Drench smart, cut costs Tins To Save 1m Xow your drenches. Do a rencest (a faocal ong count reduction test ‘Ti he amin talon your farm, ‘MMe simply, do regular ‘Drenchhecks. General this ust Dr Stephen Love Veterinarian State worm carl coornaloe Tend NSW, Armidale Involves a worm eg count (WEC) ITH spring upon us, ‘evento 10 dys after using an cattle, shoop and goat | anhelmint. producers are likely to | MLWEC Is your rend WormTest on ive their drench guns a ‘Avoid unecessary crenching, ‘Workout between now and ‘espacial of adult animals. Christmas. ‘Use effective crenenes. Consider ‘A ot of them will lose money | _ sng combination denches, ‘products combining unrelated broad Spectrum anthelmintics. ‘m Roiatedrenches, whether analy or along the way. ‘Tho experts tell me animal health inputs are not a large ‘others. In sheep this might mean ‘cating between macroyale Iecones (ML) and non based combinations, Use anefecve quarantine drench. ‘You dont need someone's resistant worms. Practice negated parate management (PM): good genes, {000 food and rotational grazing as wel asthe ight orenchat the right {ime can mean more prot and better animal were 1m Avoid drenching wien there are fow ‘worms on pasture for example ding rough or prolonged cry spe. Further Information: mWormtoss | ‘wor wool com/wormboss. MLA webste— wawmiacoman Ting te Worm (TV) Issues 11,12, a 22 tp wed sa. govau/aboutusresources! perlalalsrenslettersfuming-the- Livestock Heath, NSW Department ofndstry and Investment website ~ ht /n dpm (uvaulagrcuturefvestockhealth 1 Now Zealand Veterinary Jour, December 2006. (Summarised In ppart of the cost of production, but drenches stil cost money _ Integrated parasite ‘and worms cost even more. management (IPM) includes ‘So how much do they cost? non-chemical and chemical ‘Sheep worms, for example, control measures. ‘cost about $369 million a year, The non-chemical parts, ‘about 90 per cent of which is" include animal genetics, largely invisible from nutrition and grazing production loses. management. How do you manage worms? The chemical part of the ‘package obviously National cost of diseases to the beef industry WAR Wa ——e ‘with anthelmintics ‘fieteesicone Gm) | or drenches. ‘Treatments include effective resistant worms, as ‘well as treatments, ‘guided by a worm ‘control pian, finetuned by regular worm egg ‘count monitoring. For sheep and, 64 LIVESTOCK re Lan | thrsey, ooo: 008 goat producers, you almost Certainly have resistant worms ‘on your farm. (Cattle producers need not be ‘smug: your turn is coming). ‘And, [reckon 80p¢ or more of you don't precisely know what resistant worms you have that is, which drenches work ‘on your farm, and how well. There is probably no drench ‘on the market in Australia that is not affected by resistance, ‘but how common is resistance to the various drenches? Hore is a thumbnail sketch (above right). ‘These numbers vary with the region, worm species, and the individual drench being usod, How many producers have tested their drenches in the past three years? Probably no more than 10pc, ‘so many of you are still losing ‘money unnecessarily. Percent of Australian Sheep CN ues ‘What about cattle worms? To date, there are few Australian reports of drench resistant ‘eattle worms in the scientific journals. However, field roports of resistance in Australia have increased steadily recently. ‘We do afterall use drenches a fair bit, sometimes in ways that tend to promote resistance, for example, frequent ‘treatments of macrocyclic lactones (ML) product to control cattle tick, and unnecessary ‘treatment of adult animals,