Parasite problems and dewormer resistance can look different from one farm to another. In this episode, Deborah Niemann talks with Cornell Extension specialists Amy Barkley and Jess Waltemyer about an applied research project with sheep and goat farmers in southwest New York.
The team looked at individual animals and farm management to better understand parasite burdens and dewormer effectiveness. Amy and Jess share why a fecal egg count is only part of the picture—and what surprised them as they worked with producers.
They also discuss selective deworming, FAMACHA and fecal egg count training, and how farmers can make parasite management fit their own operation. The conversation offers a look at what the project revealed and what researchers are investigating next.
Featured Guests
Amy Barkley is a livestock specialist and Team Leader with the Southwest New York Dairy, Livestock and Field Crops Program (SWNYDLFC). In her role, she works with on-campus faculty and Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) agricultural educators in the counties of Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Erie, and Steuben to bring timely research-based programming and consultations to the farmers across the region.
Jess Waltemyer is Cornell PRO-LIVESTOCK’s Small Ruminant Extension Specialist.
For more information
- NERME funded project summary
- Final NERME project report webinar
- Southwest New York Dairy, Livestock and Field Crops
- American Consortium for Small Ruminant Parasite Control: FAQ
- Doing Your Own Fecal Egg Counts
- National Sheep Improvement Program (NSIP)
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Transcript
Intro 00:03
For the love of goats, we are talking about everything goat! Whether you’re a goat owner, a breeder, or just a fan of these wonderful creatures, we’ve got you covered. And now, here’s Deborah Niemann.
Deborah Niemann 00:18
Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s episode. I am very excited to be talking about worms again. And if you’re thinking, “Oh my God, worms again! Doesn’t everybody get it?” The answer is no, they don’t. Because if they did, I wouldn’t be talking about it still.
Deborah Niemann 00:34
So today, I am joined by a couple of researchers with the Cornell Small Ruminant Extension, Jess Waltemyer, the Cornell Pro Livestock Small Ruminant Extension Specialist, and Amy Barkley, also Livestock Specialist with Southwest New York Cornell Cooperative Extension. Welcome to the show today.
Amy Barkley 00:53
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Deborah Niemann 00:55
So, I’m sure that everyone who’s heard about dewormer resistance for as long as I have. A lot of them are probably saying, “Again?” I think once we get into the meat of your study, it’s going to become obvious why we’re still talking about this. Years ago, I used to think I would be out of a job in no time because everybody was going to hear about all the research and smart deworming and dewormer resistance, and everybody would be doing everything correctly.
Deborah Niemann 01:23
And here I am, 20 years after figuring out dewormer resistance with my goats, still beating the same drum. And I love it that researchers are still looking at the research, and especially what you did, because this wasn’t just some controlled randomized study. It’s a little bit different. Can you go ahead and tell us exactly what you did and why?
Amy Barkley 01:46
In my work as a livestock specialist, traveling around the Southwest New York region and visiting sheep and goat farmers of all sizes and all sorts of production systems, one of the things that came to light really early on was that we have a major issue with parasites in southwestern New York. This was before I determined that parasite resistance was also a problem, but I was seeing animals just struggling. Folks would have large portions of their herds or flocks pass away, up to 25% to 50% depending on the year, depending on the field. And I would have a lot of folks that would say, you know, “My animals aren’t doing super well. They’re really laggy. They’re really slow. They’re getting good nutrition. I don’t know what’s going on.” And so this prompted me to learn about FAMACHA and become a certified trainer.
Amy Barkley 02:30
And then after doing that for a couple of years, I realized, “Oh no, we also have dewormer resistance.” So an opportunity came across my desk where there was a grant through NERME, so it’s Northeast Extension Risk Management Education is what it stands for, and that is a grant program designed for extension specialists to focus on problems and address them in the field in real life with producers in real time. I asked her what was it, two weeks before the grant application was ready to be submitted. I was like, “Jess, I would love your input. I would love you to participate. Do you want to come with me? And she said yes.” So that’s how we got started with the project.
Jess Waltemyer 03:11
Yeah, and I’ll just add to that. So I’ve been in this position for two and a half years now. I started in February of 2024 in this specific position, but even prior to that, I was a certified FAMACHA trainer as well as involved in the Cornell sheep flock management, and we’re doing some solar grazing with those sheep at Cornell. And so we were seeing again parasite persistence and high burdens, even though we felt like we were doing rotations correctly. We were feeding good nutritional plan, you know, checking those animals. But we’ve always been selective deworming.
Jess Waltemyer 03:45
So similar to how you felt, Deborah, everybody has to know this at this point. I feel like we just promote FAMACHA trainings and those types of things. But when I came into this position, I realized there’s a lot of new and beginner farmers in New York State, specifically small herds, small flocks that don’t always have the capacity to get off the farm and get those trainings or have those one-on-one interactions or feel like they can reach out to an extension specialist or a county or a regional specialist and ask those questions.
