Livestock Wala'au

S2 Ep 05 Small Ruminant Parasite Management

• Susan Schoenian • Season 2 • Episode 5

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Aloha and thank you for tuning in for season 2 of Livestock Wala'au! In this episode we’re going to talking with Susan Schoenian who is a Sheep and Goat Specialist from the University of Maryland's Western Maryland Research & Education Center. She is also a member of the American Consortium for Small Ruminant Parasite Control. Listen in as we talk about small ruminant parasite management and some tools to help with your herd health management. 

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If you have any questions, comments or request for special topics please contact us at walaau@hawaii.edu

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Shannon Sand:

Today's episode is brought to you by the Western extension Risk Management Education Center, USDA NIFA and the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources and the livestock extension group.

Melelani Oshiro:

Aloha welcome everyone to the livestock by law, our a podcast aims to provide educational support information, guidance and outreach to our livestock stakeholders in Hawaii. We are your hosts millio, Cheryl and Shannon sands. And today we're going to be talking about small ruminant parasite management with Susan showing. Thank you so much, Suzanne, for joining us today. And Susan is a sheep and goat specialist, who's recently retired, congratulations on your retirement from University of Maryland's Western Maryland Research and Education Center. Is that correct?

Susan Schoenian:

That's it. Yep.

Melelani Oshiro:

And she's also a member of the American Consortium for small ruminant parasite control, and also has their own flock of sheep on her farm, Badlands. I love that name. Thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate you taking the time out. So yeah, maybe you can share a little bit about your background and your position there as you were a sheep and goat specialist.

Susan Schoenian:

It's very recently retired April 1, several positions with University of Maryland extension. I started out as a county agent. I did that for about 13 years. And then for about three to four years I was a regional farm management specialist. And then I got my dream job which I've had for the last 20 years and that is as a sheep and goat or small ruminants specialist. My office is located at a we have several research and education centers located around the state. It's in the Western ones. It's kind of in the skinny part of Maryland. Think of what Maryland on the map we're on the middle of the East Coast. And that really skinny part is where we are located. It's a 500 acre research farm. And fairly soon after I got there I began doing research with sheep and goats. So we spent most of the time actually with goats. We did a meat goat performance test and we were really focusing on trying to identify bucks, meat goat bucks, that could handle parasites tolerating from a deworming standpoint, but also be low, egg shedders, because there's actually two different things. Yeah. So I've been in with extension almost 34 years that would my university would be in July. But I decided to retire and enjoy a good life and still have a lot of connection with the University of Maryland. And also with the small ruminant industry. You mentioned the American Consortium for small group parasite controls, I've been working with that group for close to 20 years, I maintain the website, which is a very easy to remember, wormx.info. And I'll be continuing to work with that in in my retirement. I have I do have a small flock of sheep, I've had this flock for about 20 years, they are Katahdin, I usually run between 35 and 40 ewes raise about 70 to 80 lambs per year I sell lambs for meat and also sell breeding breeding stock as well. And it helps keep me at least one foot in reality.

Shannon Sand:

That's always nice. Especially when you're like a specialist doing lots of other things. So yes, in

Susan Schoenian:

the last few years, we actually did research, which last four years, we transitioned from goats to sheep, we did a two year study looking at rams weathers and short scrollers. Then we did a two year study on looking at supplementation or pasture. And the research will continue with my younger colleagues and hopefully I'll be involved as well. But they're taking one year off to kind of fix fences and add more fences to expand the system a little bit. So So I've worked with the sheep and goat industry for a very, very long time. The reason for all my life and nothing more I would rather talk about

Shannon Sand:

well, that I was gonna say I think mele can relate to like sheep and goat like needing to fence so because Yeah, a couple of Yeah,

Melelani Oshiro:

yeah, my tends to come to me, though, as rescues and here, can you take this or here? Can you take this, you know, and then it slowly adds up, right? And you go outside, you're like, wait a minute, where's all these animals come from? But yeah, yeah, I think so much knowledge, I feel like you have to share about our small ruminants. And yeah, we're

Shannon Sand:

so happy to have you here. So and like herd health is just so important, especially here in Hawaii. So you have like such a vast like breadth and depth to your knowledge, you know, can you share a little bit about some like management tools or some ideas where like people can get some additional information, things like that?

