Facial Eczema

Facial eczema is a disease of the liver, not the skin. It causes milk production loss and welfare challenges, most of the time without farmers even realising. It’s time to break the cycle and do it better. Words Emma Cuttance.

The window for facial eczema is often misconstrued. With El Nino conditions forecast to last well into the end of autumn this year, hot dry conditions followed by warm rain, could see increases in fungal growth and spore production be a risk over an extended period.

A Taranaki scientific team is testing the development of a rapid antigen test (RAT) for the detection of facial eczema (FE). By Elaine Fisher.

Facial eczema is a chronic toxicity caused by the ingestion of spores from pasture and their conversion into sporidesmin in blood. Management of this disease continues to improve with progressive farmers no longer counting it as a non-manageable problem. Why so? By Joe McGrath