Jess Waltemyer 04:14
And yes, Amy came to me just a couple weeks before, and I said, “Absolutely, I’m in.” And the reason is because you have to get to the farmers and have that applied research that they then can run with immediately. This is a project that was meant to be able to give them back individual information as well as us to learn regional information, right? So what this looks like in southwestern New York, and then moving forward, and we still need to learn, even at the end of this project. But the hopes are to continue to add components to this project or tweak it just slightly to learn those unknowns that we realized while we were out on the farm. So this was a great project to meet those farmers, bring the research to them, but make it applicable to them and for immediate use.
Deborah Niemann 05:01
Awesome. So, can you tell us a little bit about how exactly you did the study? How did you design it and find the participants and everything?
Amy Barkley 05:09
So, the project was designed to be attainable. So, one of the challenges with research projects is sometimes we have scope creep, so we get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and then we’re not able to do that individualized education that is just so incredibly valuable in extension education. So we skinnied it down. We said, “Okay, we’re going to go with 10 farmers, ideally two from each county in the Southwest New York region that include Erie, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Allegany, and Steuben counties.”
Amy Barkley 05:36
And we would find those farmers that we knew had parasite problems, and/or we knew had participated with extension in the past, and who were interested in learning more. So those were the farmers who joined in on the study. They were folks who were sheep savvy already. These were not super green farmers. These were folks who had been established for a number of years, and again, folks who we knew would work one-on-one with us to achieve the goals and collect the data with us and implement what we suggested in terms of changes of management practices to improve parasite burdens and to improve FAMACHA scores and to improve just general animal well-being, decrease mortality rates, and run with it.
Jess Waltemyer 06:16
The most important part for me, I’m located in Ithaca, New York, as you’re starting to relate, Amy is not right. She’s in the southwestern part of the state, so it’s really important for me to gather producer intel from either the county-level regional specialist that is working with these farmers daily, weekly, monthly. They’re coming to their workshops.
Jess Waltemyer 06:35
So we did put out kind of a call for farmers, right? And so, some of the requirements for this project were you must own sheep or goats. We didn’t have a minimum size per se, but we did kind of have a cap. And the reason for that is, as we go through what we collected, it was very labor-intensive for us to collect individual samples on these animals. So we would love to collect a flock of 200 ewes or you know a herd of 250 does, but just the capacity wasn’t there to be able to run those samples, get them back within a reasonable timeline to those farmers within grazing season, so they can start applying these recommendations that we had. So we did cap the maximum, but I would say most of our farmers and Amy can correct me. It was about 30 or under, or 26 and under.
Jess Waltemyer 07:20
We had a couple that were in the hundreds, and we accepted them because they were having issues, and we wanted to be able to help them. But we did try to cap it a small flock or a small herd. You had to be able to catch your animals. It did not require to have a chute, so there were some muscles gained during this project. We had a great time. It was a little hot at the beginning of the summer, but fall sampling was fantastic, and so you had to catch them. You had to be able to corner them enough so that we can get those individual evaluations.
Jess Waltemyer 07:47
So we did IPM consulting with these farmers, so integrated pest management. So we talked with them about their grazing schedules. Do they graze? There were a couple that were confinement that did not graze. What are the breed compositions that they have in their flock or their herd? What are some ailments they’re having, and are they related to worms? Are we dealing with another beast? So we had a lot of conversations, not just a survey, conversations with these farmers, and then we collected that. Then we went through the individual evaluation of the animals.
Jess Waltemyer 08:16
So we did a five-point check, which is something that we promote in our FAMACHA trainings. So that was including nasal discharge. So that’s going to be for nasal bots, which weren’t on the study, but we wanted to note whether that was a possibility of why these animals were not looking their best at the time of collection. Bottle jaw presence or no presence, which we relate to barber pole worm specifically. FAMACHA score, again, a barber pole worm symptom that we relate to specifically. Body condition score, and we did take notes on whether they were just finishing lambing, weaning, finishing kidding, what stage of lactation they may have been in, and then DAG score was the other one, so presence of diarrhea or not. And some of that was related to nutritional changes.
Jess Waltemyer 08:57
So again, the conversation was really important to take that with us, and then wool coat or hair coat. What did it look like? Was it lacking luster? Were we having some wool break, you know, or some premature shedding in that springtime? So we noted all of that, took all that information back with our fecal collection from each individual animal, ran a modified McMaster test on fecal count on those animals, and then took the whole picture to take back recommendations.
Jess Waltemyer 09:23
So we know specifically that barber pole worm is a heavy egg shedder, so high counts are common — not uncommon, I should say. But were the other symptoms saying they were showing resilience to this high worm burden, or were they showing resistance to exposure to a high worm burden? So I think that was really one of our biggest takeaways to our producers is explaining the difference between resistance and resilience, and why it’s important to make management decisions on those heavy egg shedders that are not showing any signs of distress.
Amy Barkley 09:55
So when you break down the results, we had some that were definitely shedding in the upper thousands and still thriving. However, the pen mate next to her was 150 eggs per gram and looking very poor and showing the effects of a high an exposure to that burden.