Susan Schoenian:

Well on parasites I would say the very first place to look on the internet is the wormx.info. So it's got a lot of information on it. And the consortium actually includes people from it originally started out in the southeastern United States, and then it kind of branched out to the whole us. And we also have some international collaborators in all over the world, South Africa, Europe, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean. So you know, it's a lots

Shannon Sand:

of different climates and stuff.

Susan Schoenian:

So so a lot of folks collaborated on research and continue to do so. Of course, I'm involved in more on the extension side, and the website is a big part of that. But we're, we're expanding that all the time with fact sheets, we did a fact sheet series on best management practices to control parasites and small ruminants, you know, covering things, everything from pasture to genetics to targeted selected treatment, things I'll probably talk about in this in this interview. And we just started a new fact sheet series where, what about those other worms? I mean, we focus on barber pole warming toxicity as we should. But when can those other worms be a problem? And so we've created a fact sheet series on, you know, things like tapeworms. Yeah. You know, that's probably one of the more popular ones. But yeah, but just some of the other ones with worms. You know, Telugu stager, things like that. We started a fact sheets, we have also started to translate some of our materials. Oh, that's really good. Spanish. We've recently added some consortium members that come from Spanish speaking countries. So we're, we feel like, you know, we can do that in house. Yeah. So we're translating some done some info, graphics we've done. And we're doing some some of the tax sheet series. And we're probably going to do some videos as well. In fact, YouTube videos we only started about a year ago. And I think we've only got two up so far, but we're trying to get, we're just trying to be kind of a one place to look for information about parasites, with a concern with consistent information that's backed up by research, right? Because that's one of the challenging things with small ruminants, particularly with goats, is there's a lot of information out there that has no support, you know, it's not been proven to be true, but somebody says that somebody else says, just kind of, because truth in that court. I know, the internet social media work,

Shannon Sand:

yeah, it's gonna say I think, a lot of life anymore, unfortunately.

Susan Schoenian:

So so we try to be very consistent in what we what we do. And one of the things the group did at the very beginning, actually, before I was involved, it's their connection with South Africa, which is where the FAMACHA system was developed. And also the three point check, I'm sorry, not three, five, both of those, which we teach here, I've been teaching FAMACHA for probably close to 20 years. And there's still a need, because we have new producers, we have people always need, you know, what's, what else is happening? What's new. So that's big part, you know, we encourage all of our producers to take a FAMACHA training. Before COVID, there were lots of in person workshops. And we're moving back towards those obviously. But we also have a couple of online options you can get FAMACHA certified online. And they and speaking of Spanish bringing that back, we are that is soon to be released a Spanish version of the FAMACHA training, University of Rhode Island, which is part of our consortium, they are doing that they have had an online training for a number of years and the Spanish one will be something new to offer the industry. So we'd like to think that the consortium can provide most of the information that you need regarding parasites and small ruminants. But parasites are a problem that requires critical thinking. You want to read stuff and you want to listen to people, even your neighbor, you want to listen to them. And then you need to think through all that sometimes because sometimes it's you know, you want to you want to create have an understanding of parasites and not just have someone telling you what you need to do this, this and this, or use these medications, you want to make sure you understand it. And so you can go about controlling it because, you know, short of putting animals on concrete or burning their field down. You know, there's no single thing that controls parasites usually requires an integrated approach we call our trading integrated parasite management. It requires lots of different things. And we'd like to think that the medications which we call antihelmenthics, so most of us called the dewormers, we like to think of them as a last resort, that we want to have them and we want to use them when we need to, but we'd really like to do all those other things that can minimize the number of animals that we treated.

Shannon Sand:

Yeah, so kind of as many preventative may raise as possible,

Susan Schoenian:

as many as many things as we can do to prevent the problem. And then use things like the FAMACHA system and the five point check and other performance indicators to actually determine when that individual animal needs to be dewormed. In the past, and even in really, in countries that have really large flocks and herds, they may still have a kind of make group treatments, but we try to encourage individual treatments, of you know, treat each, you know, make a decision on each animal. It doesn't take a long time, if you've got handling facilities, and you have an easy way to handle. So that's what we try to encourage.

Melelani Oshiro:

Yeah, and I can't imagine too, if you're going out there, and you're just constantly deworming your own herd, not only are you building that resistance in them, but you're probably wasting resources financially, because the dewormers aren't cheap.

Shannon Sand:

It cost money!

