, and what impacts it has both on farm and during processing. And what might the cause be? Treatment, management and prevention options. This is a fairly generic source of information and should be used as a starting point when considering your approach to management and control strategies. And it's useful as a discussion point when involving advisors or vets when feather resistant is needed to tailor a strategy that sets your own individual production and management system for a particular issue that you might have been notified of that you might want to do something about. So we send out a lot of these letters. So this table has been created just to try and make sense of some of the rather long list of conditions and where we've divided it into where the effects are seen. So there are some conditions that predominantly have an effect on farm, whereas at the processor from a producer's point of view, they have little or no effect. So cirrhosis, nephritis and lungworm. These are conditions that affect offal such as the liver and the kidneys. However, it's important to still remember that these conditions result in industry waste that is in the rendering of offal and that would normally end up as a saleable product. There are other conditions that have little or no effect on farm. However, the impact on the carcass at the processor is quite significant. So things like over-bloodworm, vaccination lesions, dog bites don't necessarily affect the productivity of sheep on farm, but there is a lot of wastage during processing. And the final category are those conditions that have an impact at both a farm and processor level. And the most significant of these is grass seeds, pleurisy and arthritis. And you'll notice that reflect cheeseland and jaundice are also on that list. So just highlights the importance of the work that Collins is doing and the impact of rib fractures in sheep in South Australia. So any part of the carcass that is defective must be removed to satisfy the customer's requirements. And the amount of trim removed to obtain this can be quite significant. A loss of trim not only reduces carcass weight but also incurs grid penalties, including downgrading to a lower value, often frozen product, rather than a high-value, chill product. And in the worst-case scenario, the entire carcass can be condemned at times. So if we consider arthritis, this can have both significant economic consequences on farm and during processing. So the on farm impacts include poor growth and reduced productivity of both meat and wool, either thrive and they can be late finishes, possibly mortalities, and often produces left with animals that are not fit to load to be sold anywhere. And then they have to deal with those. And of course, trim loss during the processing can lead to an entire carcass condemnation. So when they trim, they need to take back to the next clean joint. So this can mean a loss of an entire hind leg, an entire forequarter, or they can lose all of their legs, or if there are four or more joints involved, then the whole carcass is actually condemned. And with the feedback, conditions such as arthritis can often be reduced by looking at vaccinating using erovac, which is erosyplis is the most common cause of arthritis in sheep in South Australia, looking at hygiene and marking, looking at ways to reduce stress and at the end of the day maximizing wound healing time. So you can see that the loss of that hind leg is a considerable loss to the producer and it's a considerable loss of valuable product to the processor. So a little bit of research has happened with arthritis using some of our data as well. And tail length was found to be significantly contributed to arthritis where tail docking less than three vertebrae had a significant impact on the rate that the wound was healing and it was taking a lot longer to heal. So making sure that you've got three or more vertebrae is important in reducing your incidence of arthritis and could be one factor, amongst many factors on the farm that need to be looked at. So interpretation of our results, it's important to consider which diseases are present and what impact they're having to the producer or the processor. Are they homebred or bought in sheep and how much of a lion is affected? You can have 40% of a lion of bruised animals but they may be only mildly affected or they could be severely affected. So looking at your kill sheets, looking at your feedback information and determining carcass weights, are they more than normal? Are they well under normal and determining where the losses could be if they're not what you expect? And you need to look at whether it's cost effective. Can you cost effectively manage your issue on farm for a condition like sheep measles if you've got wild dogs that are on your property that you can't control then managing that condition may be very difficult or impossible. So just looking at all of these things in conjunction will help make management decisions a lot easier. And then I guess looking at are there sudden changes in results or are you seeing more of a certain condition? There can be great value in that feedback going back to producers where they are alerted to a problem that they may not have had in the past. I guess in caution to that if you don't send your sheep to a processing plant such as Thomas Foods International where that's the only processing plant that's actively part of our program currently they won't be receiving necessarily the same feedback. So just because you send to an avatar and you don't get feedback doesn't mean that you don't have the condition. It just may mean that they're not monitoring the conditions and letting you know. And in any management change just be patient because nothing it may not the results may not happen overnight it might take several years to reduce your incidents so be prepared for that. So our ultimate aim is to provide sheep producers in South Australia with the information that they utilise on farm when making sheep health management decisions and to decrease the degree of disease on farm. So hopefully that gives you all an idea of how to reduce the feedback system of