Jess Waltemyer 10:12
So we talked a lot about those differences and how, if you have the flexibility to get rid of those animals that are high shedding or keeping the ones that are not showing any signs of worm burden at the time, or low worm burden is important. And then, of course, you know, nutritional and importance of rest periods, etc. So it was really a whole farm analysis type of study, which I think is really important. Instead of reading it from a text that says, “Do this, do that.”
Jess Waltemyer 10:42
And not overburdening or, you know, challenging those farmers with more work to do. We all have enough to do. A lot of our farmers are part-time workers, full-time workers with full-time farming jobs, you know. And it’s just we don’t want to overdo it. But how can it be obtainable in order to see better results or get more from your animals.
Amy Barkley 11:02
In addition to the individual animal evaluations, where we’re comparing pen mates to pen mates to determine resilience and resistance, and also see what the general spread of worms across the herd or flock is, we were also determining rates of dewormer resistance. So what we had the farmers do is we said to each one, “Hey, pick a dewormer that you want to test that may have resistance on your farm.” And if they said, “Well, we don’t really use a dewormer.” We said, “Well, we want you to start with a class that we believe has a high rate of resistance, which is typically the class that includes the ivermectins.”
Amy Barkley 11:35
And so farmers either chose that, or they chose their dewormer of choice, and we went ahead and dewormed those animals that showed symptoms in the chute, of having poor body condition and DAGs or maybe poor FAMACHA. We said to the farmer, “Okay, this is what we’re seeing on this animal. Do we want to go ahead and deworm this animal? Do you want to deworm this animal?” And they would give us the yes or no. If it was a yes, we would go ahead and deworm them, and then two weeks later, we’d come out to the farm, pull fecals again, and test and see if the rate of strongylid eggs or the number of strongylid eggs was reduced by at least 75%.
Amy Barkley 12:10
We know that a 90% reduction or higher is very good efficacy of a drug. Science isn’t perfect. The way that we pull samples isn’t going to be the exact same every single time. There’s going to be some variance, but we say you know 90% or higher, the drug is definitely effective. 75% or higher, yes, it’s effective. If it’s below 75% we say you’re leaning towards having resistant worms, or you have resistant worms. There were some farms on the study where we would deworm, and worm loads would increase in two weeks, so we knew for certain that okay, those dewormer classes were not going to work on that farm, and we found about 40% of the farms that were on our study. So four out of the farms that we tested, I think we tested six farms had animals that needed dewormed. So of those six, four had resistance problems or leaning towards resistance, like 76% efficacy, which I would say is leaning towards resistance.
Amy Barkley 13:08
So a relatively large portion of our farms did have resistance issues to at least one of the classes of antiparasitics. We can say that even when we find resistance problems, we ask ourselves and we ask the farmer, “Okay, is there a reason why there might be resistance to this drug outside of resistance on its own? Was that drug mishandled? Was it not shipped to you in a proper way? Did you store it in a place that was in direct sunlight? How old is that dewormer? Did you mix it up properly?” So there were a whole lot of other questions that we were also asking to make sure that, “Okay, was this truly resistance, or is there some defect in the dewormer that wasn’t allowing it to be as effective as it could be?”
Amy Barkley 13:49
There was one farm in particular which had resistance to all three classes of dewormers. We had a lot of conversations around again, as Amy stated. Storage. “How long have you had it? Did you give the accurate dose? How often had you used it before?” And our original surveying questions did not cover all those additional questions that came to mind as we were on the farms. And that’s why I think it’s just so important to get on the farm and actually look at what’s happening. And it truly could have been-I didn’t realize it was that old. I just, you know, that type of scenario, and in some cases it was.
Jess Waltemyer 14:23
So then that’s when it opened up more conversation of, “What is your current feeding program? Are you offering minerals?” And not just minerals in a pellet that has some minerals, the basic minerals, right? But additional minerals that can help boost immunity, so that we’re actually focusing on giving the animal all of the tools that it needs in order to combat this parasite load, we know, and as you stated at the beginning, that this is probably a continuum issue.
Jess Waltemyer 14:51
We’re seeing that these worms are becoming much more adaptive to our temperatures, our winter specifically. They’re not dying in the winter as we thought they would. They’re harboring inside the animals. They’re going under a hypobiosis, so it’s not even on the pasture anymore. They’re still in the animal, and when high times of stress, such as lambing or kidding, weaning, maybe you’re moving animals or combining groups of animals often, so they’re constantly in this high level of stress. That’s when they really shed this high worm load because if the animal’s stressed, the worm is stressed about its survivability, and it’s going to try to replicate. Right, it’s going to reproduce.
Jess Waltemyer 15:29
What other tools can we use? Not dewormers, and that was part of the larger conversation. Is yes, we’re trying to supply you with the information of if you have to deworm, these are the ones that are going to be effective for you, but let’s hope you don’t have to. But selective deworm, not blanket deworm, to slow our dewormer resistance, as well as let’s give them all the tools we can. So good mineral programs, good forage or hay or grain, if you’re feeding that in that form. Let’s focus on animals you’ve never have to look at twice, and they never look at you wrong. Type scenario.