Susan Schoenian:

Yeah, absolutely. Your you know, your your we used to say if you'd be worth more than three times a year, that's a really serious problem. And that was back when we were talking about these whole flock treatments. We had that that mentality. But yeah, I think we I think there's a couple of problems. I think we have people in the southeast, and probably in Hawaii, that deworm a lot and maybe too much. And then I think you can go into other parts of the United States where we're climates are different, but it's been drilled into their head that I'm a good manager. So I need to do I need to do this, this and this, right. And they're probably often deworming animals when they don't need to. So frequently deworming is what's contributed to the resistance by the worms to the drugs. It's definitely contributed to that is frequent deworming. And and then like you said, it's costly. You know, it's costly to deworm, and probably for a lot of people, the cost is more even the labor.

Melelani Oshiro:

right labor,

Susan Schoenian:

but but the dogs are, you know, they're another cost of production. And even though prices and I assume this is true, where you're at prices are pretty darn strong, historically strong, at the same time. So our production costs and health care is, is a big part of production costs, not as much as feed. And things like that still be quite significant. So we want to you know, and I'll say the third reason is, you know, our consumer today wants food, you know, produce with less inputs. You know, I'd like to think that most people think animal treated if it's sick, but just a treat it because it's easier to do them all or things like that, I think I'd like to think we're getting away from that. Right, we are with antibiotics, then he and we use the same implemented in people as well. But there's lots of reasons why we want to get away from deworming a lot. And so we want to do everything we can, we still want to have the drugs, when the animals clinically need them. we want to do everything we can so that we don't have to do very many of them. Or we don't have to do them frequently.

Melelani Oshiro:

Right? One of those drugs to stay effective is what we really want, right? So you know, as we talk about these management tools for our herds, you want to speak, you know, fecal egg counts, and whatnot is one way we can or tool that we can use you want to talk a little bit about that and how you would use that in your herd to help prevent this there's

Susan Schoenian:

there's a number of ways benefits of doing fecal egg counts. When you making a decision to deform an individual animal, however, they're not that's not their best use, you know, you have an animal you wonder whether it should be worth it. Look at the animal, you know, look at it Sumatra score, which is the color of its lower eyelid look to see if it has bobble jaw, which is the accumulation of fluid under the jaw, evaluate its body condition, its its coat condition. Does it have current or previous diarrhoea? Look at those kinds of things. And if you're weighing animals for for performance, you know, look at its level of performance. The feet lay cats to be helpful for us, we need to do a lot of them. So one of the best uses for fecal egg counts is to look at differences in animals in their resistance to parasites. So resistance means we don't the animal doesn't let the parasites get established or it affects the egg laying of the parasites once it's in there. And we call that resistance and we estimate it with a count extra grant. When an animal just doesn't need the worm. We call that resilience and we do measure that with things like for macho things like body condition score, you know, average daily gain, things like that. But resistance is actually fecal egg counts. So the number is important. Not, you know, that's a lot of things you get back to you on an individual animal. A lot of vets will just do a simple fecal flotation like they would through your dog. And if they see one worm a, they say your dog needs the worm. And there's some rationale to that. I mean, you don't might sleep in your bed. Presumably you shaped you, not your dog, my lick your kid's face. So there are dogs are intimate with us. Right? So we have a zero tolerance, right? What parasites are small ruminants and other livestock, its expectation that they are carrying parasites, it's an expectation that we're going to see more, right, because although sometimes we will, sometimes we'll get a negative test. But we're looking for the number. And the barber pole worm, which is among us contortus. She is a very prolific egg later. So we actually can see quite high numbers. In our book test, we could have a bug qualify in some of our standards with a 2000 eggs per gram. Well, that's that's like, Whoa. Yeah, but like I said, barber pole worm is a very prolific egg layer, where the limitations of fecal egg counts is when we do we look at all the strong Joe type eggs together. Yeah, and we can't differentiate them unless we hatch and look at the larva. Right? So that's, again, that's a limitation. If you've got really high eight counts, chances are you got a lot of powerful warmth. But the other ones can be problematic at much lower eight counts. And so, so that's a little bit of a limitation on but if you were to, if you were to collect feebles on your animals, you could determine which ones are more or less resistant. Oh, yeah, but the challenge with that, I will tell you is number one, you need at least like, I'm gonna say, at least 15 intensity animals, because you got to we're making comparisons, we gotta have to compare something, you need to have a sufficient challenge. So you need those 2000 You need those 4000 eggs per gram, because you so you need at least 500, preferably more eggs per gram average for the whole flock or herd, then you need probably a difference of at least 1500. So zero to 1500 1500 to 3000. And of course the wider they are as an as an alternative selection, you can't you can't make progress if everybody's similar. Right, if all your ewes had singles, you can't select on repeat. So we need some differences in fecal egg counts, and, and we need sufficient challenge. And in order to get that sometimes you you can't do what you'd like to do to prevent parasites because you need them to have. And we all know that lambs and kids can be pretty vulnerable. But, but that's what you do, you compare them, there are estimated breeding values for parasites, that's relatively new. But it involves the same thing. It involves collecting fecal egg counts from individuals. And, you know, that's pretty powerful. Another use of fecal egg counts, just as important is to determine whether the dewormer works. And if you did it in an individual animal, a before and after fecal egg count, you could determine whether that individual treatment was effective, you know, so the lamb had 5000 eggs per gram, and you treat it in it had do my math, right 250 I think that would be like 90 Almost 98% reduction in that would be considered an effective drug. The drugs need to kill at least 95% of the War of the eggs and a reduction in the a count for that to be considered an eau de warmer without much resistance. As that number goes below 95. Obviously, you're getting higher and higher levels of resistance, you know, if the D warmer kills 80% of a warm, so it's probably going to help that health of that animal, but that's a significant amount of resistance. And we can use the fecal egg counts to do that, instead of doing a couple of animals that can at least 10 to 15. And again, there's got to be at least 500 eggs per gram and fennel order to do that, there is another way to do it. It's called a drench write test. Previously, it was available at the new University of Georgia. And now the test, I don't know if it's available right now, but we'll be at Louisiana State University, right. And for that one, you can collect just one fecal sample from, again, 10-15 animals, and you pool that sample, and they from that single sample, they will calculate an egg count, they'll identify the percent of the different types of warm, so you'll find out what percent is the barber pole. And then they'll use the larva to test for the effectiveness of all the dewormers at one time. So we basically look at, we have three groups of dewormers but we kind of almost say four, we have the benzimidazoles, which are the white beamformers, which is safeguard and Valbazen. Within the macrocyclic lactones, we have the aver Meccans, which is ivermectin and Dectomax. And then Cydectib is in a slightly what I call subgroup of that, right. And then the third group is where we lump in lavamesol, which is sold under the name of Prohibit. And then there's a couple of there's the Myrantle product that's approved for goats, and then this Strongid, which is not approved or either, but is in that group. So we look at those three, those four different, they tell you the effectiveness of the drugs of those four different drugs, when they do that test. So looking at differences in animals and looking at resistance. And obviously, if you just, you know, pulled samples from animals, not even worrying about which one, you're gonna get some idea of what's happening on the pasture, you know, so if you were, you get a pooled sample, and you can do that you can do the testing for resistance with a pull sample as well. And there's specific protocol for doing that, in terms of how much you can how much sample you can put into the pool sample, but you can do that too. And so, like I said, you could pull a pull sample, and if you're a counselor pretty high, you could, maybe that's going to help you make a decision in terms of pasture rotation and that sort of thing. Right, so So those are the primary things, testing for resistance, looking at genetic differences and evaluating pasture management on the individual animal, I call it an extra piece of information. So if I had a FAMACHA three, and I wasn't sure whether or not I want to deworm that animal, personally, I'd go ahead and be warmed. But if the if I do an egg count, and it's up to, you know, 2,500-3,000, then I might go, then I'd probably deworm. But individuals decisions are better made on those, you know, they get FAMACHA etc.

Melelani Oshiro:

right, using the multiple aspects of looking at looking at the animal looking at the eight counts and everything else to make a decision. And I guess that's important when you're collecting the samples for fecal eggs counts, when you look at your herd, you mean, you essentially cannot be selective and you should be more random. Essentially, that's what I'm understanding from what you're saying. So that you get this different variety, or levels of counts across the herd, right? Because you don't want to you

