Controlling Internal Parasites in Sheep and Goats
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EmailMarch 24, 2025
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Internal parasites in sheep and goats can be deadly, but producers must be careful to not overuse dewormers. Some internal parasites have even become resistant to the available dewormers. There are different ways to help producers decide when and how to treat internal parasites in their herds and flocks.
The 2025 MI Ag Ideas to Grow With conference was held virtually, February 24 - March 7, 2024. This two-week program encompassed many aspects of the agricultural industry and offered a full array of educational sessions for farmers and homeowners interested in food production and other agricultural endeavors. More information can be found at: https://www.canr.msu.edu/miagideas/.
Video Transcript
All right. Well, good evening, everyone. Greetings, and welcome to the MI Ag Ideas to Grow with Virtual Conference. My name is Tom Guthrie, and I'm a statewide extension educator based in Jackson County. It is my pleasure to welcome you to this session on controlling internal parasites in sheep and goats. And today, you will hear from my colleague, Mr. Mike Metzger, who is a small ruminant extension educator he serves the state, statewide basis. But before we get started, we'd like to take a quick moment to thank our sponsors, as you can see, the sponsor slide here, who are shown on the screen there. And due to their generous support, we're able to offer this event at no charge to participants. All right. So as Tom said, my name is Mike Metzger. I'm the Michigan State University extension educator for small ruminants on a statewide basis, and my email is metzgerm@msu.edu. I'm more than happy to answer questions via email anytime. So we're going to talk about controlling internal parasites in sheep and goats. So what we're going to look at tonight is parasites of health and economic importance. We're going to look at gastrointestinal nematodes also known as GIN. We'll look at tapeworms, meningearl brain worms and liver flukes, as well as coccidia. So there are many factors that determine what you need to do for a parasite management program on your farm. Do you graze lactating ewes and does and their lambs and kids? Do you graze lambs and kids after they're weaned? Are you rotationally grazing or you set-stocking or some variation of that? Can you machine harvest some paddocks? What are the genetics of your animals? And is your production organic or conventional? So there's no one size fits all control program. You need to understand the risk factors for infection that requires knowledge of parasitiology and host immunity. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about effective drug treatments, treatments that have over 95% efficacy. We'll talk about refugia management and what refugia is. And we'll also talk a little bit about grazing management. So for parasite control, we have resistant breeds, and we have chemical control. And for resistant breeds, in our sheep, a lot of that is our hair sheep, the Saint Croix, the Katadin, the Dorpers. The Gulf Coast natives are a wool breed. They have more resistance than some of our other breeds that we have. And in the goat world, the Kiko has more immunity than the boar and most of the dairy goats. In fact, there's been some research that shows parasite resistance is inversely related to, um, milk production. So when we're talking about deworming medications, there are four classes of dewormers. There's the benzimidazoles, I can always have trouble with these, imidazothiazole, the macrocyclic lactones, and then the amino acetronitrile derivatives. And that one is not approved for use here in the United States, so we're not going to spend a lot of time on that one. When we talk about the benzimidazoles, albendazole is the first one we're going to talk about or valbazen. This dewormer is effective against the common stomach worms, the intestinal worms, lung worms, tapeworms, and liver flukes. Is it effective against hypobiotic larvae? And I'll explain hypobiotic larvae in a little bit. It's questionable. There's both a drench and a paste that are approved for sheep. And but the one thing we want to make sure with this one is not to give it to use during their first 30 days of pregnancy. And it's been found that two doses at 12 hour intervals greatly improve the efficacy of this drug, as well as overnight fasting. So that has a little bit to do with retention time in the rumen and how much feed is in the rumen. The other benazimidazole is Fenbendazole or safeguard in panacur. It is not approved for sheep in the United States, but it is approved for goats. It's also safe and is commonly used in other countries. It's effective against those common stomach worms, the lung worms, and the intestinal worms. Minimal effect on liver flukes, modestly effective against tapeworms, but you need to give it at a two times dose. It's questionable effectiveness against those hyperbiotic larvae, and there are various forms available, including drenches, pastes, and granules. When we get to the imidazothiazole, that's Levamisole commonly sold in this country as Tramisol or Prohibit, I think Prohibit's the main one now. It's effective against most