McCaskie Monthly Newsletter August 2026
Weaning Boluses, Fly Control and Dry Cow Minerals
Four jobs worth getting ahead of this month — trace elements before weaning, fly and lice cover that doesn't cost you milk, dry cow minerals matched to your forage, and footbathing sorted before cattle come inside.
August is the month where a few weeks of drift costs you all winter. Grass quality is on the way down, lambs are about to lose their mothers, dry cows are quietly setting up next lactation, and housing is closer than it feels. Here's what our team is talking to farmers about right now, and what's on the shelf in store.
Downland Essential Lamb
A single mini-bolus giving four months of cobalt, iodine and selenium.
Weaning stalls lamb growth just as Scottish grass quality falls. The lamb loses milk and gains a diet that is lower in energy and lower in trace elements at exactly the moment it needs to keep gaining. That's the weaning check — and the finishing date slips accordingly.
A trace element bolus given before weaning takes one variable off the table. Downland Essential Lamb is a single mini-bolus that delivers a steady supply of three of the trace elements Scottish grazing is most often short of:
Four months of steady cobalt, iodine and selenium from one mini-bolus — no repeat gathering, no drenching interval to remember
Suitable for lambs over 25kg
In a Glasgow trial, bolused lambs grew 49g/day faster than untreated lambs — a 38% lift in daily liveweight gain
Why cobalt, iodine and selenium?
Cobalt drives vitamin B12 production and is central to energy metabolism in growing lambs. Iodine and selenium underpin thyroid function, immunity and growth. Deficiency rarely announces itself — it shows up as lambs that simply don't finish when they should.
Ask your local McCaskie SQP Field Sales Representative or go in-store now at McCaskie Ayr, Kinross, Lanark & Stirling — pick up Essential Lamb before weaning, not after.
Flydown Delta: fly, lice and blowfly control with zero-day milk withdrawal
Downland Flydown Delta
Available in 500ml, 1L and 2.5L
Flies, lice and blowfly strike cost condition all summer — and most treatments cost you milk on top, because you're dumping it through the withdrawal period. Flydown Delta avoids that trade-off.
Zero-day milk withdrawal in dairy cattle and sheep — treat and keep milking
Covers flies and lice in cattle; ticks, lice, keds and established blowfly strike in sheep
Simple dosing: 10ml cattle, 5ml sheep, 2.5ml lambs — the applicator cap is marked in millilitres, so there's nothing to calculate at the crush
Pack sizes: 500ml, 1L and 2.5L
Because it treats established strike as well as preventing it, it's a useful thing to have in the shed rather than something to send for once you've found a struck ewe.
Ask your local McCaskie SQP Field Sales Representative or go in-store now at McCaskie Ayr, Kinross, Lanark & Stirling
Dry cows deserve a proper mineral
Opti-Mol Dry Cow
High selenium, vitamin E, copper and zinc for the pre-calving period
Next lactation starts in the dry period. Much of what you get out of a cow in the following lactation is set up in the weeks before she calves — and a general-purpose mineral doesn't do that job. Transition cows need a specification built around what actually goes wrong at calving: milk fever, retained cleansings, slow-starting calves and a weak immune system at exactly the wrong moment.
Downland Opti-Balance dry cow minerals are formulated to complement typical forages through transition
Support smoother calvings, fewer retained cleansings and livelier calves
Bring your forage analysis into store and we'll match the right specification to what you're actually feeding
That last point is the one that matters. Two farms feeding "grass silage" can have very different mineral pictures underneath — which is why guessing at the specification, or carrying over last year's, is the expensive option.
Ask your local McCaskie SQP Field Sales Representative or go in-store now at McCaskie Ayr, Kinross, Lanark & Stirling
Hoofcount automatic footbaths: fit it before housing, not after the lameness
Hoofcount automatic footbath
It fills, doses, washes and refills itself.
Digital dermatitis thrives once cows come inside — and by then you're treating, not preventing. The Hoofcount automatic footbath gets ahead of it by making footbathing something that happens every cow, every milking, without anybody having to decide to do it.
Fills, doses, washes and refills itself — fresh solution after a set number of cow passes, every milking
Two models, both built bespoke to your race: Standard (2 dips per hoof — smaller herds and robots) and Excel (3.7m, 3 dips per hoof — 200+ cow herds and rotaries)
Automatic dosing of formalin, copper sulphate or Hoofcount's own Extra-F blend
Installed by McCaskie Engineering. Book a site visit now so it's running before the first cow comes in this autumn — retrofitting mid-housing is always harder than fitting it while the shed is empty.
Every cow, every milking — automatic footbathing from Hoofcount.
Also in store and on the road this month
JOZ-Tech JT200 EVO manure robot
Better hygiene, healthier animals. The JOZ-Tech JT200 EVO keeps passageways clean far more often than a scraper pass twice a day, which cuts the amount of slurry cows are standing in — and standing in slurry is what feeds digital dermatitis and mastitis pressure in a cubicle shed.