Susan Schoenian:

if you want to,for some of the testing you want to need, I mean, for the resistance testing, you need these minerals, right. So you could actually select samples from those animals that are more likely to have a high eight count, okay, young animals over older animals, lactating females over dry females, for much higher scores three and above to make sure you got that high enough a count. When we're making those animal comparisons. We need those individual samples from across across if you want to select from across. Now the one thing I will say about selecting for genetic differences. We have to make sure we're comparing apples to apples. And so we have this term we call a contemporary group. And that would be a group of animals that are basically managed and said and handled the same. So you couldn't compare an animal born in February with one born in May. You couldn't compare. You can collect fecal samples from us as well, parrot cartridge us. So right around that lambing time. But you would want to make sure again, they were some a group manage the same. I keep my use that have three or more lambs. I manage them separately from those that have two lambs or one and then I have a third Management Group. that are my yearlings. So I wouldn't be able to compare Costas regroups, I would have to compare us which, within each of those groups say what the lambs do, you have to be within each of those groups. So we have to have 15 enough animals, and we have to have enough. Just, you know, we have to have enough differences of differences. But the animals have to be managed to say, Well, we did our mock tests, it's basically goes with the assumption that wants the bucks, or it can be rams, as well, once they get to that central location. They're at work, they're kind of a contemporary group, we can't control what happened to him before. But once they get there, we can kind of level the playing field by ordering them with three different medications. And then whatever differences we see during the test, we attribute to genetics, instead of environment, is it perfect? No. But it's definitely a step in the right direction towards identifying animals that are more resistant. And a lot of people think that that selection is probably the is probably the best way to go in the long run, because it's, it's a permanent change, you know, your your rainfall is going to vary from year to year, your forage quality is going to vary from year to year, you breed, you know, it just varies, whereas genetics is a permanent change. So, and we can do it with any, any, any breed or any population of animals.

Melelani Oshiro:

Well, you know, you talked about resistance and whatnot, another term that I think comes up, sometimes when you start talking about those things is refugia. You want to talk a little bit about that. And

Susan Schoenian:

you'll read things that will say like refugia based strategies, right. So refugia are the basically the worms within our system, whether they're in the animal or out there on pasture, that have not been exposed to the dewormer. So they're in in refuge. Because if you think about it, if you d warm, everybody in a group, put them out on a clean pasture. And those used to be the recommendations, treat and move and treat everybody. The only worms that's that are going to be deposited on that clean pasture are now resistant works to whatever drug treatment you gave. That's not good. So that means who's grazing that pasture is going to only ingest worms that are resistant to the drug therapy. So we want more refusal. So let's say I do one half of half of them will deposit eggs that are resistant to that treatment, and the other half will not. So you got a mixture of parasites. So almost like you got to breed sheep and goats. And now we got to breed worms. So we want to reduce, you know, we always want to reduce the amount of larva on the pasture. And we want to reduce particularly that which is resistance to the drugs. So that's where the term was usually came up is, like I said, that exists. So if you do, if you don't be more of an animal, it's, it's going to have parasites and refuge, say, you know, so as much as we can do, you know, parasites is number game, watch as much as we can do to keep the larva numbers down. And that's what a lot of strategies are aimed at the new buyer warmer, which is a fungus. The animal, the whole purpose of that product is not to it doesn't affect the worms inside the animal that kills the larva on pasture. So as you feed it over time, it's going to reduce the level of infection. And, you know, so that's what a lot of things are aimed at is reducing the amount of larva and it will it will kill the larva have the worms that are resistant to all that you want to kill. It doesn't care. And so that's that's a relatively new strategy it's that producers can consider it's I think it's off the market right now just because of supply issues, which is a lot of things that are going on right now. It's something that producers can look into.

Melelani Oshiro:

Yeah, I've heard of BioWorma. I'm not too sure. The last I heard. I don't know if folks are able to get it yet here even in Hawaii. I think it was still fairly new but I

Susan Schoenian:

like been around for a couple of years and Premier in Iowa is the primary seller of it. But it's nobody can get it right now. I think they're having trouble getting the spores that either I've heard from our consortium that perhaps this summer. Yeah. And, you know, so So that's, that's the strategy, again, keeping the pastures clean. Right, cleaning up the pastures.

Melelani Oshiro:

Right. Right. Yeah, well, you know, I hear you know, we mentioned a little bit about coccidia which is another parasite that does impact our herd especially here in Hawaii is another big thing. You want to talk a little bit about what coccidiosis is and..