stomach, intestinal and lung worms, less effective against those hypobiotic larvae, ineffective against liver flukes and tapeworms. So if you have tapeworms, this is not the one to use. It's available in a bolus or drench product. It can be used in all classes of animals, meaning in lambs and kids, does, ewes. It has a short withdrawal time. Withdrawal time is important. Action is not enhanced by feed withdrawal, so meaning you don't have to fast your animals before you give it. If you're using it in goats, you want to use 1.5 times the sheep dose. It has a short persistence, and there have been some claims about abortion in goats, but those have not been substantiated by research. At one point, prohibit was difficult to get. I think they've got those production problems worked out, and you can find it in most of your farm stores now. The Macrocylic lactones, the first one we're going to talk about is Ivermectin. So this is the third class of drugs. Ivermectin is effective against most of our common stomach worms, those intestinal worms, lung worms, not effective against tapes or liver flukes, but it is effective against nasal bots. The drench form is the only form that's approved for use in sheep, but there is the injectable form, which is commonly used in sheep and goats in this country. It is effective against those hypobiotic larvae. It's very safe to use, including pregnant animals. If you're going to use it in goats, you need to use two times the sheep dose, and it will kill dung beetles. The next macrocylic lactone is Dectomax or Doramectin. Similar efficacy, excuse me, as ivermectin, but it persists longer, and it has a three weeks persistence. And when we talk about resistance, that length of persistence or when we talk about resistance, that length of persistence will get more important. Again, if you're going to use it in goats, you need to use a two times sheep dose. And then the final macrocyclic lactone is Moxidectin or Cydectin. Effective in all stages of major parasites in sheep and goats, including those hypobiotic larvae, has a long persistence, although this one does not get tapeworms. I will add that has a long persistence two to three weeks if given orally. four to six weeks if injected. Only the oral formulation is approved in sheep. 1.5 sheep dose if you're using it in goats and it does not kill dung beetles. I would say that I would never give a dewormer to sheep and goats that wasn't oral. If you think about it, if we're looking at these intestinal and stomach worms, you want to give these orally because that's where those worms are located and not have to absorb it through the blood system to get those parasites. So these are the drugs. I talked about what's approved in sheep and goats. Well, there's only two that are approved for sheep and goats. The Monrantel tartrate, which is a feed additive. You top dress it on the feed and the Fenbendazole. Those are the only two that are labeled for sheep and goats. When we get into I'm sorry, for sheep, I'll get it right. They are labeled for goats. They are not labeled for sheep. Albendazole, Levamisole, Ivermectin, and Moxidectin are labeled for sheep, but not goats. And then when you get into these other two, they're not labeled for either one. So if you're going to use these in a species that is not on the label, you need to do that under the guidance of your veterinarian and have a valid client patient relationship agreement. Off label use includes the use of drugs not approved or the animals not listed on the label, but it also includes a change in dosage. And it's important to do that because you need to know what the withdrawal times is if you're going to be slaughtering those animals or using the milk, things like that. So what is drug resistance and how does it develop? One of the ways that it develops is treating animals and not leaving a refugia population. So what do I mean by refugia? Refugia is a population of parasites that are not exposed to the dewormers and they're able to reproduce. So essentially, you have this population of worms in an animal that hasn't been dewormed. So you're giving these parasites the opportunity to live and reproduce, and hopefully they're going to reproduce generations that are not likely to be drug resistance. The key concept is to maintain that refusion without compromising the health or performance or the welfare of the animal. So if you have dry animals that when you look at their refugia score, they're not you know, they have nice pink membranes. Don't treat those animals. The concept here is to not blanket treat the whole herd, to leave some animals untreated, and you want to leave the ones that are not really affected by the parasites. Another way we can get drug resistance is through frequent treatment. Used to be we told you to deworm your sheep and goats out on pasture every four weeks. Just keep deworming them. Well, we found out that that was a great way to cause resistant parasites. And when it comes to haemonchus contortus, and we'll talk about the types of worms here in a minute or the barberpole worm, we have worms in the state of Michigan that are resistant to at least one of all three classes, and some of them are even resistant to two classes. So the final way that we get drug resistance is through sub effective drug