Jess Waltemyer 16:04
Let’s keep offspring out of those, right? Let’s increase our genetic resistance without even doing any EBV values or blood draws or having to send it to a lab. You can do that on the farm. You just select those animals, that FAMACHAs are always consistent. Fecal egg counts are always low. I never have to deworm them. They just thrive and they produce, you know, wonderful offspring, etc. That’s data. That’s on-farm farmer data, right? That you can use to help increase the welfare and the, you know, the performance of your animals.
Deborah Niemann 16:35
So you mentioned one farm that had resistance to all three classes of dewormers, which I find those incredibly interesting. I mean, I was there 20 years ago. That’s what caused me to dive into the research. Was because I was still building my herd and you know spending a lot of money on animals, and then they would just die, and I didn’t know why. And ultimately, I did discover that we had complete resistance because we were doing everything wrong. We were using the wrong dosage. We were deworming everyone at one time. Do you remember the things that that particular farm did that they wound up with resistance to all three types of dewormers?
Amy Barkley 17:11
Yeah. So we actually had two farms. So I know the one that Jess is referring to specifically. We had another farm that also had resistance, and that was a different case. So I’ll let Jess talk about the farm that she started on, and then I’ll fill in with the other farm, which had an entirely different scenario as to what their resistance was caused by we think.
Jess Waltemyer 17:29
We think, presumably, right? So yeah, the one that I was referring to, these were sheep, not goats, that this producer had. They were unique in the fact that they were a show a show flock, so they were had a small flock to begin with. Had lineage that they weren’t willing to part with either, so that was a hard sell. You know, they only had I believe eight on the study, eight ewes, and then there were some lambs that we didn’t test. We only tested animals that were nine months and older, so any lambs by side were not evaluated for this project, and so there was frequent deworming twice annually, so that probably assisted with the increased resistance. The small flock, we think there was some genetic susceptibility as well.
Jess Waltemyer 18:14
We found that specific ewes, the older ewes that had lambs or offspring replacements that were of age, that whole family line was showing high worm burden and then displaying symptoms that was causing low performance. So there was definitely some genetic influence into that flock, and unfortunately, because they were very connected with the flock, it was hard to get rid of, right? And being such a small flock. But the consistent deworming I believe also did not help.
Jess Waltemyer 18:46
We talked a lot about management. This was a flock that was kept primarily inside, which was interesting because all of our other flocks were grazing. Well, one I guess the one goat herd was not at the time, but it would be eventually. They were inside, but they did occasionally have access to a small outside lot, but it was continuum exposure, so it wasn’t a new lot every time. It was the same one, which we you know we call the barnyard effect, where there’s contamination, it never gets rotated, you know that type of scenario.
Jess Waltemyer 19:15
So we do think they were picking some up from that exercise pad that they kind of had, but even indoors, there was some management things like the feeders were on the ground and the water was on the ground. So if we have high loads in the feces and it’s being deposited in the feed and water source, we think there was a lot of recontamination of that flock. So it was interesting. We definitely went through all three classes of dewormers. I believe we did a dual deworming too to see if that was helpful at all, but because we had resistance to the two classes we were dual deworming, we really didn’t see that reduction that we expected.
Jess Waltemyer 19:50
So that’s when we really talked about nutrition and thoughts around integrating better genetics. So my suggestion to that producer at the time was, “Where do you get your ram from?” She didn’t own a ram, so is there a chance that you can sort out a ram that has some genetic resistance to parasite loads that would then increase the performance of the next generation? There was a lot of conversations around that because we were definitely puzzled as well because we weren’t expecting those type of results. Moving forward, unfortunately, that producer did decide to sell those sheep, but still in contact if they ever decide to start back up, and we would be there to assist them with that.
Amy Barkley 20:29
Yeah.
Deborah Niemann 20:29
Interesting. I was just curious what breed it was.
Jess Waltemyer 20:32
Yeah, so they were Suffolks and Suffolk crosses, which we know are not the most immune powerhouses of the breeds of sheep, and so that also could have took a large effect, is that breed influence on them.
Amy Barkley 20:46
Yeah. So the goat herd that we worked with that had resistance issues had individuals that were for show and for meat production, and they were from several different sources. So there, I believe there was Georgia, New York State, and Pennsylvania were the original areas where the goats for the original herd came from. When we tested those animals the first day that we were there, we did find poor FAMACHA scores that did align with poor body condition scores and just poor doing overall.
Amy Barkley 21:17
So the producer elected to deworm with the dewormer that they were giving previous to us coming on the farm, they had been dual deworming at the recommendation of their veterinarian, so they knew that there was resistance issues already, but we didn’t know how severe those were. So we went through, we tested the animals after giving the first dewormer. There was resistance. So we went ahead, dewormed them with the second dewormer, and interestingly, after that second dewormer, half of the animals had resistance, and half of them did not have resistance.