rates here in South Australia. And I think we're going to field a few questions and then I'll hand over to Colin and he'll explain how he's used this information in his research. So thank you everyone for joining us and please feel free to leave a comment and if you wish to know more about our feedback program or if you have any further questions I'm happy to answer them. Thank you. Kirsty, I've got a couple of questions here that the audience has typed in. The first one you might be able to answer but Colin might also provide insight into his presentation and the first question says how often is the rib damage caused in transit compared to older injuries? That would be a Colin question. I think from our information we don't have that sort of data but that might be something that Colin's looked at. Do you want to park that one, Colin, to your presentation? I can happily answer that now. I would just say that in the study there are about 2,000 lambs at Bordetown Abitur's or less than 1% were injuries that have been incurred during transit to the abitur's so the vast majority occur on farm at an earlier age. Thank you Colin and we're about to gain some further insight into that shortly. There's another question here, Kirsty, in regards to comments about tail links. The person says short tail takes longer to heal. Can you just explain your tail links comments again, please? Yes, so from the research that was done they made a strong correlation between a shorter tail links, less than 3 vertebrae long and tail links 3 or more and there was a different correlation and a reduced incidence of arthritis in sheep with the longer tails than shorter and the thoughts are that the wing takes longer to heal so there's more, a longer exposure to the bacteria that's quite common in the environment so there's more of a chance that they're going to pick that bacteria up and get the infection which causes the arthritis. Okay, so that's just clarified that question. The person was just asking, the shorter tail takes longer to heal and you've just clarified that. Thank you. Is there any further questions from the attendees for Kirsty or we might pick them up as we go to the end? We'll do some questions again. There's one here before Tiffany introduces Colin so there's a question here that there's what proportion of farmers acknowledge the feedback and what proportion take corrective action that you know of, Kirsty, as a result of getting these reports from you? I couldn't give you... I mean we've done a survey to see what people think of our information and that's been very positive. I do field a lot of quite a few phone calls during the week of producers ringing me about conditions that they've been notified of and they just want further clarification or some more information on. To give you a... I couldn't give you sort of numbers but we do field regular calls on producers wanting more information and we haven't really studied how many people are... I think in our survey about 40% was saying that they were making on farm changes. That was a survey done about a year ago. Yeah. We're going to build on that as Tiffany introduces our next speaker. Thanks. Thanks, Colin. So our second speaker tonight is Dr Colin Trengrove for those of you in the southeast or in South Australia. He's fairly well known. Colin is a production animal veterinarian at the School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences University of Adelaide, Roseworthy Campus. He's currently finalizing research towards his PhD into the cause and prevention of rib fractures in sheep. Previously he has run his own livestock consultancy business, Pro-Agg Consulting, as well as working in private veterinary practice as a district vet with the Department of Primary Industries, South Australia in the southeast, mid and upper north and Air Peninsula. He was also a founding director of the APOW Soil and Plant Analysis Club based in Adelaide. So tonight Colin is going to give us an update on his PhD and his findings into the cause and prevention of rib fractures in lambs. Thanks, Colin. Thank you, Colin. And thank you for the intro, Tiff. And welcome, everybody. Yes. So this, as has already been stated, this is the culmination of probably four years of planning and research, but my interest in rib fractures goes back beyond 25 years when I first, it was reported to me by a producer down the southeast. And so it's been an issue that's been around for a long time, but there was little awareness of rib fractures in lambs because it is not a condition that is normally recorded or reported in avatars generally. But as Kirsty has just highlighted, the information has now been recorded for nine years through the Enhanced Habitor Surveillance Program in South Australia funded by the sheep industry fund. And so it's based on that information that we've been able to, I guess, gather enough information to investigate this further. So the topics I would like to cover was firstly talking about rib fracture detection, a review of the causes based on literature, what's the results of the research done to date, and then the prevention strategies that have been developed as a result of those studies, a little bit about the cost of the industry, what's intended down the track, and of course the acknowledgments. So the Australian food standards dictate that rib fractures or calluses as they're probably more correctly referred to, such as these in the picture in the top left-hand corner, need to be excised before the carcass is fit for human consumption. And so, for example, in the JBS, at the Border Town Abiturs, enumatic saw is used to remove the damaged ribs while the lamb is, when its rib fractures are first detected, they're put onto a retained rail, the ribs are removed, and as a result of that, the rack is often compromised. And instead of being worth, say, $25 a kilogram, it's only reduced to a salvage value of probably 20% that value. So you can see here that as a result of cutting out the ribs, there's quite a hole left in the carcass where there's several ribs affected, and this results in the rack which is subsequently damaged. So both of these racks, in this