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Date and time
Thu, 18 Jan 2024 18:30 - 19:30 GMT
Location
Online
About this event
- 1 hour
- Mobile eTicket
In 2022, farmers Matt and Pip Smith from Trefranck Farm, Cornwall, teamed up with Castle Vets, the Moredun Research Institute and CIEL to run a Defra-funded pilot study. The aim was to establish whether Trefranck Romney rams showed any variation in how they responded when exposed to gastrointestinal nematodes (worms) throughout the 2022 grazing season.
Join this webinar to find out more about the project and it's outcomes.
Speakers:
Matt Smith (Trefrank Farm, Cornwall), Adam Hayward (Moredun Institute)
More info:
Heavy reliance on the wormer drugs, which are designed to kill worms after the sheep ingests them, has led to widespread drug resistance. All wormer classes in the UK (other than the purple class- Derquantel) have reported on-farm failure to kill 100% of the parasites they target.
Some breeders in the UK have begun investigating creating sheep that can fight off the infections themselves (‘resist’ worms). However, this has a known impact on growth rates, so the Smiths have invested in alternative New Zealand genetics, aiming to allow lambs to tolerate worm exposure, whilst growing normally. Over 200 ram lambs from 16 sires had their response to worms assessed from July-October 2022. They were dung sampled and weighed fortnightly and the results were stark. At an average worm burden of 400 eggs per gram, the most tolerant individuals only experiencing a 50g weight penalty, whereas the least worm-tolerant individuals were penalised by over half a kilogram. In addition, the lambs’ sire made a significant difference to its ability to cope with worms.
Please be aware: We will be recording this event and it will be available for public view. If you are not comfortable with this, we recommend you turn your camera off for the duration of the webinar.