Amy Barkley 21:48
So half of them got kicked off the program, and we said to the producer, “Okay, this dewormer works for those two animals. Let’s see what works for these other two animals.” We tested again with the third class of dewormer, and those two came up resistant, unfortunately. So they were resistant. Two individuals were resistant to all three classes of dewormers.
Amy Barkley 22:06
And so this was an interesting case where the management of these animals was they were kept in a barn full time, regularly cleaned the bedding, the food was off the ground, the water was getting off the ground. They’re in the process of renovating their barn and air quality was really good. Stress was low in the barn, so we couldn’t really pinpoint an environmental factor as to what was causing the resistance.
Amy Barkley 22:30
What we kind of concluded was that because the animals were from all different places, what likely happened is that they bought in resistant worms. So some individuals were probably on farms that had programs that resulted in resistance, and those animals then came to this farm. Those worms mated with the worms from the non-resistant animals, and so we ended up kind of with this stew of resistance and non-resistance.
Amy Barkley 22:57
And that made it really, really challenging for that producer because when an animal would have a really poor FAMACHA score, the question then became, “Okay, so what drug works?” So eventually, what that producer ended up doing is they had an opportunity to buy a new herd, so they sold off that herd and bought in a new one, and we then went through and did the exact same testing with that new herd. With that new herd, all the individuals had come from the same place. They’d been all managed the same way. So our hope is that going forward they’ll be able to manage those animals all the same way, rather than to have some that have resistance to some things and some that have resistance to others.
Deborah Niemann 23:35
How long had they had the goats before you started your study with them?
Amy Barkley 23:40
I don’t know. I’m not able to answer that.
Deborah Niemann 23:43
Okay.
Amy Barkley 23:44
I don’t know, Jess, if you know off the top of your head.
Amy Barkley 23:46
It wasn’t extremely long. I would say under five years.
Deborah Niemann 23:49
That’s how we actually got started with dewormer resistance. Was that I bought a little buck who had come from a farm that where the goats were resistant to safeguard. I had actually never even used a dewormer at that point. I’d had goats for two years, never used a dewormer. I brought in this little buck, put him in there with my other two bucks that I had at the time. And two weeks later, I thought he might have a worm problem, so I took a fecal to the vet, and she’s like, “Yeah, go ahead. And she goes, “Just give him safeguard.” So I gave him safeguard, and he was dead like a week or two later, and he actually died at University of Illinois.
Deborah Niemann 24:23
Like I rushed him down there when he couldn’t stand, and so we had a necropsy done, and they said it was worms. And when I called the person I bought him from and told her what happened, like she was so mean to me. She was like, “Well, everybody knows Safeguard doesn’t work,” and I’m like, “I didn’t know that. Like I’ve never used a dewormer before. It’s what my vet told me to use.” And the reality is, it would have worked. Like if for one of my other goats, and so then a few months later, I lost two more goats to worms, and then I lost more. Like and so basically, and then all of my bucks very quickly wound up with dewormer resistance. Because I had them all in a 64 by 64 foot pen with grass, so they were just consuming all of these resistant. I mean, that’s literally you know almost 100% of the worms that they were consuming were resistant. So that’s why it’s interesting to know. Like, yeah, I think what you said is probably very accurate. That each farm had its own resistance issues, and then they got all mixed up.
Jess Waltemyer 25:23
Yeah, and that’s one thing. And we know it’s hard if you’re buying in animals. If you’re buying in a couple animals a year, it may be simpler, like just you know you’re breeding rams or you’re they’re breeding bucks. But if you’re buying in and trying to increase your herd or your flock at any type of rate, it’s hard to keep them separate. It’s hard to quarantine them, you know, accurately, so that you can see if they’re shedding high levels of worms before you’re polluting your pastures or contaminating your pastures.
Jess Waltemyer 25:49
And so, I mean, it’s not uncommon for us to go grab 20 ewes and and bring them and throw them with our other 20 ewes, right? Because that just makes management sense. But unfortunately, you don’t know what you’re buying unless you’re testing regularly. And that was another part of this project, is there are not a lot of small ruminant specific veterinarians in New York State, you know specifically that we’re dealing with. So they have some knowledge, of course, of parasites and parasite resistance. Some have labs that they can run fecal egg counts in office. Some are third party, so they’re sending them away to another one, or there are some other non-veterinary linked labs that you can send your fecal samples to.
Jess Waltemyer 26:29
But it could be time-consuming, or again, labor cumbersome, or price is not you know ideal at this point in time. So how can we supply these farmers with a tool? And so part of this project was FAMACHA training for those farmers that were on the project, as well as opening it up to other farmers in the area. We had a large response to that, both in-person FAMACHA training. There was some online training, not formal FAMACHA, but informative of sense.
