Am I mad !

[Holsteinfriesian90]

Why? We haven’t for year's, Don't even huskvac.

Really. We tried it one year and nearly lost a bunch of heifers so learnt the hard way.

 

[vantage]

Really. We tried it one year and nearly lost a bunch of heifers so learnt the hard way.

Had a group of cattle badly affected with lungworm last year, the Spring calves have clean grazing first year, unfortunately picked it up from a previously grazed field. Only autumn group have autoworm.

 

[sidjon]

Really. We tried it one year and nearly lost a bunch of heifers so learnt the hard way.

We just do a FEC couple of time during the summer, but guess our cattle are always on the move, so guess that helps

 

[buffalo_soldier]

This is where we need to get to I think, never done a fec count but fairly sure they’d manage without being wormed, it’s the huskvac element we need to put into place for lungworm, had a mate have an awful do with it a few years ago, anybody know what it costs?

I didn’t think of that. How much is the husvac? Always interesting to know how other people do things.

Ha, I can't tell you what it costs sorry as it's lumped in on my monthly fee.
So any vaccines and whatever show as £0.00 on the invoice

My guess would somewhere between wormers and them pulse things.

 

[O'Reilly]

Farmacy have it at £6.29 for a single dose. I would imagine that it is a fair bit cheaper for more doses. You need two doses.

 

[Princess Pooper]

We used to do autoworm first grazer on the autumn born heifers as we had no handling facilities at the field. Bought a s/h movable pen, race & yolk set up 6 years ago for £1k (not one of the fancy ones with its own trailer, but can be loaded with a foreloader and a flat bed). Just about the time that autoworm boluses shot up in price.

Perfect handling system for our small group of heifers, so we swapped to Dectomax ; this year after talking to a very helpful Norbrook rep, we are hoping to reduce wormer use and starting FEC as he thinks on our system we shouldn't have an issue, will be interesting to see how we get on.

 

[Sid]

How do you all know that there is no effect on soil biology?

I would have thought that a rotational grazer would hardly use any wormer anyway, I have only used one dose per year for a long time, and didn't use any last year. I know my calves are older by the time they go out, but even so. Do use huskvac though.

Bit like the ABS used to be. Way they have always done it so just keep going

Really. We tried it one year and nearly lost a bunch of heifers so learnt the hard way.

That's where FEC come in and clean grazing.
We lost a bunch with lungworm. Huskvac the next year lost even more.
We didn't store the vaccine correctly was the excuse.
So now we monitor with fec and clean grazing.
Saved money and stock!

 

[Farmer Keith]

Farmacy have it at £6.29 for a single dose. I would imagine that it is a fair bit cheaper for more doses. You need two doses.

Can only see single dose packs everywhere but it’s a 25ml oral dose so I’m assuming you just administer straight from the bottle. If it’s not significantly cheaper in bulk it’s going to mount up pretty quickly over two doses, fine for replacement heifers but I’m not sure you can justify that on beef stock when the ivomectin approach is 1/4 of the cost.

 

[Headless chicken]

Can only see single dose packs everywhere but it’s a 25ml oral dose so I’m assuming you just administer straight from the bottle. If it’s not significantly cheaper in bulk it’s going to mount up pretty quickly over two doses, fine for replacement heifers but I’m not sure you can justify that on beef stock when the ivomectin approach is 1/4 of the cost.

you might get a small bulk discount but it’s one bottle per animal. You need to order the exact correct quantities too as it won’t carry over until the next dose as the dates are really short.

we stopped using so much wormer and FEC last year, FEC showed up nothing at all but the calves looked like total sh!t. Wormed them on vet advise and they made a big improvement. Can’t see that it was just a coincidence

 

[jerseycowsman]

View attachment 1030719Would really like to go back to using these. Once only treatment. No issues for soils or insects and they have worked well here in the past.
but the price !!!

We use huskvac, treat them as calves, and never doing again for the rest of their lives. Before huskvac we were having to worm the adult cows a couple times a year. Haven’t had to do that for several years now

 

[jerseycowsman]

Nope, just husvac.
Do FEC's and whatnot. Never shown a need for wormers.

I'm just guessing but closed herd and dedicated youngstock ground might have something to do with it

We don’t use any gut wormers on ours either, just one double as huskvac and that’s it for the rest of their lives

 

[jerseycowsman]

Bit like the ABS used to be. Way they have always done it so just keep going


That's where FEC come in and clean grazing.
We lost a bunch with lungworm. Huskvac the next year lost even more.
We didn't store the vaccine correctly was the excuse.
So now we monitor with fec and clean grazing.
Saved money and stock!

Foecal egg count won’t tell you if you have a lungworm problem!

 

[Princess Pooper]

Foecal egg count won’t tell you if you have a lungworm problem!

Ours come running for daily feeding in their first summer, told to treat at first sign of coughing.

 

[Sid]

Foecal egg count won’t tell you if you have a lungworm problem!

We take regular dung samples in to vets,
they test it and we get told if we need to do anything.

So

 

[Farmer Keith]

We use huskvac, treat them as calves, and never doing again for the rest of their lives. Before huskvac we were having to worm the adult cows a couple times a year. Haven’t had to do that for several years now

Ah that’s a different ball game all together, as mentioned earlier I don’t huskvac but also have never worked anything over 12 months old. If there’s a lifetime benefit it does not look as expensive.

 

[jerseycowsman]

Ah that’s a different ball game all together, as mentioned earlier I don’t huskvac but also have never worked anything over 12 months old. If there’s a lifetime benefit it does not look as expensive.

Yes, unlike all these other vaccines like bvd etc that need doing yearly, huskvac is just a double dose before their first grazing as calves, no more after that, and in the 7 or 8 years we have been using it, we have now stopped all other worming. We haven’t had to do the milkers for lungworms or gut worms for the last 4 years now

 

[Jdunn55]

We take regular dung samples in to vets,
they test it and we get told if we need to do anything.

So

So did I last year, lost 9 x 6 month old calves to lungworm in the autumn including 3 heifers, never ever ever ever ever again

You cannot test for lungworm in a fecal egg count

 

[Sid]

So did I last year, lost 9 x 6 month old calves to lungworm in the autumn including 3 heifers, never ever ever ever ever again

You cannot test for lungworm in a fecal egg count

Quote from vet times

"Faecal larval counts are still the standard diagnostic tool for lungworm and provide for a high
specificity and moderate sensitivity, with reasonable indications of the infection levels"

 

[Cows 'n grass]

The problem with relying on FECs for lungworm is that the lungworm needs to be advanced enough to be producing eggs and you are relying on the animal coughing up and then swallowing the eggs so they can be excreted. It's a bit hit and miss and you need a very large pooled stool sample to gain any accuracy.

 

[Old apprentice]

Back in the late 60s we had a problem with lung worm after that we wormed on a regular basis ,used lavemasol 3 times in the summer then fluke and wormed a month after housing in the winter.