levels. What do I mean by that? Underdosing. Did you guess the animal's weight wrong? Did you not use a 2X dose if you were treating a sheep or a goat instead of a sheep? And the other way is these persistent drugs. So if you have a drug that stays in the system for three weeks, as that animal or as time progresses, the amount of drug in the system goes down. And so slowly you have this sort of sub effective drug level, and that can if it hasn't killed all of the parasites, that can, cause resistance. So what do we want to do? We talk about the five point check. So we look at the eye color from the FAMACHA card. We have a FAMACHA card here. If they have nice pink membranes, you can see the membranes on the eyelid here. They're nice and red and pink. We don't need to treat that animal. If they're in the middle here, maybe we need to treat her. If she's on pasture raising twins, we probably need to treat her. Twins are more, we probably need to treat her. When we get down to the four and the five here, five is next to death. I've seen these worms actually kill an animal. And so down at four and five, we definitely need to treat those animals. So we also look at their body condition. Here in the middle, if they have a body condition of three, we probably don't need to treat them. Do they have a nasal secretion? Do they have scours? Scours is not always a sign of well, it's definitely not a sign of the barber pole worm, but it's not always a sign of worms. And then bottle jaw, and bottle jaw is the accumulation of fluids underneath the jaw, and it looks like a giant goiter underneath the jaw of the animal. It's an accumulation of the proteins caused by the effects of these worms. So the gastrointestinal nematodes that we're going to look at is haemonchus contortus, the barber pole worm. We're going to look at the brown stomach worm. We're going to look at the bankrupt worm, and we're going to look at nematodirius. Hey, Mike? Yes. We got one question here. Okay. And the question is, what do all these medications do to soil microbial life like protozoa, nematodes, fungi, and the micro anthropods. So these are for parasites. I'm pretty sure that there's not any effect, especially at the level that we're using and coming through that were affecting these protozoas the fungus, that type of thing. So I'm pretty sure there's no effect to that. So again, we're going to talk about these four gastrointestinal nematodes. First, we're going to talk about well, let's look at this chart. This chart shows four large sheep flocks in Michigan in 2011. And it's a bar graph. So the red is haemonchus, and then these others are the other species of worms that were present. And if we look at this, the majority, the highest percentage of the larva population that we found in these four large flocks was haemonchus contortus or the barber pole worm. So haemonchus contortus, is king. It's the one. It's the blood sucking worm that causes anemia that every year causes death in sheep and goats in Michigan. Last summer, because of the type of summer we had, it was a bad year for parasites. Let's look at the life cycle of haemonchus. It's a seven to 21 day life cycle. So we'll start here in the middle with this adult worm in the stomach. This adult worm, the female shed eggs 5000-10 thousand per day. So they come out the back end of the animal in the feces. The eggs hatch in the soil, and they go through some larval stages. And depending on temperature and humidity, it depends on how long those larval stages last, usually somewhere around three weeks. And then we get these infective larvas, which this picture over here on the right shows, these are the larvae in a drop of water. So these larvae have to crawl up a wet blade of grass, and they're only going to crawl three or 4 inches and be re-ingested. And once they're re-ingested, they go into the stomach. In the wintertime, they can go into this hypobiosis I talked about. So what happens is they sort of just go into this, hibernation state, if you will, and they sit there and they wait for an opportunity. And that opportunity can come in the spring, or they can break hypobiosis at the time of lambing and kidding. And so even if you lamb or kid in January, you can see does and ewes that are affected by haemonchus that time of year without the pasture being enveloped. If it's in the summertime, then these larvae just go into the stomach and they become adult worms. So this picture, it's magnified. They're not this big. You can actually see them with the naked eye. They'll just be these little tiny, you'll see them kind of glimmering if you take out the abomasum and you sort of rinse it off, you can see these guys moving around. They're called barber pole worms because they're spiraled like a barber pole between red and white. The white is the eggs, the red is the blood because they attach to the lining of the abomasum, and they suck blood so they can cause anemia. So what are some of the infection symptoms? We see the pale inner eyelids, the loss of pink color in the nose, maybe the udder, the vulva, on these white fleece or coated animals. It's harder to see like on a suffolk or something that has darker pigment. These animals lack fatigue. They may lag behind the rest of the herd or flock. We will not see diarrhea. With the barber