Jess Waltemyer 26:57
And then there was a lot we did, and Amy did a lot of it was like a traveling fecal egg count show. We were calling it, you know. So just fecal egg counts. What tools do you need? How can you do this in farm? How can you do this yourself? But then once you get those results, what do you do with that information? I’m never ever gonna say that our animals are 100% parasite free. It just happened to be there was not an egg in that three gram sample that I ran through my microscope. You know, zero is fantastic, but if you do get a high load, we need to look at all the different parts of the equation of the five-point check, or how they’re acting, or is this normal for them? Is this normal for your herd, or this is normal for your flock to be a little elevated at this time of the year? And that’s another part of it is just looking at that whole picture and not just taking one quantitative number or you know one evaluation and deworming the whole flock or herd.
Amy Barkley 27:47
I’ll add to that. One of the challenges with the fecal egg count road shows is we were teaching producers how to do it, what equipment they needed, and then how to interpret the results. And what we realized very quickly is folks would say, “Oh, I have a thousand eggs per gram. I need to treat, right?” And it’s like no asterisk. Let’s look at that full picture, just like Jess said. And so that actually prompted additional trainings.
Amy Barkley 28:12
In April of this year, we had an online training to just teach how to interpret these results because so many folks just assume that if they see eggs, they need to treat, and that really isn’t the case. We want to have worms that are shedding eggs that are susceptible to dewormers to create that refugia that is just so important in maintaining a susceptible parasite population. So it’s really been a learning curve. It’s been a lot of fun. So the project is officially over in Southwest New York, but we’ve had continuing requests for both FAMACHA trainings and for fecal egg count trainings. So this is something we’ll be bringing into the future outside of the grant project, just simply from demand from producers.
Deborah Niemann 28:52
Yeah, that is amazing. I love what you’re doing. That is so great to teach people how to do all those things and how like people in my Goats 365 membership a lot of times they’ll leave with it. Like, “Okay, I know you’re gonna say it depends, but here’s my question,”. And then I’ll laugh and I’m like, well, yeah, it does depend. Like, I got a few questions for you first before I give you an answer to that.
Jess Waltemyer 29:14
Agreed. It’s one question turns into 20, and I do feel some producers are like more questions. I said I have more follow up. I just need to know because unless I’m there viewing a specific animal we are talking about, I just cannot give you a definitive answer until I get all as as much information as I can. So as Amy said, producer requests for trainings, they’re still coming in.
Jess Waltemyer 29:35
Especially we find that in the spring, right, when a lot of our farmers are lambing or finishing up lambing, so we see that rise in eggshed, and then if we have a pretty mild summer and not a drought, we’ll see some again some increases over the summertime. So that we start to get demand. So we do tend to circle a lot of those trainings in that seasonal time of the year, whenever farmers are seeing those results.
Jess Waltemyer 30:00
But it has prompted other research, right? So this was in Southwestern New York specifically. We had a great response to it in Southwestern New York, and I can briefly talk about the project that we did this last summer. What it did was it triggered, “Hey, my producers in Northern New York are struggling with a similar problem. Can we move it to northern New York?” So I took Amy’s project that was, you know, was really successful in what we were gathering, and then added a component to it.
Jess Waltemyer 30:27
So not only were we looking at the same things we did in this project, but we’re also adding a hatchability on pasture, so in real time and real temperature. And this was funded by the Northern New York Agricultural Development Program, so specific to the counties in Northern New York. I do not have very clean results yet. Our first presentation on this project is next week at the Cornell Sheep and Goat Symposium, and it will be very raw. It will be cleaned up for our next presentation, which will be at the end of this year. So I will definitely keep you informed with that whenever it becomes available.
Jess Waltemyer 31:02
But we’re finding, as we expected, Northern New York has a much shorter grazing season. We’re seeing colder temperatures further into the spring than we would maybe in the southern part of the state. As well as this time of the year, we’re starting to see freezing temperatures at a much expediated rate than we were expecting. So we’re incubating composites from those farms at real temperatures. I was raising temperature during the day, and then I was dropping it at night. And then we collected the L3 or the infective stage of larva from those composites. And then now we’re in the process of looking at counts. So relating that to the median of the total egg counts we collected individually. So the average was 200 eggs per gram for a 20 head flock. You know how many were actually hatching. That was potentially what we were depositing on the pastures. But then, what is actually hatching out because of temperature and rotation time on each individual farm?
Jess Waltemyer 31:56
So again, taking that in individual management and just using what they’re already doing, and hopefully supplying them with information that says you can extend your grazing timeline because you’re having a low hatch, or you need to shorten your grazing timeline because you’re having this huge hatch right in these temperatures. And that was something that I was, you know, really passionate about adding to project because I think that’s important to those areas that may have a shorter grazing season and are struggling with getting enough vegetation to have rest and land to be able to do it the way we’re suggesting at least. So there may be some adaptation by region.
Deborah Niemann 32:31
I love it. That is like probably the most strategic plan I have ever heard for grazing for parasite control. That is just so cool.
Jess Waltemyer 32:41
I’m hoping the results are cool too. We’re still, we’re not done.
