Triple Dewormer?

[misfitmorgan]

Is anyone else doing triple dewormers?

Our vet has us doing triple wormers on our sheep and goats once a year(lambing/kidding) unless they lose condition. She told us don't bother with FAMCHA as it is worthless. So when we pull lambs everyone gets all 3 classes of wormers and corid in the water trough. To be honest we have seen good results and there are many studies on it showing it works and is better for parasite resistance then the old school thoughts of worming on a schedule or rotating wormers. The whole thing stresses me out though because I can't shake the idea I am doing some kind of damage to my livestock or making super worms even though the studies say no.

Our vet is a small ruminant specialist and only graduated 2 yrs ago...so maybe this is just something new they are teaching in vet school? We don't do fecals because our vet suggested that the number of animals we have atm and the fact we are not culling yet it would sort of be a waste of money which I can see the logic in.

 

[secuono]

It sounds like a step above from rotating wormers+scheduled worming, but below only deworming when needed(checking eyes, condition and fecal testing.)

I don't understand why he thinks checking eye color is worthless. It will tell you if there's a blood sucking worm load and how bad it is. How is that worthless?

 

[misfitmorgan]

It is based on condition only, the "danger" time of the year for us is spring, summer and fall. Spring they are on grain and fall they are on grain.....so the real time of concern is summer when they are on nothing but dry 1st cut hay atm. We can do fecals if we choose to spend the money to get them done but going on body condition seems as effective for us, the wormer program recommends FEC after 16+ weeks post dewormer....that's fall for us and they are back on grain then winter time. It would be October before we would be pulling fecals at the earliest possible date, november the ground freezes and we no longer worry about parasites.

Because it is not reliable here I guess. We have had animals nearly dead from parasites(fecal count confirmed) but they have retained FAMCHA "safe" eye colors until 48-72hrs before death. Our goats esp are bad they never have pale eyes until they are on deaths door. Alternatively because we flush in the fall and early pregnancy and then give grain while nursing the highest stress time for our flock is when lambs/kids are pulled. The parasites come on pretty hard first thing in the spring after everything thaws out and turns to soup.

Honestly I really get the logic in the system of watching condition and treating the herd when we pull lambs/kids. Like I said it seems to be working, this year was the best lamb crop we have had and with the highest survival rate in 6yrs. The system also only has us worm once a year, there is no second follow up dose. When our pastures get done and we can rotate I will most likely move to a condition only based worming system except on lambs.

I know stuff is different here to other places like our dogs only need one heartworm chew a year because of the way our weather is. Eventually when we get our handling system in I would like to learn to do my own fecals but until then this is what I have.

Just wonder if anyone else is on a similar system?

 

[Baymule]

When we went to Tennessee to get Ringo from @Mike CHS and his wife Teresa, she showed me how to do fecals . She had gone to a class, I believe at a university, to learn how. Yes, it is costly to run fecals on the whole flock through a Veternarian. Being able to do my own was a huge asset. I can now keep a closer eye on the flock and I culled some with enormous barber pole egg counts, but were in decent condition. They might not have been at deaths door, but were dropping worm eggs to infect the rest of the flock.

I barely use wormer now. When weaning lambs, there are some that have a higher count, but nothing like it used to be. I used to wonder why they weren’t dead! Recently we took 6 ewes to auction and was left with 6 ewes. We kept 7 ewe lambs for replacement.

It is such a help to know how to do fecals. Check with your extension agent to see if any classes are offered or maybe someone can teach you.
It is great that your vet has a system that is working that well for you. Fecals only add to the whole picture.
Before we got our equipment for working sheep, we put up cow panels and made our own chute. It wasn’t great, but it worked.

 

[mysunwolf]

We have high worm pressure as well, and do a double wormer once a year on the whole flock. Have done triple but honestly I do feel that when you DO get resistance, you will then have resistance to all three classes. So we do two classes at a time until it doesn't work, then switch to solely the other class or a combination. It's not a great system and honestly in this country there needs to be another product or three like there are in other countries.

 

[misfitmorgan]

When we went to Tennessee to get Ringo from @Mike CHS and his wife Teresa, she showed me how to do fecals . She had gone to a class, I believe at a university, to learn how. Yes, it is costly to run fecals on the whole flock through a Veternarian. Being able to do my own was a huge asset. I can now keep a closer eye on the flock and I culled some with enormous barber pole egg counts, but were in decent condition. They might not have been at deaths door, but were dropping worm eggs to infect the rest of the flock.