pole worm, they do not get diarrhea. In severe cases, you can see the bottle jaw, which is that edemia that I talked about under the jaw. And sometimes on pasture, we just see sudden death. This is a worm that can and will cause death in our animals if not treated. So the ewe shed lots of eggs during the period right before kidding or at lambing time and during lactation. Our lambs are at greatest risk after they start grazing, typically four to six weeks old. So they're not going to be born with these worms, but after they start grazing, they pick up these larvae on the grass. That's when they're at the greatest risk. Egg to infective larva progression is variable, but usually a couple of weeks after the manure hits the ground. And again, these symptoms are bottle jaw anemia, sudden death, but we are going to see normal and dry feces. So one thing we can do is if we're rotationally grazing, usually our grass is ready at about three weeks. We come off a pasture or paddock. We go to the next one, the grass is at its highest nutrition level at about three weeks. Well, that's also when you have the highest risk of those larvae being present. So if you could take a cutting of hay off at that point or graze some cattle or horses on at that time and not put your sheep and goats, sheep and goats share this parasite. So if you can graze another species in there, that will help break this cycle of parasites. Hey, Mike, we've got another question from Ruth. Okay. Do any of these parasites infect people, dogs, or chickens? No. And I'll talk about coccidia, especially, but coccidia is very species specific. These barberpole worms You can get them in cattle, but cattle aren't good host. They don't reproduce in cattle. They don't tend to be a problem in cattle. I've never heard of a problem with people, dogs, or chickens. So my answer there is no. The bankrupt worm, trichostrongylus, is a similar life cycle to the barber pole worm. It can cause death, but more commonly we just see poor growth. It causes significant damage to the GI tract. They thrive under wet cool conditions, so early to mid fal is the problem season. This one, scours is a problem. You do get diarrhea with this one. It is a significant problem here in the Great Lakes region, but it's far less than the barber pole. Brown stomach worm is, again, a similar life cycle to the Barber pool worm, but it's more common during the cool weather in the fall. Causes protein loss from a variety of mechanisms. Commonly does not kill, but you'll get chronic weight loss. It damages the stomach lining, and diarrhea is a primary symptom. Then when we get to nematodirius, its minor significance, although there are isolated problems in the region. Five to 12 week old lambs grazing during mid April to late May are especially at risk, has a long life cycle, so this free labeling stage in the soil can take up to nine months. Patching requires a cold spell, followed by a warm weather. So that happens in the spring. Symptoms are lack of appetite, severe diarrhea, and thirst, so it can easily be confused with coccidiosis. Eggs are much larger than other gastrointestinal nematodes. So if we look at this picture on the right here, B, the smaller one is if you're looking at a fecal, you've set up a slide, you're looking under the microscope, B is what we would see with the other worms, including the barberpole worm, brown stomach worm, the bankrupt worm. But if we see this great big egg over here, this is nematodirius. So that one's really easy to pick out on a slide. These other ones, you really can't pick out on a slide as far as what species it is. And this is a worm that can be controlled by all of our major dewormers. Excuse me. So let's move on to tapeworms. Moniezia is the tapeworm commonly affecting sheep and goats in the Great Lakes region. So pasture mites are the intermediate host, and then the sheep and goats consume these mites when they're out in the pasture, and the mites have the eggs in them. They'll develop in one to four months in the mite before they become completely developed larvae and our um in the sheep and goats causing problems, although we'll talk about that more in a minute. I probably shouldn't have said that. But then it's another six weeks before we start seeing these segments being shed in the feces of these animals. And it's really up for debate whether there's a significance of infection for tapeworms. Tapeworms are more a problem for the owner than they are for the animal. Now, if these animals have infections of other gastrointestinal nematodes, then they can be a problem. But studies have shown that with the control of these other infections, without really doing anything for the tapeworm because many of our dewormers don't do anything for tapeworms, the animals are usually okay. If you have a heavy tapeworm infection, it can cause diarrhea and sometimes an intestinal blockage that can lead to death. Under these conditions, you may want to treat. But the other thing with tapeworms is that animals develop an immunity to tapeworms as they get older and older than 12 months of age. So we do have albendazole and fenbendazole that are effective against tapeworms. They're not as those dewormers are not as effective on other gastrointestinal nematodes. So you might want to use those in