illustration or photo here, have been compromised in the process of removing the rib fractures, and so they don't meet the market specifications. For the US market, there's a 10-centimeter length of rib as indicated in the packaged export product on the right. And there's typically over 100,000 primal cuts downgraded annually in South Australia due to rib fractures which is estimated to cost the South Australian red meat industry around about $3 million annually. So a review of the literature identified several potential causes, so eagles and small, in 1908 reported physical injury is a major cause of rib fractures in the EU and the UK, especially where the EU inadvertently steps on the limb. They also describe the influence of vitamin D, calcium and copper on bone strength and development. And Heteroglu in 1980 highlighted the importance and role of several trace elements in bone formation and development. So there's been a lot known for a long time, but little has been done to resolve the issue. And so a research strategy was developed to examine these causes in the Australian context. Firstly, I'd like to just briefly report a few observations and I've had several of these, especially from Victoria, from veterinary engineering practice and this one from Dr. David Rendell in the Hamilton practice, where he found rib fractures in a mob of lambs that were being yarded for the first time around about 6 to 10 weeks of age and found them collapsing with rib fractures. So in this case about 40 lambs rib fractures were also apparent on post-mortem and liver copper levels were extremely low. So anecdotal evidence such as there's strongly supports that copper deficiency plays a significant role or contributing to the incidence of rib fractures and of course in this case long bone fractures as well. The map here indicates traceback data from the Enhanced Saboteurs Surveillance Programme in this case in 2014 through Thomas Foods International. So one in 25 lambs in South Australia have evidence of broken ribs at slaughter and about 9 in 10 properties send lambs to slaughter with evidence of broken ribs and these come from all over the state as indicated on the map here where the rib fractures have been found up as far as the dog fence indicated by the black dots on the map as opposed to the grey dots which represent negative feedback or properties that haven't had a problem. So this is all based on the IAS data as described by Kirsty in the previous presentation and I guess it highlights one thing is that its not actually unique to any part of the high area, the unnecessary or the high rainfall parts of the state and the other thing I'd like to add here is that, ok, these black dots indicating rib fractures represent where the estimated prevalence has been over 5%. In actual fact the study I have recently completed at Bordetown shows that it's much more common than that as you'd expect because these dots are only representing where there's been at least 5% incidence or prevalence should I say. So we initially funding was initially obtained from MLA to look at a neonatal lamb investigation several years ago where we enrolled 29 farms in a study to test the hypothesis that rib fractures have primarily occurred during birth as has been speculated by many producers and due primarily to copper deficiency which is another commonly held belief. We ended up doing 119 autopsies on lambs that were dead at birth or shortly after and revealed only two with broken ribs. We also collected liver and bone and pasture samples at the same time and we looked at various mineral associations with this condition. We found no apparent association between liver copper levels or bone density and properties that had a history of rib fractures however we recognize that this step sample size was pretty small. A pasture analysis however did reveal a strong correlation between nutrient levels that we'd normally associate with soil acidity and the properties that had a history of rib fractures and so this led to the following study here. So this plot was undertaken to explore the potential association between soil pH from soil maps produced by the CSRO and rib fracture prevalence so based on the that EAS data from 2014. So it reveals here the prevalence of rib fractures, rib fracture positive properties which is represented on the y-axis. So this is properties positive to rib fractures per hundred properties at risk and then across the horizontal axis we have the soil pH, water pH. So we find a distinct correlation here where properties with a higher prevalence of rib fractures are also associated with the more acidic soil types. This is quite plausible association given that calcium intake is critical to bone strength and calcium deficiency is closely associated with soil acidity or increasing soil acidity. So moving on to the Apertor study completed last spring at JBS where we observed 30,000 lambs over a two-week period going along the slaughter chain and we found that a prevalence of about four just over 4% with rib fractures but the range was from 0 to 18%. An average of 21 lambs had rib fractures per line. The average line was 500 lambs so a line or a consignment from a property and 90% of the properties that presented lambs during this period had lambs with rib fractures and in fact fractures were detected in all lines presented during that time that exceeded more 260 lambs. So it was only generally the smaller lines of 100 or so that where we didn't find rib fractures. A third of properties had rib fractures in excess of 5% and an average prevalence in these lines was 8% and this is compares quite closely to the an average of 9% prevalence found in the EAS studies over the last nine years. Now this diagram may look a bit difficult to interpret initially but what we have here is a density plot which simulates a lamb carcass hanging vertically with their head up the top end and so the red spots here are the spine and then we have the rib cage on both sides and we see here there's perhaps poor to see but the ribs numbered from 1 down to 13 on the vertical axis and across the horizontal axis we have the centimetres from the spine out to