Susan Schoenian:

it's it's there's there's just the two twin devils, barber pole worm and coccidia, you know, there are other parasites, but the generally speaking, tend to be, you know, more unusual circumstances where there's a problem. So Coxeter, it can be just as big a problem with as the barber pole one. And on some farms, it can be the biggest problem. We tend to think of Coxeter osis as a problem in just confinement, where animals are close together. But it can occur on pasture as well, especially with intensive grazing type situations. Whereas the barber pole warm, is pretty much a pasture problem. If the animals are raised in barns, you know, in dry lot, that tends not to be a problem. They're quite different parasites barber forms, obviously a worm, you can actually you know, it's the biggest of the worms, then you can actually see it in the animal the only parasite usually you can see your tapeworms in the feces rest. But in the if you do a cut an animal open the barber pole, or it's fairly large, it's in the abomasum and you can see them, while coccida are microscopic, they are a single celled protozoan parasite, kind of in the same group as things like cryptosporidium and giardia. So, and when you look you know, you can't see them inside the animal, you see the damage that they have caused to the intestines. They are an intestinal parasite, Barbara form is aggravation stomach. Some of the other worms can affect the intestines, but but coccidia is definitely intestines that affects the ability of that animal to absorb nutrients. So it can be the damage to the lining of the intestines can be permanent. I often think that sometimes when we get these runs that just don't do anything. Yeah, that maybe, right. They you know, you saved you know, they lived through Cox city, but it did a significant amount of damage. And where the barber pole was primary symptom is that anemia, the paleness of the lower eyelid or the paleness of the gums or the vulva or bottle jaw. coccyx is this scours diarrhea. Most most of the time, and a lot of times it's nasty diarrhea. You could see Aki and it's it could have mucus in it, it could have some blood in it. But that's or you could just have animals that that you look at him, you know, they're they got stuff on their tail. They've got stuff on their, on their on their hocks. Last year, we had an outbreak of coccidiaosis in our research labs on pasture. Oh, wow. And I said this this was this was something they had poop on their testicles. That's just how much how much scouring that they had done. Oh, so. So that's that's the big difference they, coccidia, can cause anemia, but it's usually you know, like, say we usually associated with scours and diarrhea. They do develop immunity to coccidia earlier than the barber pole worm. But in circumstances, the exposure simply overwhelms that young immune system. The adult animals, particularly sheep are largely immune to coccidia maybe goats less. So in just like we have that periparturient egg rise, which is when the fecal egg counts increase at the end of pregnancy and lactation. It also occurs with the coccidiosis. So even though she's in the same thing can be true with worms, the moms not necessarily clinical, but she's a source of that effect. Right. Yeah. And so so it's like I said, it's not just that Barbara form. It's also coccidia. One of the advantages with coccidia is we have in some cases we have I want to say we have better tools, because the dewormers can't and shouldn't be used as a preventative. You know, they just kill the worms that day. There's a little bit of residual effect of side death and but For the most part, they just do it that day. And then it starts all over again, we have some parameters of coccidiosis, we can feed iontophoresis, which will include bovetec, which is FDA approved for sheep that will solicit rumensin which is Monensin, which is FDA approved for goats, and then D Cox Dec Cox, which can be fed to either one of them. So it can go in the mineral, it can go in the feed, it's commonly included in, in milk replaces, and it's, it's not like, it's not the treat them, it's to prevent it, because they disrupt the lifecycle. So it's not like we're gonna get rid of all of the complexity out there, we're gonna significantly reduce that level of infection. And hopefully, then it's at a level that that young lamb or kid can fight. And so what's important is that these products be fed before the anticipated risk period. So in an intensive operation, you know, more barn based operation that's going to probably be earlier, you know, maybe it's six weeks. In a pasture situation, it could be later and in many cases, and in many cases, toxicity outbreaks occur after weaning. Right, so we have to use our noggins to figure out when the best time to do these preventatives, some people will give the preventatives to use a dose that are pregnant, in that last month of pregnancy. Reduce again, we've tried to reduce the number in the environment, not 100% Eliminate stuff, it's trying to keep the levels at a you know, trying to keep an eye level, right. So some people will do that, to try to, you know, again, to try to keep that level low. The other important thing for for them to work is and this is real challenging is are they consuming enough of that product? That can be real challenging, because if you do create feed, you know, they, you know, how much are they eating? Are they eating and not? Yeah, same thing with free choice minerals. You know, these products were really meant, I think more for feedlot type use where you you control everything they're eating, and you put the right amount in. So it's a little bit of a hit and miss. But at least it's a preventative, you can use corid, which is amproline, which you can put in the water that one has, I don't know if they're officially documented, but there are some resistance issues with that product. If you use too much of the product, there's been some issues with polio. And also it is not FDA approved. For sheep and goats, you can usually buy it from a farm store. But technically, you shouldn't be working with a vet. sulfa drugs, antibiotics are what's typically used to treat Coxeter along with corn, also not FDA approved for sheep and also not available over the counter. When the veterinary feed directive came out a few years ago, besides putting the rules on feeding the antibiotics in the feed, it transitioned all the antibiotics that we provide in the water to prescription so you'd have to get that to your to your vet. So those drugs are used more for treatments, if the animals are, you know, not real, clinical, usually put in the drinking water. But if animals are clinical, you need to catch those rascals up at least three days in a row. And individually dosed.