combination with other drugs. And again, never use albendazole within the first 30 to 50 days of pregnancy, because you can get some birth defects, although we don't usually see these tapeworms in animals, young, non pregnant sheep and goats. Mike, a couple more questions here. Okay. Do the hypobiosis worms hibernate in all sheep during the winter, yearlings and rams, et cetera, or does this just happen in pregnant ewes? No, it happens in all of them. And so but I mean, they'll break dormancy right before lambing or kidding and during that early lactation. In the rams and the dry yearlings, they're not going to break that hibernation until spring. Okay. And then the next question is, is there a school where I can learn to identify and count the fecal parasite loading under the microscope? You're not going to be able to identify them. You can send fecal samples off to the consortium in Georgia, and they can identify them for you. But they do that by hatching them and then looking at the worms. The the eggs are so similar, they're very, very hard to identify by just the eggs. And we do a parasite program in the summer. We just did it last summer, so we probably won't do it this summer. Where we teach fecal, people how to do their own fecals and at least count those so you can get the number of eggs per gram. There's also some local vets, I know, one over by the Detroit area that does one of those schools as well. They're out there. If you email me, I can send you some information on where to look for that stuff. Okay. Moving on to liver flukes. It's a major player in the Great Lakes region. We see more in the north than we do in the south, but pockets exist. Deer are definitive hosts, small ruminants are an aberrant host and snails are an intermediate host. If you don't have snails in your pasture, you're not going to have liver flukes or if you have a liver fluke problem, it's because you're grazing in wet areas and your sheep or goats are consuming snails. Symptoms are severe anemia, bottle jaw, acute abdominal pain. You'll see these animals in distress. You can get secondary infections due to liver damage, and sudden death or or chronic wasting or both symptoms. In the map over here, you see where we typically have problems with liver flukes. So, avoid grazing wet areas after August 1. Albendazole is effective against adult stages. You need to do two treatments six weeks apart to provide complete protection in these animals if you have wet conditions that you're grazing. The other one that's a lot like liver fluops is the meningeal worm or the brainworm. Again, deer are definitive hosts and small ruminants are aberrant hosts. So it's spread through snails again. Typically, infections intensify after the 1st of September. Following the ingestion of these snails, the larvae develop and migrate to the central nervous system in as little as ten days, yet it can take as long as three months. So you can see these infections from mid September to March. These worms do not cause problems in their definitive hosts, the deer. Symptoms include a stilted gait. So they walk funny, and then they can go to almost to a full paralysis of the hindquarters. So typically, you'll see this strange gait, and then you'll see this dog sitting over the next few days. And the animals will basically be normal in all other regards. They may not be able to get up, but they still eat. And it's also commonly seen in clusters. So you're going to see it probably in more than one animal in your herd. Prevention, remove these animals from the wet grazing areas after August 1. If you have high value livestock, your ram, something, you may want to treat those animals with ivermectin every 20 days until ten days after the first hard frost or you've removed them from pasture. Keeping in mind that this can relate to resistance and compromise your drug program for your other gastrointestinal nematodes. Treatment, early detection can allow effective treatment, but after that, treatment is usually, success is very low. So it would be five times a dose of ivermectin and fenbendazole, along with an anti inflammatory every other day for five days. Keeping in mind that both of these drugs dosages and are extra label, and so therefore you need veterinary guidance. Switching away from some of the internal parasite, well, the gastrointestinal nematodes and things, we're going to move into coccidiosis or coccidia. Coccidia is a single cell protozoa. It's host specific. The question was asked about chickens. Chicken coccidiosis does not affect sheep and goats. Sheep and goat coccidia can go back and forth. Infection symptoms are to intestinal worms who can get anemia and diarrhea. The eggs can survive in the environment for years, so it's extremely hard to destroy. Animals develop immunity over time. So your adult animals are going to be immune to the clinical disease, but they're harboring the organism and they're shedding eggs. And so they're shedding these eggs to our lambs and kids that aren't going to develop immunity for approximately four weeks. And so we want to try to provide a safe level. And to do that, we recommend that you put your sheep in your does and ewe's on a coccidia stat. And we'll talk about coccidia stat and excuse me, a decox or a rumensen type thing three weeks before they're