the exterior of the rib cage out here at 16 centimetres. The illustration is representing over nearly 1300 lambs with rib fractures and the increase in density represents where the more prevalence or where rib fractures were found to be more prevalent. So it's highlighting that the if we look across here that most of the rib fractures are occurring between ribs 8 and 10 on both sides on the left and right side and the rib fractures are occurring on average or mostly between about 10 and 14, 15 centimetres from the spine. So getting close to the exterior of the rib cage to illustrate it another way graphically look at an anatomical diagram of a lamb and we see that about 75 percent of rib fractures occurred on ribs 8, 9 and 10 around about 10 to 14 centimetres so that's where these yellow stars are representative and so why were most of rib fractures occurring in this area? Well if you look at the anatomy of the lamb we find that effectively the first seven ribs are largely protected by the shoulder and foreleg and the the last three ribs are really are somewhat more protected because they're tucked in you know over the abdomen and so it's the ribs 8, 9 and 10 which are the most vulnerable to any sort of injury and so this would indicate that physical injury must be playing a role in this because it's obviously affecting the ribs that are most vulnerable. So looking at the on-farm survey so during the Abitur study of 30,000 lambs that represented 75 lines from 60 properties and so an on-farm property survey was conducted amongst those 60 producers and the findings today indicate that over 90 percent were at risk to copper deficiency based on primarily on the soil analysis and looking more closely at the soil analysis we see that nearly three quarters of the properties had copper potential or at risk to copper deficiency based on the interaction with iron and or molybdenum which were there in excess. Just over half the properties had acid soils and an acid soil was defined using the pH in water of being less than 6.3. 72 percent had what is considered calcium deficiency which correlates with I guess closely with an acid soil although sometimes you can have an alkaline soil due to an excess of potash or magnesium but still have a calcium deficiency and that's why the discrepancy between these two figures. 19 properties had more than 5 percent rib fractures which is that same criteria used for the EAS data and of these 19 properties 100 percent were deficient in either a calcium copper or both and the copper deficiency in this case 89 percent were deficient due to the interaction with iron and molybdenum which I think draws to an important point here because during the survey I found that several producers were spreading copper as a fertilizer partly to prevent perhaps the occurrence of rib fractures but if it's a copper induced deficiency due to an iron excess or a molybdenum excess or for that matter a sulfur excess that copper fertilizer won't have any or have minimal impact on improving the copper status of the animals grazing that pasture. For those that are more statistically inclined looking at some of the correlations in the soil analysis we find strong correlations between iron, calcium, soil pH and for that matter organic carbon and the prevalence of rib fractures and you might say what does that represent? Well in actual fact iron increases and calcium or pH and organic carbon all tend to decrease with increasing soil acidity and so that's a quite a significant correlation and sort of backs up the data that I presented in the previous slide and also the fact that the increasing iron associated with increasing acidity is also that ties up the copper and so reduces copper availability. So the conclusion from this data so far is that rib fractures are mainly due to initially I think an underlying issue is handling or accident and so that's why we tend to see rib fractures from sheep presented to slaughter from well over the state but we do see a higher prevalence of rib fractures occurring in lines from for example Kangaroo Island, the flurio peninsular and the mid and lower southeast in other words generally the higher rainfall areas of the state and this I put down to be more commonly associated with calcium and or copper deficiency and there is also in the literature the issue of vitamin D deficiency which can predispose to bone fragility although I didn't look at that in this particular study. So as we in the process of doing the on-farm investigation looking at how we may prevent rib fractures that's sort of a vast array of different handling equipment and one of the criticisms once again leveled by producers has been is that a result of the increasing incidence of mechanical handling devices in more recent times however the the rib fracture distribution was such that it was on average there was only about two rib fractures per lamb and so it represented more of a pinpoint injury rather than a crushing industry's injury and so for example the use of these mechanical or hydraulically operated capturing devices I don't see as being a significant issue in in the incidence of rib fractures I see there's more a problem with perhaps particular sharp points or sharp objects that might be impinging on the lamb as they run past or getting squashed against a post by the you or similar sort of episodes and so there is obviously an opportunity in many yards to improve the the quality of the equipment and and reduce the risk of rib fractures so for example this illustration here on the bottom right where we have a good flow into a narrow raceway to prevent the animals sort of being too abreast in the raceway but also no sharp objects which might impinge on a rib in the process of going in there and then on the bottom left we have rubberized drafting gates which also will tend to reduce the risk of breaking ribs as through the drafting process which I thought sure could be an issue so I see interim advice on how rib fractures can be prevented one is to ensure that there's adequate calcium and copper uptake by the animal I do specifically refer to uptake as opposed to intake because it may go into the rumen