Deborah Niemann 32:46
Yeah.
Jess Waltemyer 32:46
You know, research is trial and error, right? So if it doesn’t work this season, hopefully finding funding to continue it in future seasons.
Deborah Niemann 32:54
Yeah. Well, you have to come back and talk about this because this is just like one of the coolest things that I’ve ever heard anybody talk about, and I’ve been reading this stuff for 20 years. This is great.
Jess Waltemyer 33:06
I will definitely come back when we have better numbers and answers.
Deborah Niemann 33:09
Yeah, it’s fascinating because a couple years ago, I visited a sheep dairy in Wisconsin, and what they did-I mean, just talk about strategic-was amazing. They started this sheep dairy with embryo transfers into ewes at another farm. The manager who was starting the new farm was there. Like, if she caught the lamb in her hands and put it in a box and took it away, it got moved to this new farm. So there was like zero risk of anything coming from the previous farm, from the bedding, from the mom, from anything like if she missed a birth by five minutes, sorry, that lamb’s not coming with me.
Deborah Niemann 33:48
And then they decided that they would not let the sheep graze at all because of the risk of parasites on pasture and the fact that Wisconsin has such a short grazing season. They felt like the risk of parasites on grass for just a couple months of grass consumption, like to save money on feed, that they really didn’t think it was worth it. They thought they would wind up with more parasite problems by letting them graze grass, which is the first time I’d heard anybody say that. But they were up to like 700, 800 ewes, you know, and that was another very strategic decision that they made. But I love what you’re talking about in terms of like when is the load of larvae on the pasture going to be too high?
Jess Waltemyer 34:26
Yeah, and I envision, and Amy and I’ve talked about this, so I feel confident in answering for both of us that we will continue to add those components to our studies and collaborate with other CCE individuals or industry stakeholders that would work with us, of course, but add those different components that we still don’t know those answers to. Right? We left this study with more questions, I think, than some answers. And one was we did not differentiate species of the worms that we were collecting. We were doing a modified McMaster’s, which means we clumped them all together and we give you total egg per gram, right?
Jess Waltemyer 35:02
So of course, some of those five-point check symptoms helped us a little bit. We could say it maybe was more a brown stomach worm, or maybe was more a barber pole, but we definitely had mixed infections, and we can’t say for sure what was affecting that animal the most.
Jess Waltemyer 35:17
So moving forward, you know, do we need to add a component that actually sorts out which one is your nemesis on your farm, right? Is it brown stomach worm? Is it barber pole? You know, which one of those worms is the most resistant? And moving forward, you know, how do we address that? Those worms can be addressed a little differently. Life cycle is similar, but some are faster laying and some are slower laying, so we can definitely address it a little bit differently.
Jess Waltemyer 35:43
So that was definitely a question that we were still, you know, that will be a future study that we maybe add that component, the hatchability portion. I thought was you know important because it would be different for every farmer and be something that they can use. And then of course the question of, and this is kind of the final question: What happens when none of these dewormers are working for anybody anymore? Right? We supplied every tool in the box, and we used every dewormer we have, and that’s a question that we have, of course, of how do we advise producers when we come to the end of our our toolbox?
Jess Waltemyer 36:18
Again, I think there needs to be more research done as far as what farmers can do to select for genetic resistance without a high investment. I mean, we absolutely promote, you know, like the NSIP program and enrolling and purchasing animals that have high EBVs, but reality is not every farmer is going to invest, right? So, what can we do next, and what’s coming down the pipeline, and we don’t have those answers yet. So once companies and you know research labs tell us yes, this is now on label for sheep or on label for goats, which isn’t the case for most of our dewormers, they’re extra label for one or either or both. What can we use next to help these farmers out?
Deborah Niemann 36:58
Yeah, could you talk a little bit more about that program that you mentioned a minute ago.
Jess Waltemyer 37:02
Yeah, so that’s the National Sheep Improvement Program, and there are goats on that program as well. NSIP, N-S-I-P, is the acronym that I use, and so that’s a program that is a kind of a bank of data for estimated breeding values, and there is linkage for estimated breeding values on parasite resistance. So if you are looking for a specific breed and area of the country, so you can go on that website and type in Dorset Michigan, or Dorset Pennsylvania, and you can find breeders that are enrolled in that program that have invested in genetic evaluation of their animals. And so, if you’re trying to purchase a new animals that potentially have some genetic resistance to worm burdens-that’s a possibility.
Deborah Niemann 37:46
Yeah, I quit buying does in 2005, and since then have been very careful about any bucks that I bring in. I look at my baby bucks and say, “Give me a reason to castrate you.” I keep more than I want because literally, if it needs a dewormer, it gets wethered and sold as a pet.
Jess Waltemyer 38:02
That’s very controlled of you, right? You know, to have that control and to be invested at that level, and that’s great that you’re able to make those decisions and still be able to meet your goals.