due to lamb or kid. And that cuts down the number of adults in our ewes or doe flock so there are less eggs coming out the back end so we can provide a safe level of exposure. Young animals tend to be most susceptible 30-60 days of age, and stress can trigger a severe infection resulting in death. So what do we do about 60 days of age? When these animals are most susceptible, wean them and we cause stress. We took them away from their mother. So you've got to have your kids and lambs on a coccidia stat in the crete feed so that they're cutting back on the number of oocytes and coccidia in the digestive system. Chronic infections result in poor doing animals and it creates long term damage. It actually damages the lining of the intestines. What do we? Yes. We got another question from Sean here. Okay. It says, Quest gel for insisted larvae and dosage. Will you cover that in anthelmintics in general? Not really. I'm not sure. Quest gel, I think is ivermectin, and so you would just need to look at the dosage. Again, it's probably an off label use, so you need to talk to your veterinarian. So what do we see in coccidia? We see diarrhea. This lamb down here in the corner, that's bloody diarrhea. It's sometimes black because of the blood in it. We see poor doing animals, and once we see symptoms, we have problems already. This slide shows the life cycle of coccidia, and it's pretty long and pretty complicated. So I don't expect you to remember it, but keep in mind that our different coccidia stats affect the life cycle at different times. So what do we see? Early development during the first 16 days following ingestion. That's when the damage occurs, but we're not seeing any clinical symptoms. Once after day 18, we start seeing these clinical symptoms, it can be diarrhea, plus or minus blood. And then at day 22, we start seeing the excretion of eggs. So what does this mean? It means if you're doing fecals looking for coccidiosis, that you're not going to see them until we've already done damage to the intestines because that's starting to occur within the first 16 days, and we're not excreting eggs until day 22. So fecal eg counts, they can be, but that first initial infection, they're not a great indicator of infection. How do we treat coccidiosis? Wait, did I missed a slide here. Let's talk about prevention because coccidiosis is much easier to prevent, and we don't want to have to treat it because if we're seeing symptoms and treating, then we've already done damage. So keep the waters clean, provide adequate dry bedding. If you're out on pasture, prevent lengthy camping and grazing scenarios. What do I mean by camping? Don't let them stay in areas and stomp out out all the grass and continue to graze really short grass, decrease the length of time they're in a particular paddock, move the water source around. If you don't have to have shade in there, don't have shade in there, just avoid these areas where animals congregate. That's where you're going to have coccidia problems. You can also decrease the housing or grazing stocking rate. And if you're in the barn and you're having coccidiosis problems, you probably need to improve your ventilation. If it gets to the point where we have to treat and treatment is a lot of work. There are a couple of different drugs, amprolium or CORID, the 9.6%, we give that at 5 milligrams per pound of body weight for five days in a row. Typically, just putting it in the water is not a good way to do this. The best way to do this is very labor intensive to catch those animals five days in a row and drench them with this amprolium. You need to be a little bit careful about overdose or extended going past that five days because the use of amprolium can cause a vitamin B deficiency, which can lead to polio in sheep and goats. Our other treatment option is Albon, 12.5%. We give that at 25 milligrams per pound of body weight on day one, and we're going to follow by 12.5 milligrams per pound for the next three days. Again, catching them and drenching them with it is the best way to do this. If you're going to put it in water, It needs to be given with, like, some Gatorade or something because it has a very bitter taste. Both of these drugs, amprolilum and sulfa are extra label and therefore need to be required require DVM guidance. I missed a second, Mike. Yeah. Question on coccidia here. Okay. Is bloody diarrhea a good way to differentiate coccidia infection from other diarrhea causing infections? And or age? Typically, yes. So if it's we'll see there's lots of different diarrheas. If you have a lamb or kid that has a white pasty diarrhea, that typically just means that it's a well fed kid. If you have this bloody diarrhea, that typically is a good sign that you have a coccidiosis problem. Apparently, I missed a slide here somewhere. One of the best ways. So we have coccidia stats. Decox is one of them. You can buy lots of feed, you know, over at the farm store that's medicated. It'll have coccidiosis. It'll have lasalocid and so or rumensin in it. And these drugs need to be fed at a specific rate. But if you're feeding those amp drugs, like I said, to you ewe or doe flock three weeks before your kid or um you know, making sure it's in your crete feed. One thing we do with the ewes on pasture or, you know, grass fed flocks