R&D update
Blowflies on the "E-nose"
Scientists at the Australian Sheep Industry Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) are at the stage of conducting laboratory and pen trials to detect flystuck sheep with an electronic nose.
‘E-Nose’ comprises a set of sensors that detects a complex of compounds making up an odour.
The research involves artificially infecting sheep in the field with freshly hatched blowfly larvae. The sheep are then monitored with the E-Nose over the subsequent four days for the presence of odours.
The larvae are removed from the sheep before any harm is done.
The E-Nose is a real time, practical, portable and a continuous monitoring system for particular odours, which in this case, has been adapted to detect the smell of blowfly larvae.
The Sheep CRC work is now looking at practical ways to use the E-Nose to detect individual animals that are flystruck. The hope is that it might be attached to an in-paddock monitoring station that sheep need to walk through.
The system may simply send a message back to the farm office alerting the farmer that one or more sheep are struck, or the individual sheep might be drafted off and the farmer alerted.
With the use of E-Nose, animal suffering would be reduced by early detection of affected sheep.
Flystrike causes significant animal welfare issues as struck animals suffer pain and fever and eventually die if untreated. Mulesing – the removal of skin on the sheep’s breech – is a very effective preventative, but needs to be phased out in its current form by 2010. Chemical treatments are effective but undesirable as they can leave residues in the wool.
Flystrike is the Australian wool industry’s major animal health problem costing more than $160 million a year in lost production and treatments.
For more information visit:
http://www.sheepcrc.org.au/