Include parasite control within your herd health plan to maintain good herd health, as well as optimise production parameters and business profitability.
Turnout is a particularly important time of year. Calves and young cattle in their first grazing season lack immunity to gutworms, putting them at greatest risk of parasitic gastroenteritis from a high gutworm challenge.
Overwintered gutworm larvae will be readily ingested by cattle after turnout, but clinical signs of a high worm challenge, including scouring and noticeable weight loss, may only become apparent from mid-summer onwards.
However, even a moderate worm challenge can reduce feed intake and utilisation, resulting in a failure to meet average liveweight gain targets, impaired fertility, and reduced lifetime productivity.
Plan your grazing and pasture rotations with worms in mind, as well as nutrition, to help limit the worm challenge. Prioritise your least-infected pastures for your most susceptible animals (usually calves), and plan ahead to move them to clean grazing such as silage aftermath by mid-summer, when gutworm larvae levels peak on the pasture.
Conducting regular pooled faecal egg count tests for each group of animals, starting a few weeks after turnout, will help you assess the changes in worm burden on the pasture in the first few months of the year. This can help you decide whether you need to treat animals to remove the worm burden and reduce pasture contamination with worm eggs. FECs can also help you to assess the future infectivity of the pasture.
If treatment is required, IVOMEC® Classic Pour-On is a tried and tested wormer that treats and provides protection against reinfection with the most pathogenic gutworm species Ostertagia ostertagi and the cattle lungworm for up to 28 days.
IVOMEC® CLASSIC Pour-On for cattle contains ivermectin. POM-VPS. Advice should be sought from the prescriber. Further information available in the SPC or from Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health UK Ltd, RG12 8YS, UK. Tel: 01344 746957. Email: vetenquiries@boehringer-ingelheim.com. IVOMEC® and the Steerhead® logo are registered trademarks of Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health France SCS, used under licence. ©2023 Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health UK Ltd. All rights reserved. Date of preparation: Feb 2023. UI-BOV-0018-2023. Use Medicines Responsibly.