that aren't feeding any grain, you can have it mixed into your mineral mix, but that needs to be done at a feed mill because hand mixing it is not a good way to do it. You can't get it mixed in well enough because you're not putting in very much per ton of feed. I will be happy to take any more questions. Efficacy of Albon, as I haven't had good results on four out of four goats made. So that I believe that there's a baytril, think that's the trade name for the drug is not approved for use in food animals in this country. Again, the Albon and the amprolium they're not approved for sheep and goats, but they are approved for use in food animals. They need to be given correctly. So that could be why you're not having good results. It needs to, you know, that you need to dose at enough that the double dose that first day and then it gets cut in half for the second days or for the second, third and fourth day. So the bottom line there is to make sure you're getting dosage correct. Any other questions? Yeah, we've got one more question coming in here from Julie. When treating for liver fluke or barber pole worms, are there vitamin or mineral supplements you'd recommend giving while they heal? So the barberpole worm causes anemia, so you may consider some supplements that have iron in them to help build the blood back up. Otherwise, some of these other ones, liver flukes, was that the other part of that question? Yes. Liver fluke or barberpole worms. If you catch the liver fluke soon enough, there shouldn't be a problem. You can end up with some secondary infections from liver flukes because of liver damage. So there you might, you know, keep an eye out for secondary infections and treat with antibiotics if necessary. And we've got another question here from Ruth. How long do parasites and eggs persist in the soil? So that's a very good question, and I have a very poor answer for that because it depends a lot on temperature and humidity. So when we have these hot summers, They don't, they hatch very quickly. And if they're dry, especially on the barber pole worm, the larva don't have a wet blade of grass to crawl up. Several years ago, we did an experiment up in the UP looking at using bird's foot trefoil to prevent some of these parasite infections. And we wanted to take infected lambs up there to graze. And because it was a very cold summer, it was hard to get we had a hard time finding infected lambs to take up there. In fact, we had to basically infect them using get them infected using some other ways to take them up there and do that. So it depends. And I know that's a bad answer, but that's the best I have. What resources would I recommend? The American Consortiation of there's a parasite consortium. I believe it's let me I'm going to quit sharing my screen for a minute here. And I'm trying to think of the website. It's excuse me, Wormx dot info. That's the American Consortium for Small Ruminant Parasite Control, and there's a lot of really good information there. A couple more questions, Mike. One from Julie. This is an interesting one. Are there concerns about sheep and goats getting chronic wasting disease from white tailed deer? I've wondered if chronic wasting disease and scrape were related at all. And the answer is no because I've been concerned about I know a lot of people that have goat milk that that people feed fawns with it, orphaned fawns with it and stuff like that. I don't believe that there is a problem with chronic wasting disease from white tailed deer. I don't think it crosses over like that. Okay. Another question from John, should I be paying attention to anything other the eyelid color. Any tips on how to look at eyelids? So, you want to know, besides just looking at eyelids, you need to get your hands on the animals and do some body condition scoring. Feel that along that top line, do the vertebral processes hang out? Can you feel some flesh covering them? Think about your knuckles and the difference between way out here where you can feel every bone, and when you get further back onto the top of your hand, there's more cover on those. So that's what you're looking at. These thinner animals. If they're thin and they have pale eyelids, then yes, that's what you need to be looking for. The only you got to get your hands on them. You got to pull that eyelid down. It's not just looking at the eyelid, it's looking at the inner eyelid. So you actually got to get your hands on them and pull that eyelid down to look at internally in there. Okay. We have another question from Danielle. What do you recommend for situations where local vets aren't dosing appropriately? Yeah. If you can find a small ruminant vet that doses, that's good. If you can use that American Consortium, the Wormx dot info to talk to your vets about what needs to be done. You know, it doesn't necessarily have to be done by a veterinarian. You need to work with them because of the limited availability of some of these drugs and things. The worst thing you can do is underdose these animals because that's what leads to our infection. And unfortunately, there's a lot of vets out there that don't understand that we don't just deworm across the board every three or four weeks now like we used to because I know vets out there that are still recommending that. Okay. Another