Deborah Niemann 38:14
Yeah, it does involve keeping more males than I should. It’s easy because I have. I mean, I’ve been at this for so long, and I have so many does that I absolutely love. They’re fabulous milkers and have beautiful mammaries. Like I really do want to keep all of them, you know. And having a male from them is a great way to continue their genetics in a really big way. But if one of them needs a dewormer, like, “You are out there on the pasture with those other four bucks. They don’t need a dewormer, but you do.” So why would I keep you at this point?
Jess Waltemyer 38:43
Right. Again, and I think I said this earlier is to for farmers to be able to kind of do that genetic selection without too much, you know, lab diagnostics and investment in that sense. But it does require a high level of observation and record keeping, and you know, following those animals, or as you said, keeping them maybe longer than you would ideally think about keeping them. So it’s an investment. It’s an investment of time, if nothing else.
Deborah Niemann 39:09
Yeah. Well, thank you so much. This has been fabulous. What do you think is like the big takeaway that listeners need to keep in mind?
Jess Waltemyer 39:18
My biggest takeaway, and I say this to a lot of my producers: is if you attend some type of program, workshop, education opportunity, read a research project, you know, use an online source, a reputable online source, I should say, you don’t need to check all the boxes in one step, right? So if you can implement one new practice, one practice that’s proven to help animal performance or decrease parasite loads in your animals. One at a time is totally fine. I think that you should focus on what you already do well, pick out your weaknesses and then try to chip away at those weaknesses until, you’ve seen results that benefit you. I think that a lot of producers get overwhelmed with the amount of information that sometimes we provide, or you know, not just researchers, but extension and media, etc. And just one thing at a time, and that way you can start to solve your problem without overdoing it for yourself.
Amy Barkley 40:20
And in that same vein, I would say that integrated parasite management planning and implementation on farms is not a one-size-fits-all approach. It is 100% very tailored to your operation, your animals, your capacity, and your resources. So just because somebody is doing something one way does not mean it’s right or wrong, and it may or may not be the right fit for you. So work with your extension agent, work with your vet, work with other producers, work with the people who work right on your farm with you day to day to figure out what works for you and move forward in that exact approach that Jess mentioned, which is that one thing at a time. Work on it, work on it, work on it, and eventually you’ll get where you want to be.
Deborah Niemann 41:01
Yeah, that is a really great thing to mention, and it’s also really important to note that, like, if somebody else tells you to do something that they’re saying that like X Y Z works for me, it may not really be working for them. It may be placebo. When I was looking for a new buck last year, I saw a website, and funny enough, it was somebody in New York State who said that she puts a safeguard dewormer block out in her pasture for three days every month, and that’s how she keeps her goats worm free?
Deborah Niemann 41:28
And I’m like, oh my gosh! Like, okay, this person doesn’t know me from Adam or anybody else, and if I just go email her and say, hey, that’s not really working for you, she’s probably gonna say something rude to me. So I just like bit my tongue and tried to pretend that I didn’t see that because honestly, what she’s just done is created dewormer resistance to safeguard in her goats. So if her goats go to somebody’s farm and they try to use safeguard, it’s not going to work because she’s been feeding it to her goats at a low level every month.
Jess Waltemyer 41:57
Correct, I agree. Just one size doesn’t fit all, right? And sometimes it works, and the next time it doesn’t. So being able to track those things that work and those that don’t is also important. So I mean, record keeping doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be pen and paper. It can be putting it on an Excel sheet. But writing things down the date it happened, the date you saw results, the date you stopped seeing results, right, will help give you some of those that information, to again, chip it one thing at a time till it doesn’t work or needs to be adjusted. And it may simply just be it’s no longer working. Right? And we need to adjust our mindset or what we’re doing next.
Jess Waltemyer 42:33
So, again we can read a lot. Media is a wonderful thing and it is a not wonderful thing, so we get flooded with so much information, and I think it’s really important to dig in the research and do your own kind of research on-farm before making these huge life changes, and then again, maybe not seeing the result that you were expecting.
Deborah Niemann 42:52
Yeah, exactly. Well, this has been so much fun. So thank you so much, and I’m really excited to hear about the research that you’re working on right now.
Jess Waltemyer 43:01
Great, thank you so much for having us. I really enjoyed speaking about the project that took up a lot of our summertime, but it was beneficial for all that was involved and really got our minds cranking for what’s next and what can we start to think about down the pipeline. So thank you again. I really enjoyed talking about it, and I’m hoping that your listeners get some information from it. One thing, of course. One thing from this podcast.
Amy Barkley 43:22
Totally agree with all that. Thanks again for sharing our story, and hopefully this prompts some producers to maybe approach Cooperative Extension, say, “Hey, how about this idea? Because we’re a ground-up organization; it’s how we get new ideas.” So we’re very excited that this is being shared with the masses.
Deborah Niemann 43:42
And that’s it for today’s show. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to hit the subscribe button so that you don’t miss any episodes. To see show notes, you can always visit fortheloveofgoats.com, and you can follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/lovegoatspodcast. See you again next time. Bye for now.
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