but it doesn't necessarily get into the animal because copper and sulfur and iron and molybdenum can all combine to form an insoluble complex and so it's not absorbed by the animal so in other words we really need to be ideally basically putting copper through either a bolus dose to ensure that enough gets absorbed out of the rumen or preferably perhaps as an injectable form so that it's bypassing the tie-ups that can occur in the rumen so how do we know if the animals are getting an adequate calcium or copper uptake so a soil test to check the need for whether there is a calcium deficiency and so there may be a benefit in providing either lime or dolomite or gypsum depending on the circumstance we can do a blood test on on use at around joining time because you really need to establish the copper status of the you I think a lot of these deficiencies may be occurring during pregnancy and so the lambs are being born perhaps with copper deficiency and or calcium deficiency and they're so more fragile to injury thereafter so check in the EU copper status at joining which is obviously often in spring or thereafter depending on when lambs are proposed to be born alternatively doing a pasture test when you've still got green feed on offer in spring to assess if there is a risk of copper sulfur iron and molybdenum tie-ups occurring or interactions which can induce copper deficiency so by doing a pasture test we can make an assessment about the likely availability of copper in that circumstance and if we find that there are is a potential for redirections we're likely to see a copper deficiency induced or then we would need to ensure that copper is given it directly to the animal as opposed to being applied as a foliar spray on pasture or as a fertilizer additive onto the soil and an additional check of lamb copper and for that matter other trace elements could be warranted at marking or weaning to see how their status is progressing. The next issue I see is important to preventing ribfractures and this is perhaps the wider issue of I think a lot of properties that having one two or three percent with ribfractures is probably primarily due to handling issues and so adopting management strategies to minimize the risk of lamb trauma so being gentle when handling because if you ever do a post-mortem on a lamb or for that matter you may have noticed that sometimes you don't have to put too much pressure on the rib cage to break a rib and so being gentle and realizing that the lambs are quite fragile at an early age. Perhaps reviewing the use of dogs in yards I'm not saying that all dogs are bad because I realize that if the animals are acclimatized to dogs that's a help but lambs are usually quite skittish and are probably more prone to jumping on top of each other or injuring each other or getting injured as a result of the access to dogs. Another issue is minimizing the need to yard lambs so only perhaps dividing the lambs up and only drafting off the heavies to go to slaughter rather than having them all in the yards each time for for um uh yarding although I did find in the survey that there wasn't a distinct correlation between the number of times lambs were yarded and the incidence of ribfractures and the final point there is attending to hazards in the yards so any any situation in the yards that might be predisposing to ribfractures should be eliminated. I appreciate that's easily said not necessarily easily done. Now to finish up with just the cost of ribfractures so firstly there's three aspects to this the producer the the process the producer in the industry so the process are initially so based on estimates from JBS um the uh on a on average um you know killing several thousand lambs a day that chain disruption as a result of having to trim uh lambs with ribfractures results in about fifteen hundred dollars a day on on average the discount caused by lambs ribfractures um discounted brach of lamb resulting in about four and a half thousand dollars a day as I said you know the um it can reduce the value of a rack by eighty percent uh if it's been damaged in the process of trimming uh and this all equates to around about twenty five dollars per lamb with ribfractures at costs of twenty five dollars per lamb with ribfractures. If we look at the cost to the producer we see here that it's estimated that some ribfractures will reduce the growth rate of lambs by around about three weeks I mean this will depend on whether you've got one two three or ten ribs affected uh which looking at the value of the pasture grown may equate to around about a dollar thirty per head uh there's also the trimming cost now trimming as I said there's only an average of about two ribs affected per lamb so the actual trimming doesn't cost a lot per se it might only estimate around about a dollar thirty per lamb and then the other respect is we don't really know is what's the risk of losing soil as a result of being a I guess a repeat offender submitting lambs with a significant number of broken ribs you know especially with some lines of you know of lambs having 10 or 20 percent of lambs affected with broken ribs uh that's an unknown and then the cost to the industry well there's the welfare aspect which um you know that's once again it's a it's an unquantifiable but um like all these things it's best to address these issues early before they uh become an issue uh from a south saran perspective where it's estimated about three million lambs are cured annually if we if we base it on the four percent prevalence discovered in this study uh and the 25 dollar cost per lamb with the root fracture that works out about three million dollars a year to the industry uh and that figure can be arrived at through the various calculations that it comes to a similar figure if we expanded that to this Australian situation where we have about 21 22 million lambs cured annually uh you know that could be cost in the industry over 20 million a year but um as Kirsty referred to we don't have the data on the prevalence of rib fractures in other states because it's not information that's collated and so unless studies are done in a state we won't be