question from Julie. Is wool break a potential in ewes a sign of parasitic load? I think wool break has more to do with I mean, it can be a result of poor nutrition, which could be, I guess, a result of of of, of worms, but it also has to do with an infection or a high fever. So I mean, it can be, but that's not the first thing I would think of. Okay. And Kathy is asking, will the slides be available at some point? If you email me, I can send you a copy. I'll put them in PDF and send them to you. Okay. We got a question from Alpena Group. How do you determine which type of worm you have? So oftentimes it's not important. But you can look at the type of, you know, if it's if the animal has diarrhea, then we know it's not the haemonchus , it's not the barberpole worm. If the animal has pale mucus membranes, then it is the Haemonchus worm because the other ones don't suck blood. The big thing is to make sure I mean, and then, you know, tapeworms are completely different, that type of thing, liver flukes, the brainworm we see different symptoms on those. I We so oftentimes in today's world, we're recommending that you use two or three when you deworm your animals, if you've come to the conclusion that your animal needs to be dewormed through looking at doing fecal egg counts, looking at mucus membranes, doing body condition scores, we know this animal needs to be dewormed. What we recommend now is that you would use two or all three classes of dewormer. So give a dose of the Benzimidazole, a dose of ivermectin, and a dose of all three of them at the same time. Don't mix them together. Give a full dose of one, then give a full dose of the other, and then give a full dose of the third. The thoughts there are that if you have resistant worms, then hopefully if it's resistant to one of the dewormers, one of the other two dewormers will kill those worms. I hope that helps. I mean, there's no really good way to determine I mean, you can send feces off and they can hatch the eggs, but that's very expensive. Another question. Is there research on just giving multiple body weight dosage of wormers? i.e. four times body weight Ivermectin, for example, first ivermectin. So some of these wormers, especially prohibit, are you need to be pretty close to it it's really easy to overdose, especially on the prohibit. So I would not recommend giving a four times dose of any of these dewormers. And again, that's way off label use, so you would need to talk to your veterinarian about that. All right. Any other questions? Yes, another one just came in from Julie. You mentioned some parasites in Michigan being wormer resistant. Are there other states with parasite resistance when purchasing sheep specifically. In the United States, in New Zealand, and most of the temperate world, we have parasites that are resistant to these dewormers. So if you're buying a sheep, One of the best things you can do is you put that animal in quarantine, you deworm it with all three classes of dewormers, and then six weeks later, you might do that again so that if it has any resistant worms, hopefully you have killed them before it goes out on pasture and starts putting eggs out there and larva that your current animals could be consuming. So quarantine the best thing to do, treat them fairly heavily to try to get rid of any potential resistant parasites that they have. Again, you're only doing that to one animal, so you're still maintaining that refugia of hopefully non resistant parasites in your own animals because that refugia is important to help with resistance. Clarifying three classes of wormer same day, hours apart or days apart, no, three classes of wormer same day, same time. You give the one, you give the other, you give the third all at the same time. Just not mixed together. So like I said, the objective is if one wormer doesn't kill it, then the other one will. So you want to give them you can't in Australia, they have them pre mixed together. We don't know what the chemistry of them is here, at least I don't. So if you mix them together, you could get a precipitate that is solid and does no good or one could deactivate the other. So if you give them all three at the same, you know, one, two, three, then that's the way we do that. All right. I don't see any more questions coming in. So if you have further questions, I would encourage you to contact Mike directly. You talk to him. Mike, you gave your email address earlier. It's metzgerm@msu.edu. So there's a couple more questions here that just came in. The will eggs die in compost? If you're truly composting correctly and getting hot enough, yes, that will help to reduce the number of eggs. What class is moxidectin? Moxidectin is one of the macrolytic lactones, so it would be the same class as Ivermectin. It's in the same classes. Giving Ivermectin, oxidectin and Daramectin is not giving three classes. Three classes would be giving Ivermectin, lavamazole, which would be like a prohibit, and then fenbendazole, that would be using all three classes of wormers. Okay. Dung beetles were yes, Ivermectin is the only one that kills dung beetles. All right. Thank you for your attendance tonight. Thank you, and look forward to seeing you at maybe some other sessions during. Yep. Thanks everyone for attending. Have a good evening.