“The timing of fluke doses has caught a lot of people out due to the mild winter seen, and as result has seen the carry over of fluke to now,” Shane McGettrick said.
Shane was speaking at the Teagasc National Hill Sheep Conference last Thursday (February 24) at the Clayton Hotel in Co. Sligo.
McGettrick is a Laboratory manager with the Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine Regional Veterinary Laboratory in Co. Sligo.
Shane was posed with the following question during the even: Will faecal sample tests determine if fluke is present?
Answering, Shane said: “It’s not simple or straightforward. Most of the disease caused by fluke occur in the immature stages, so when the larvae are migrating through the liver.
“So when this is occurring, there are no eggs being produced at that stage. So, that means you could have fluke damage at those acute stages that can be enough to kill that animal and still show up a negative dung sample test.
“While if you have a positive faecal egg test on the dung it means fluke is present but it doesn’t tell you how much fluke is there.
“So what we see, time and time again is mistiming of the fluke doses. The fluke dose will be used and the adult fluke all the way down to early immature fluke are all killed, but the animal is still being exposed to the fluke on the pasture.
“And if there is enough fluke there in the one go, enough of these larvae cutting through the liver all in the one go, it can still cause huge disease in the animal.
“We have seen a lot of this, this year where we had a very mild winter. I think the timing of the fluke doses caught a lot of people out.
“Normally, when farmers would have given a fluke dose in the back end of the year, in October or November, that there was still a lot of active larvae contaminating on the pasture and I think that’s why I think we are seeing a lot of so much acute fluke carrying over to now.”