Melelani Oshiro:

dose them Yeah, yeah.

Susan Schoenian:

There are other products available in other countries, but we don't really have legal access to them. Right. It's a shame because they're individual treatments. And there is a natural, they always looking for natural control. Sericea lespedeza, which is a warm season legume has been shown to reduce egg or osis counts and reduce the clinical signs of Ksenia just like the medications that needs to be fed ahead of the rest periods. And they're always looking at stuff. I mean, I've read a lot of different stuff and this goes through with worms too is we're trying to the research community and producers are trying to find when we can natural things that will work and maybe one day we'll have some of that by a war is completely natural, but it's not the norm or it's it's more a pasture treatment, if you will always ask what can I treat my pasture with? And of course, I typically say cement Yes. But um, you know, they did a little bit of work with liquid nitrogen, but I think by a worm has kind of become that. The best, the best started preparing for us to reduce the level of infectivity, of course just plain resting pastures will do the same thing. And, you know, people have to figure out the best way to do it. You know, by warmer comes with a cost and putting them dry light comes with a cost. So you have to everybody has to figure those things out on their own.

Melelani Oshiro:

Right? Yeah, yeah, I guess that was another question for I was gonna ask because majority of our small ruminant flocks and herds here in Hawaii are pasture managed, you know, so they're always outside they don't typically go into barns. I mean, um, some folks have small ones, but majority of them are on pasture and I think that's where you start to see more of issues with parasites in the herds when the pastures are not managed properly and essentially, they just get over grazed or something like that. Do you want to touch a little bit about how that impacts their parasite load

Susan Schoenian:

