Testing calves and youngstock for worm eggs is one important step in developing a more sustainable approach to worming, which can also protect productivity and returns.
Faecal Egg Count tests (FECs) are useful for providing information on gutworm infection dynamics in the first half of the grazing season.
Pooled samples from at least 10 individual animals, taken periodically from just after turnout until mid-summer, can help you monitor gutworm infections and estimate the number of eggs being shed onto pasture.
Worm egg levels will determine the gutworm challenge facing grazing animals later in the season, and this information is useful for making decisions on grazing management, and whether a worm treatment is required.
Taking this approach avoids treating animals unnecessarily, before they have become infected, but allows treatment to be timed appropriately before burdens become significant. This allows some refugia to establish on pasture but prevents heavy contamination.
By allowing low numbers of un-treated worms to live on pasture, you will help to provide some refugia which reduces the likelihood for wormer resistance to build up.
FECs are a great tool to use alongside grazing management techniques, such as use of clean grazing at turnout, and moving young cattle to cleaner grazing later in the summer. Your vet or animal health provider can provide more insight and support on using FECs within a parasite control plan.
It’s important to note that although FECs can be useful early in the grazing season in calves and first-season grazing heifers, results become more difficult to interpret as immunity develops within those animals. FEC results are unreliable in adult cows and are not suitable to determine gutworm infection levels in individual animals of any age.
EPRINEX® Pour-On is a tried and tested zero-milk withhold 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.
EPRINEX® Pour-On for beef and dairy cattle contains eprinomectin. 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. EPRINEX® and the Steerhead® logo are registered trademarks of Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health France SCS, used under licence. ©2024 Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health UK Ltd. All rights reserved. Date of preparation: Mar 2024. UI-BOV-0044-2024. Use Medicines Responsibly.