A few years ago, one of our sheep (the lovely Vera) developed an allergy to sunlight. At first we weren’t sure what was causing her skin flare ups, but after careful monitoring and a couple of vet visits it transpired that she had become photosensitive.
The most likely cause of photosensitivity – in Vera’s case at least – was probably a plant she had eaten. The three main phototoxic plants in our part of the world are St John’s Wort, Bog Asphodel, or one of the umbelliferous plants containing “furanocoumarins” such as Hogweed or Angelica.
As we don’t have St John’s Wort or Bog Asphodel we thought the most likely culprit was Angelica. We have plenty of it on our pastures, it grows in damp shade which we have plenty of as well. Similar-looking to Cow Parsely, Angelica is an elegant plant with a long tap root and clouds of tiny white flowers atop a tall stem.
So I came up with a plan to dig it out. After a scoot around I noticed it grew in clumps in three of our fields, all very localised. I estimated it would probably take me a week of digging for a couple of hours a day.
Unfortunately, as with many great plans, the reality turned out to be a little different. As I started digging I discovered I’d wildly underestimated the amount of Angelica we had. Not only that, Angelica has an enormous tap root. Digging out each plant was a major operation and just removing one plant took absolutely ages. To boot, I had to remove the entire root system and take care not to leave any fragments in the soil – pretty much impossible given the size of it. Angelica is one of those clever plants which can regenerate from even the teeniest piece of root, rather like Dandelion or Ground Elder.
After two days of digging and some colourful language I didn’t know I knew, I admitted defeat. Slightly miffed because I’m not one to give up easily, I trudged back to the house with my spade. A thought occurred to me as I walked across the fields, perhaps there was no point in removing the Angelica. I wasn’t 100% sure, but I had a feeling that once you developed photosensitivity you had it for life. I put that thought on the backburner. In hindsight I should have pursued this further but isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing? Once back at the house I put the kettle on at the sound of which Adrian popped out of his study and we had a chat. We didn’t have a ‘Plan B’ so we decided all we could do was monitor Vera and see if she improved once the summer fizzled out. Thankfully this is exactly what happened – as autumn blew in, Vera’s “itchies” became a distant memory.
But, the following summer, round about the middle of May, Vera’s “itchies” returned. She had good days and not so good days depending on how sunny it was. On cloudy days she trundled around grazing with the flock. But on sunny days she hid in one of the field shelters we have dotted around. We took to giving her daily check-ups and applied udder-cream to her un-woolled parts, mainly the backs of her legs, ears and bottom which she seemed to enjoy. If she was especially itchy we gave her a steroid. In June when it came round to shearing we decided not to have her done with the rest of the flock. Instead I carefully removed her fleece myself using hand-shears so I could leave a covering of wool on her to protect her from the sun. We also took into account her mood. Vera’s a placid sheep and isn’t phased by much, even on bad days she remained in good spirits. She took to “baa’ing” if she spotted us coming into the field with her pot of udder cream as if to say ‘Cooeee! I’m over here!’ But all the while in the backs of our minds we knew there might be a day when we’d have to make a difficult decision. Thankfully that never happened, perhaps because the summers here in SW Scotland aren’t too hot and are relatively short, so we carried on taking care of Vera in this manner summer after summer.
This year however something made us stop and think. We had the hottest spring on record; six weeks of unbroken sunshine and soaring temperatures. But strangely, Vera was absolutely fine, trundling around with the flock, no hiding away in shelters and no ‘itchies’. We had always assumed that Vera was permanently photo-sensitive, end of story. But now it occurred to us that perhaps she was only photosensitive while she had access to Angelica.
I promptly went down a google rabbit hole where I discovered that photosensitivity isn’t necessarily permanent. In most cases it is only temporary and resolves once the offending plant is removed. Inspired, I whizzed over to the fields to see if there was any Angelica growing. It was mid-April and I was pretty sure it didn’t get going until May. I inspected the damp areas it usually grew in and sure enough there were only a few young plants starting to show through. What with the abundant grass everywhere there was a good chance Vera hadn’t been down to the damp areas and scoffed any naughty plants yet. I didn’t want to get my hopes up but it was looking like her photosensitivity might not be as permanent as we’d thought.
But what to do about the Angelica? Attempting to dig it out again would be depressingly reminiscent of Groundhog Day. There were clumps of it in three of our fields where otherwise there’s excellent grazing. We couldn’t just shut the gates and deny our sheep all that pasture. I thought about cracking open some Glyphosate but I’m not keen on chemicals, plus Angelica likes to grow in soggy soil and I didn’t like the idea of spraying near water. I also reckoned Angelica would need more than one squirt as it’s a pretty vigorous plant. So I had a cup of tea which is always helpful at times like this. Fortunately a few minutes into my cuppa inspiration hit, I would put up some temporary fencing. Sheep netting in other words!
After rummaging in the shed getting covered in cobwebs I finally located some rolls of sheep netting. After a couple of mornings’ work putting netting around the offending plants it was time time to say ‘job done’!
We are now into June and so far Vera hasn’t had any ‘itchies’. We don’t want to count our chickens, but we are quietly hopeful that Vera might have an easier time of it this summer.