able to quantify that figure further so um looking at further research uh also looking to do further aging of fractures and mineral studies on the bone composition of lambs that have got weak bones as opposed to strong bones uh refining that advice to producers that i just outlined previously and uh looking at perhaps ideally doing similar studies in other states uh and finally um ultimately we want to improve the abattoir feedback to producers and so um any feedback that producers have on that matter would be much appreciated so in finishing uh i'd just like to acknowledge uh my phd supervisors uh mla jbs and perza for their assistance through the various means uh there's also the national sheep industry and i'm health australia through their um abattoir surveillance the sheep industry fund for the eas funding on an ongoing basis tfi for their assistance uh samary and also um professor mark stevensson for their help with some of the studies done so on that point i would like to finish up and say thank you for listening and and i welcome any questions over to you carlin thanks colin um i've got a couple questions here one related um back to when you were talking about um the initial copper deficiency slide um so the question was did you verify copper deficiency in the lambs by blood or tissue testing as opposed to soil testing which does not necessarily reflect the actual animal status and i then think in your presentation you went on to talk about actual um blood testing from the animals at marking i think you talked about it as well yes uh yes that's a good point now what we did do um so the 60 uh producers uh we sampled uh five livers from each line of lambs as they came through and uh admittedly so this was in late november early december and we found a third of the properties had evidence of uh deficiency so in other words one or more of the livers that we sampled was was uh grossly deficient in copper and uh so i thought that was interesting in that by the time we get to late november december we may not necessarily that's not the peak time necessarily for seeing copper deficiency but the fact that we found a third of properties um at that one point in time had evidence of copper deficiency uh was quite relevant and uh so yeah that's a fair comment that obviously testing livers is the ideal that's i guess the gold standard for for finding um in particular copper deficiency but uh we can make some various predictions from the soil and from that for that matter from pasture analysis on the likelihood of copper deficiency occurring but um there's no doubt liver sampling either at slaughter or doing a biopsy technique getting your local veterinarian to do a biopsy on say seven to ten animals is perhaps the most direct method of finding copper deficiency and to a lesser extent the blood test is a is a reasonable predictor it depends on the time of the year as to how effective the blood test is i hope that answers the question okay um thanks colon um just following up from that that same person's just um text um i typed in a question was there any correlation between the incidence of low liver copper and the incidence of refractions on those properties uh yes um i've actually got the uh the data right in front of me so as i said um the properties that had uh so there are yeah 18 properties that actually had uh copper deficiency based on liver analysis of the lambs and it wasn't necessarily i mean we just sampled sampled five lambs out of each line we weren't sampling lambs that necessarily had rib flexors so um that was that was good would it be a much more difficult thing to try and organize because generally the livers livers are separated from the carcass before we get to diagnose the presence of rib flexors uh but i did find a correlation between those with uh certainly with those with low copper uh invariably um looking at the soil analysis it was a copper deficiency was predicted but um and in actual fact there was a high correlation between the properties that had high prevalence in other words greater than five percent with rib flexors and uh and the presence of copper deficiency however i can also appreciate that just sampling five lambs from a line at one point in time is not necessarily the the best way of detecting copper deficiency i think it'd be far more relevant obviously to be going on farm and and looking at animals that might be a bit um backward in condition obviously the lambs that are going to slaughter are going to be the ones in best condition and so possibly the less likely to to necessarily have a copper deficiency show up okay um thank you we'll give um Colin a rest for a moment i think there's a couple questions here that were directed back to the first presentation um Kirsty um the question was will we find out what our loss has been on effective carcasses sorry can you just repeat that question will we find out what our loss has been on effective carcasses on effective carcasses by conditions is that what the yeah they've written thank you but sorry means affected oh sorry um we don't know exactly how much trim is taken off um at the processing um it's impossible to know um what that would be we don't get that feedback and they don't record it i mean the line moves so quickly um there's no way i mean they just have to remove it and go on to the next carcass so it's yeah it's um unless research gets done um where you go in any way and take samples to try and estimate it um but there'd be no way of knowing for your particular line how much loss there would be i guess just comparing your carcass weights looking at the conditions that were found and using the feedback to try and sort of join the dot is the best that you can do at this point in time um yeah without further studies but yeah to know um losses of an individual line um i don't think that's information that we'll ever know i guess um but yeah i guess deducting it from the information that you presented with from your kill sheets from the feedback um and just trying to work it out from there great great um yeah it appears that you're fired about the lamb and the tail and docking at the appropriate at the appropriate