9 Jan 2026
Sheep Veterinary Society past-president shares top tips for vets to discuss with farming clients.
Chris Simpson
Job Title
Fiona Lovatt.
A renowned sheep vet has urged fellow clinicians to recommend “tweaks” their farming clients can make that can have a significant impact on lamb survival.
With lambing season approaching, Flock Health Ltd’s director and veterinary consultant Fiona Lovatt, a past-president of the Sheep Veterinary Society, is urging vets to encourage farmers to refine their practices following a drought last summer that is said to have had a significant impact on forage availability and quality for some.
Dr Lovatt’s top tips include careful and precise administration of a pre-lambing diet to ensure ewes have sufficient energy in the final eight weeks of pregnancy and optimum protein in the last fortnight.
She also recommends farmers use hand-pump ewe milking devices to optimise colostrum harvesting to ensure passive immunity transfer in newborn lambs.
The European and RCVS-recognised specialist in sheep health and production encourages vets and farmers to discuss risk factors for joint ill, such as maintaining good hygiene when applying ear tags and considering using shavings for bedding rather than straw.
Dr Lovatt also recommended the use of NoBACZ Navel for treating navels and ear tags rather than iodine, following a study she conducted in which lambs that had the barrier solution applied to their navels and ear tags had a mortality of 6.51%, compared with a mortality of 8.35% across all the control lambs that had iodine applied.
The study also demonstrated that dipping navels was more effective than spraying the site, and ears and tags should be treated at the point the skin is pierced.
Dr Lovatt said: “There are plenty of new and exciting tools for farmers to use at lambing time as an alternative to the routine use of antibiotics, some of which are just tweaks to traditional routines.
“Vets should be encouraging their clients to pick up just a few of these new habits, such as using NoBACZ Navel on lambs’ navels and ear tags, to help ensure that farmers are doing all they can to improve lamb survival.”