in the data remember that the if you look at again, let's use our barber pole worm and coccida. barber pole worm is a worm, they get infected when they well they when they put the eggs in the poop the eggs hatch, assuming the environment is good, and I have a feeling your environment is most excellent. We have a great one here. And then they go through a few molts. And they become a third stage larva. That is what the sheep or goat ingests. And most of the larva is found in the first couple of inches of vegetation. So the shorter we raise our pastures, the higher probability that they're going to adjust for. Coccidia is basically they ingest feces. So while they can do that on pasture, they're more likely to in the barn, you know, or in the dry lot. Or, you know, or for Mama's getting a dirty other because it's messy in the barn and the little kid latches on to that teat. So, you know, so they're, you know, so we can create that circumstance on pasture too, but it's definitely more common in confinement. So since pasture is basically the vector of transmission for for the worms, how we manage it has a great deal to do with it, right? Of course, we always throw out the words rotational grazing. Well, that's a very generic term, because it could mean you have two pastures and you flip back and forth. Or it could mean you have a paddock system where you've got 20 or 30 paddocks. So. So rotational grazing doesn't always help. But when it's done in a certain way, it does. Yeah. So that the shortest that that egg hatches and develops into third stage Larva is about three days. It can be longer, probably very often, it's only three days giveaway. So theoretically, if you rotate, move those animals off that pasture after three days, they're not going to get reinstated. Now you also have to be careful about when they come back to that path. So if they come back to that paddock in three weeks, yeah, they're gonna get reinfected. But if they come back to that paddock, maybe in, we often say 60 days, although, again, that's going to be climate related. But did they a 60 day rest period, those numbers will theoretically significantly reduce any ingestion, it never seems to be perfect. Right. So again, we're trying we're trying to reduce numbers. So you know, so you have to start doing the math, if you've got three days rest, and you want to, I mean, three days of grazing, rotation, and then you want to rest for 60 days, you gotta go, you know, do the math to see how many paddocks actually meet. So, and then again, getting back to this idea of the larva is in the first several inches of vegetation, you really don't want to graze your pastures when they're two inches high. And I know a lot of people do, I don't care where they live, it just seems, you know, it happens, you know, for whatever reasons, it happens. So a lot of times you can control you, you can reduce your parasite problems if you reduce your herd. I mean, if you're having to graze these very short pastures, and obviously, like the resource for that, you know, for that enterprise, and I know, you know, we have different you know, every year the weather is different, I mean, you know, you can have a drought and you could, you know, different things can affect the fact that I'm having mixed pastures, you know, not just grasses but legumes in there. Herbs. We we've grazed chicory and our research and of course I don't think that's necessarily want to do where you're at but the CEREC less visa is not Obviously, I mean, when they use it to for toxicity, it's typically fed in a pellet. But it's used quite a bit in the southeast for grazing, so it's almost like you could think of it as maybe this isn't a good way to term it, but it the warming paddock and essentially slapping the warm sun, but it, it gives them a break from ingesting larva. So if you had, you know, sorry, Celeste mateesah. And sometimes people planted as part of mix stands as well. Browsing, you know, if you can, if you allow goats to do what they were naturally intended to do, which is not to have their head on the ground, but their head up and eating brows right. You know, if you had some some of that, you know, again, it would be like having that, that CEREC, let's be decent, they'd be giving them a break. I often, you often hear the term sacrifice area. For small ruminants, I think of that as the barn. Because if you have a sacrifice area, or pasture, it's going to be very short, highly effected pasture. But in your climate, you'd like say you don't have a lot of farms. So maybe it's dry lofts. And what I mean by dry lot is no vegetation. And dry lot has a place in management. I mean, there could be years and groups of animals that you just, they just need a break. And, you know, and I've done a lot of traveling in to the Caribbean and a lot of their animals are, of course, every place is different, but a lot of their animals are in in either dry lot or some type of shelter. And then or they're laid out only during the day, or, you know, they're locked in at night. And you know, that sort of thing. You know, because again, we're just we're trying to we're trying to what can we do to keep those those that level of contamination low, right, I don't think our goal is ever to get rid of parasites because most of the immunity is in the gut. And they've actually shown a couple of things. I remember a long term study for a Fulbright, and this is in New Zealand, show that those animals that are more resistant to foot rot are more resistant to parasites. And right now West Virginia University has been doing research with sheep to see if the ones that have you know, the better EBVs for parasite resistance, meaning the low egg counts, they're finding that they also put it's kind of preliminary, but they have a higher survival. So so, you know, parasites are part of small ruminant enterprises, we just need to manage your mind a level that the animals can handle. And it's and the other thing is focus, again, focus on the animals that are most susceptible, which are young lambs and kids less than six months of age. And that pair Partridge female, and especially when she's got multiple births, especially three or more. And in case of dairy goats, the high producer, you know, sometimes our best producers might be the ones that need the worm, because they got the higher level of productivity. So again, when you're making some comparisons, you know, don't discount a triplet. Because it's expected to have a higher a count and don't discount a female because she's raising three babies or two, depending on what what tied in with your resources. You know

Melelani Oshiro:

what, thank you so much, Susan. I've learned a lot. Yeah, whatnot. So I mean, there's, I'm sure there's more things that we'll probably just have to bring you back for another episode.

Susan Schoenian:

So we can count on why that would be absolutely

Melelani Oshiro:

love to do that. Yes. Yeah. You know, we've been slowly everything things are openly opening back up for us here because we, you know, we are the ones that have been closed up a lot longer, and not able to get in person. But we would love to have you over here for some workshop. It would be great. If we could get you over here. I think that would be really your knowledge would be very amazing. So thank you again for joining. You're welcome for joining us.

Shannon Sand:

Yes, thank you so much for joining us today, Susan. We hope our listeners found this informative and will be useful to their herd management plans. Also, if you have not already please be sure to fill out our feedback fest to let us know your thoughts about this podcast. And so we know what you would like to hear from us in the future.

Melelani Oshiro:

Yeah, make sure to join our Facebook page and livestock extension group as well as livestock walaau Instagram. Be sure to visit our UHCTAHR Extension website and our YouTube channel which will be listed in the show notes.

Shannon Sand:

Yep. And for additional information about this topic, see the show notes of the podcast and the description box of our YouTube page. Thanks for listening to the livestock walaau Before we go show some love for your favorite podcasts. That's us, by the way, by leaving us a review on Apple podcasts or anywhere you listen to this and then stay tuned for next month's episode.

Melelani Oshiro:

Yeah, thanks again to our sponsors the Western extension Risk Management Education Center, USDA NIFA, the livestock extension group and CTAHR Mahalo for listening a hui hou!

Shannon Sand:

A hui hou