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Warning: That 'certified organic' lamb I got from the farmer's market in Portland had liver flukes crawling out of it
I was breaking down a whole carcass from a local farm last Tuesday and found these little flatworms in the bile ducts, and after calling the supplier they admitted they haven't been deworming this season, has anyone else seen this with pasture-raised animals?
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jessem5919d ago
My buddy runs a small farm in Oregon and had the same exact issue last fall with their grass-fed beef. They started using a targeted dewormer rotation after a vet told them pasture raised animals need it especially bad in wet seasons like this spring has been. It's not just liver flukes either, we saw a spike in tapeworm segments in some of their older stock. Maybe ask about what their vet recommended for timing, because skipping treatment completely is a recipe for this kind of mess.
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fisher.thomas19d ago
Yeah that wet season timing thing is huge, we saw the same pattern with our own stock when we skipped fall deworming one year and paid for it bad. A simple rotation between a macrocyclic lactone and a benzimidazole every 6-8 weeks has kept our losses down to nearly zero since then. If his vet hasn't brought up running fecal egg counts before and after treatments that's a cheap way to dial in exactly what's working.
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