I barely use wormer now. When weaning lambs, there are some that have a higher count, but nothing like it used to be. I used to wonder why they weren’t dead! Recently we took 6 ewes to auction and was left with 6 ewes. We kept 7 ewe lambs for replacement.

It is such a help to know how to do fecals. Check with your extension agent to see if any classes are offered or maybe someone can teach you.
It is great that your vet has a system that is working that well for you. Fecals only add to the whole picture.
Before we got our equipment for working sheep, we put up cow panels and made our own chute. It wasn’t great, but it worked.

I did ask here last year and there were no classes anywhere near me the closed is at msu they had a seminar but msu is several hours away and I have not see anything about it this year. Sheep and goats are not the cash crop in my area, hay, row crops and cows are the big money so most everything is focused on those unless you go 4-5hrs south and even then there isnt much.

We plan on building a working chute and tilt table when we build the sheep barn....it makes life so much easier. The working area is going to include a sorter before the tilt table so we can use it to pull sheep out to be sheared in the end of the barn....under cover/shade.

We have high worm pressure as well, and do a double wormer once a year on the whole flock. Have done triple but honestly I do feel that when you DO get resistance, you will then have resistance to all three classes. So we do two classes at a time until it doesn't work, then switch to solely the other class or a combination. It's not a great system and honestly in this country there needs to be another product or three like there are in other countries.

After the vet proposed the plan I went and did a bunch of looking up for studies and such. I have been told most of my life give one dewormer until it doesnt work anymore, then they switched to a rotating schedule, so this went completely against that. I know the one study I found had 60-80% parasite resistance, they went to triple dewormers and after 4 yrs of using it have yet to see further parasite resistance in a concerning amount. So I dunno, I know in other countries like australia they sell ready made combination dewormers that are basically this system but combined and have been using them for 20years with good success. The idea in simple terms is say you have 1000 parasites and 10% are resistant, you give dewormer 1 leaving 100 parasites, then you give dewormer 2 leaving 10 parasites, then dewormer 3 leaving 1 parasite.....so your wormer is now 99% effective. Obviously those are not real numbers but the easiest way to illustrate the theory/system.

Atm our sheep are pretty parasite tolerant. I do know our ewes look like s*** this year after shearing so I think not moving to the field back in april really had an effect. We have 3 ewes you can literally count the ribs on, they got 50lbs of grain a day because they were nursing but it apparently was not enough with the calves in with them. The lambs also were left on for 2-3 weeks longer then normal because we were building that new pasture which didnt help. For now they are on 75lbs of grain a day and free choice hay until they get some weight on. As soon as the second new pasture is done they will be separated from the calves and we wont be making that mistake again.

 

[Beekissed]

I've never heard of that system and it sounds good in theory....but that leaves 1% of worms that are resistant to 3 types of dewormer as the only worms left alive to reproduce.

I'd be more prone to culling the sheep that didn't maintain condition when all the others did, thus eliminating the weaker sheep genetics and keeping the stronger. That way you aren't breeding stronger parasites but are breeding stronger, more parasite tolerant/resistant sheep.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Culling for resistance is in the plans for the future, atm with only 9 adult ewes it is a little premature. We do know both of our rams have good parasite resistance so their offspring we hold back....2 ewe lambs this year, are improving our flock.

 

[Mike CHS]

Teresa got a lot of info in the Small Ruminant Master Producer course at UT where they gave out info on doing fecals but she learned pretty much on her own. Our vet is fairly young but he does everything he can to help in managing animals and he went over our results several times when we took him samples so he could verify our results. He only charged us $10 a pop so we did that several times till we felt comfortable with our results.

We use FAMACHA but have found it to be less than accurate. We have 6 two year olds that would need worming every month if you used FAMACHA but none of the six have needed worming since they were weaned. We do worm everyone shortly after weaning but other than that we do random fecal samples. We use condition as the decision point but we culled very heavy for several years so all of the sheep we have now only get a little down as it gets close to weaning time but a little feed ration takes care of that.

Edit to add - We use two wormers like already mentioned and don't do three for the same reasons mentioned also. We know a bunch of sheep producers and they all managethings the same way.

 

[Mini Horses]

One thing comes to mind....do you give enough, when you worm? My vet always said, kill them, don't stun them!! With the safety margin of overdose with MOST products, it's something to consider. Do not under dose. Also, the condition of pastures, rotation options for you and your area weather, other animals there, all play into the life of worm viability and reinfection.

It's a crap shoot.....we know that certain herbals and forage help keep numbers down, so using that with everything else helps. I never kill the "weeds" in my fields! Well, except nightshade, if I see any.