In a recent conversation with good friends from Berkeley (thank goodness for Zoom!) we were talking about how to keep a genuinely open mind—about anything. The context was a recent epiphany on my part about how fixed my thinking had become with respect to flystrike, and the way that circumstances had rather abruptly forced a few cracks in my well-established thinking on the topic.
Mary Jane recounted her long-ago experience with martial arts, when she went with her son for their first lesson. As beginners, they were honoured by the entire class, including the master, precisely because as beginners they brought completely open minds to the group. The honouring was not at all perfunctory—these mental characteristics were cherished, and the conviction was they would help anyone in the group, right up to the master, to learn from the beginners’ minds.
Joe then immediately googled ‘beginner’s mind’, as he was sure it was a real term, and it is: the term shoshin comes from Zen Buddhism and Japanese martial arts. It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner would.
The somewhat painful process of finding my beginner’s mind with regard to flystrike began slowly: last year I had more trouble with flies than in previous years, but no one around me was muttering about worse fly problems. In fact, at one point I began to question whether in the rush of crutching and jetting I’d simply forgotten to put the deterrent chemical into the tank!
The tank for the deterrent chemical. Sheep on the left have been jetted. On the right, they’re waiting their turn.
Let me back up a bit and explain. Flystrike is a major management issue for sheep across Australia. The Australian sheep blowfly, Lucilia cuprina, lays its eggs in damp wool, and the resulting maggots attack the the skin of the sheep, causing irritation, infection, and, if not treated, death. Prevention is through crutching (cleaning the stained wool from the breech) and chemical deterrents. For struck sheep, treatment involves catching them, removing the affected wool and treating the wound with antiseptic and deterrent chemicals (to prevent a new strike on the open wound).
Mid-summer crutching of a ewe.
Because my sheep are not mulesed (a surgical procedure to limit wool growth in the breech area) and also have their tails, I’m particularly ‘tectchy’ about managing fly well. About 10 years ago a new organically certified compound called Extinosad came on the market, and I jumped on it. It’s more expensive than the earlier chemicals, and doesn’t last as long (4 weeks compared to 12), but the organic certification caught my full attention.
Unfortunately, just like bacteria and antibiotics, flies can develop resistance to the chemicals we use, and I’m pretty sure, after a second unsatisfactory season of ‘chasing fly’ this year, that I have Extinosad-resistant flies. It took me 18 months to crack open my thinking enough to suspect I had a systematic problem.
After consulting with the local rep for fly strike chemicals, I made a slight modification to my practice—I would rotate through three different chemical types, to cut down on the development of resistance. Quite coincidentally, a few days later I received an invitation to attend a workshop about flystrike management sponsored by our industry body Australian Wool Innovation.
It was the workshop that finished the job of returning me to the innocence of my beginner’s mind. Through the day’s work and learning, it became clear my fears were driving my decisions. Specifically, my fear of not finding, or being able to catch, a fly struck sheep in the paddock. As a result of the fear, I would begin using Extinosad before the fly season started in November, and continue to use it without a break until after the fly season ended, usually in April. After my mid-summer crutching, when I could have had about 6 weeks chemical free, I chose to apply Extinosad to the sheep as they came out of the shed—a clear case of ‘belt and braces’, as I now acknowledge.
Sheep after jetting—you can see the line of damp wool down their spine.
Catching a sheep on its feet in the paddock is an art (see my Come Shepherding post on this topic) and one I’ve never mastered. As I get older it has gotten both more tricky and harder on my shoulders. By the end of the workshop, I realised I needed to stop trying to catch sheep. Period. I have a magnificent set-up now in the woolshed for sorting and handling sheep. The woolshed is no more than 2 hours sheep saunter from the farthest corner of my property, so I have now committed to simply bringing in the whole flock when I spot a struck sheep, and treating it in the sheep handler (a Combi Clamp from New Zealand for those who might be curious).
The new approach will also mean more frequent and careful checks of the flock during fly season, so I’ll have to revise downward my aspirations about what else I can do during those months. I can sense more beginner’s mind challenges coming as I grapple with the changes resulting from this episode!