spot has generated a bit of discussion so the question is is there a difference between using a hot knife or rings for tail docking in regard to arthritis that i don't know came out of the study um from the information that i've seen i'm not sure that um that was actually looked at um but i'm happy to look at that further if they would like to leave their information and i can get back to them on that yep yep so we've got a register of those questions um curses we'll be able to follow that up or there might be a paper that we could send out to the participants yeah exactly sure seems like that um topic has drummed up a few questions so that was good all right i think these next ones are going to come back through to you Colin um someone says is there a difference between breeds for example dortha second cross marino or pure marino have you noticed trends there look it's interesting i um i recorded at least eight different breeds in the process of um uh visiting the 60 properties and so i think the data sets probably too small to be very conclusive um uh admittedly and i wouldn't say it's at all statistically significant but um the five properties that had dorpas none of them had rib fractures but i might also add there that none of them submitted more than about a hundred and i think the biggest line of dorpas that was submitted was about 140 and i really uh based on the the analysis of the data i think any line less than about 250 lambs is probably not going to give a reliable or statistically significant result because when we're only looking at about a four percent prevalence um you really probably need to be sampling at least two or probably 300 lambs uh before you can produce what i'd say is a statistically significant result so so it was interesting um and i also found interesting that um in fact i recall several of those dortha producers were also giving copper supplementation and uh so the fact that they didn't have evidence of copper deficiency or should i say rib fractures may be also because of their management program as well uh only about 20 of producers in the survey were providing copper as a supplement and i did find that some of those i would have considered at risk to copper deficiency based on these soil analysis but they uh weren't presenting with rib fractures uh there were others that were giving supplements and still having rib fracture problems as well so uh i think the the data data set is too small to draw any conclusions about breed and susceptibility certainly there was a there was a lot of composite um bread lambs in there as well as a mixture of british breeds and marino and and as i say dorthas but uh at this stage the data set is too small to really draw any significant conclusions okay thanks colin the next there's got two more questions here coming in um when it comes to marking which is probably when the lambs are at their most vulnerable they need to be drafted and often portable yards are used what would you suggest farmers do to minimise those risks okay yeah i think uh to my mind uh invariably i think drafting is is a big risk uh where it is occurring and i i think it's probably just a matter of um attention to detail and being uh and being careful now i appreciate you know some of the producers have got um you know 10 or 20 000 lambs and it's very hard to be diligent with them with them like you might be with a with a few hundred but uh basically uh not not rushing into the yards not causing them to be trampled uh not sort of um and we all know experiences where um you know even the yard set up well are being funneled from a large catching pen into a small catching pen lambs are indebarably going to be trodden on or squashed and that might be exacerbated by the presence of dogs um but uh i did actually make a subjective assessment during my survey where i i noted talking to the producers and and the um as they detailed their management program that some were showing a lot of attention to detail whereas um i thought others where there might have been uh third parties involved or contractors or whatever perhaps that same attention to detail wasn't wasn't necessarily there and i um found what i would say a correlation a distinct correlation between the prevalence of rib fractures and attention to detail but i appreciate that was a very subjective assessment so i didn't put that in my my findings however i do think that um talking to some producers they obviously take a lot of care with their lamb lambs at handling and uh i suspect that would also be a major contributor to um you know reduced prevalence of rib fractures if um attention to detail is exercised but um all yards are going to be a unique circumstance and and it's a lot of lot to do with producer attitudes to how they handle their stock i think is to um you know the risk of rib fractures occurring okay um it's got some more two more questions here waiting in the queue so this question is is a multi-mineral drenched enough copper or do you need direct copper injection with um or will a multi-mineral drenched be enough yeah that's a good question um given that there isn't actually a registered copper injection for sheep uh and i know that a lot of um you know for example um a multi-min cattle with copper in it is is used in sheep and one of the reasons that copper injection is not registered for use in sheep um because it does cause a quite an adverse reaction in the tissue uh and so certainly if copper is being injected into um sheep off label it should be injected into areas that are a low value meat cut in other words up behind the ear or somewhere like that um i mean it does also cause tissue reactions in cattle as well so it's not that sheep are unique in that respect so there's no doubt that injectable forms of copper are probably the most reliable way of getting copper into the system but um and there is that issue with if there's a lot of iron or molybdenum or sulfur in the diet uh obviously in the form of usually in pasture intake but it could be in some supplements as well that that is going to tie up any copper that's put into the room and so if we're giving an oral drench of a multi-min or a