Animal Health

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      Quinns have a wide range of animal health care products; the list includes fluke and worm drenches, pourons, injectable wormers, vaccines etc

Dosing is a vital part of herd health management, if it is not carried out the health of your animals and indeed your profitability will without doubt decline rapidly.  Animals left untreated will develop a massive build-up of worms and perhaps fluke in susceptible areas.  This in turn will leave these animals susceptible to other diseases such as pneumonia.

In recent years problems have arisen with resistance to anthelmintics.  Resistance means that the product no longer works and when multiple resistances develops it means that the disease can no longer be controlled, creating a very serious dilemma in animal husbandry.

Where particular treatments are repeated frequently then there is a high risk of anthelmintic resistance developing.  As there are so few groups of drugs available, it is important to protect them.

So what can help prevent resistance development?  The best answer is yearly rotation.  This form of rotation means using the same product for a complete year then changing to another product the following year.  It is also important to emphasise that changing products within a group e.g. simply changing from one brand of a white drench to another is of no value in a rotational programme.

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   Liver fluke costs Irish farmers over €25 million annually, with deaths and loss of production that is due to lowered weight gains, milk production and fertility.  The majority of these losses could be avoided or at least greatly reduced by good animal husbandry.  The disease primarily affects cattle and sheep.  Certain wildlife such as rabbits and hares act as reservoirs for fluke.

It is a parasite disease with the parasite living in the bile ducts of the liver.  They cause severe damage to the liver, if present in large numbers.  The principal source of infection is from eggs, surviving on the pastures and eggs from previously infected livestock.

There are two forms of liver fluke disease ( a ) Acute Liver Fluke Disease

                                                             ( b ) Chronic Liver Fluke Disease

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       This mainly occurs in sheep especially lambs as they have little immunity to natural infection.  The disease occurs usually in late summer to winter and sheep can be found dead in the fields without outward signs of disease.  Animals, which do not die instantly, will be weak and fail to thrive.  This is a huge loss of production to the sheep industry each year.  Cattle can occasionally develop this form of fluke where they are present in massive quantities but usually the chronic fluke is more of a problem with cattle.

        Sheep with long-term fluke infections show signs of anaemia, brittle wool and low production and lambing levels.  Chronic fluke has profound effects on production with greatly lowered weight gains and milk yields.  Where dairy cows produce high yields, risk is high with even small numbers of fluke causing a milk yield reduction of 5%.  Big heavy cattle are the most resistant, this should be considered when planning your grazing system i.e. think leader-follower system.

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It is important to note that control of liver fluke is not dependent on treatment regimes alone, good husbandry is essential.  Treatment of Dairy cows can only be carried out when they are dried off.  Knowledge of liver fluke life cycle is a good start for controlling it.

Where fields have boggy or swampy areas these should be fenced off or at least avoid grazing susceptible animals (calves and sheep) on it.  Liver Fluke requires two hosts – the snail and the farm animal.  Also farmers with land in fluke prone areas should pay particular attention to acute fluke forecasting which proves to be very accurate time and time again.

A control programme must include anthelmintic treatment.  Even with the best husbandry, treatment will be necessary for this disease, especially in areas of high prevalence.  In certain areas of Ireland it would be deemed almost impossible to keep sheep without frequent treatment for Liver Fluke.

     In all areas of fluke prevalence, autumn treatment of sheep and cattle is necessary and cattle should also be dosed after housing.  Out wintered sheep will require at least one other winter treatment.  Dosing in the spring can greatly reduce larvae contamination on pastures.

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