nutrimin or whatever the product might be um you would hope that there's enough copper in there to get some absorbed before it gets tied up by other um confounding products so having said that it's very hard to say hard and fast that any one oral product is going to do the job and that's why i think you really need to know at least have done a pasture analysis at some stage to work out what the the status of the iron, sulfur and molybdenum is in the in the pasture to work out whether the tie-ups are likely to occur um yeah so there's no one answer there and i think it's part of the reason why rib fractures have been recognised as a problem for a long time and probably will continue because it's not a clear cut issue to deal with i think if we had more of our access to copper in an injectable form that would be handy um and we did do some research some years ago with um glass bullets which had a copper cobalt selenium in them which were found to be quite effective but the market was never considered big enough in Australia looking to review that circumstances but um so generally we'd say a copper drench for example just a straight copper sulfate drench uh there's only about one or two percent of the copper is absorbed but that's often enough to meet the needs of the animal for a couple months however if there is um you know as i say those other confounding nutrients in the in the diet well that may not be um as satisfactory it's hard to say it sounds like Colin i'm just going to put out a bit of a professional disclaimer there that um people might just need to consult with their vat or their livestock consultant um because someone else who's made a comment here that just needs to be cautioned that um copper is potentially toxic um someone else has made that comment so we just need to change sounds like this is quite a complex relationship here that you're explaining um so just people might want to get some more advice on their specific situation before they go and apply this yeah that's a good comment i mean the um and it's the same with selenium that um you know selenium and copper are considered uh essential trace elements for normal animal production to health but they both can be toxic if given inappropriately or in excess and so um it's not a good idea to just go out there and and treat animals indiscriminately with either of those products without knowing what the the risk of deficiency is in the first place so yeah consulting your random health advisor is a good idea okay we'll just take one final question tonight Colin and the questions in regards to pasture tests um who provides the producers with the feedback on their pasture pasture tests and what are the acceptable levels okay yeah well look there's a lot of laboratories around the country that will do a pasture analysis and uh if you're looking um sort of more specifically for something like selenium you've got to be very careful because it's only required in very small amounts and so you need to get a laboratory that does measure it down to um 0.05 parts per million but in the case of copper i'm in all pasture analyses we'll look at copper and uh we'd normally say that um we want to see a uh and that's not straightforward because we'd normally say you need to have at least five to five to seven parts per million of copper in a pasture analysis to um to meet the needs of an animal but the trouble is if you've um if there's a significant amount of iron or sulfur or molybdenum present in that sample as well then seven parts per million may not be enough uh and so that's where you really do need a an animal horse or someone with an agronomy consultant so background who uh knows the um the significance of the um the relationship between the various confounding elements to see whether the copper is going to be there in an in abundance to meet animal needs so um i i'd happily provide that um that more detail to anyone who wants it um but otherwise if you know uh someone in the animal horse or agronomy line um that can interpret pasture analyses that would be a good way to go however yeah i'll look if anyone would like to contact me i can i can certainly provide that detail okay thanks Colin there's a few more questions rolling in here so um we'll have a record of them and might be best just to um follow them up because this one's going into more detail um in regards to the pastures and things so um i'll provide these questions all through to Colin and Kirsty as our speakers tonight um and they can then follow you up individually or it might be a topic that then can get passed through to Tiffany and she might be able to coordinate another webinar via the limestone coast red meat cluster so thanks everyone tonight it's um been a wealth of information shared by Colin and Kirsty and obviously one hour wasn't quite enough to capture all these ideas and discussions um apologies for the technology issues in the middle of it and thanks for those who sat with us as we problem solved that um we will work on a recording of tonight and distribute that to all those who are registered and i'll try to edit out um those awkward time of balances so as you leave tonight just to help Tiffany and the limestone coast red meat cluster plan future webinars could you just complete the evaluation survey that will pop up as you close your window um thanks again to Colin and Kirsty Tiffany do you want to have any final comments to the group tonight i'll hand over to you if so yeah thanks Colin um i'd just like to thank everybody tonight for logging on and i hope you found um it a valuable um session i think webinars are kind of a new front here for a lot of people and um we're certainly uh going forward in the future and working with the limestone coast red meat cluster we would be hoping to to run some more so um and um i've certainly we've had a lot of interest in this webinar and thanks Colin for recording it and yes as Colin said we'll be sending that out through the various networks so um yeah so anyone that you know couldn't log on tonight um and uh perhaps let them know that uh there is a link available there to to to watch the webinar in their own time thanks Colin