[Foobar]

Sorry to hear of your loss, that's a real bummer .


For repeat intervals check the label on your product - they all tend to have different suggested intervals.  Some might be 10 weeks (e.g. triclafas), some 12 (e.g. flukiver).  And also, Like Sally says, check Nadis, as if you are in a high risk area you might need to repeat at much shorter intervals.  This is because none of the flukicide products have any persistence, they only kill what is in the sheep at the time of dosing, so you could dose and turn out only for the sheep to pick up a fresh load of larvae in it's next mouthful of grass.

[SteveHants]

We're on dry sandy sloping land (so dry our well ran low recently!!) and fluke test was negative in the summer. Vet said to minimise resistance we shouldn't fluke routinely given our conditions. Hope he was right?!!

Fluking is usually done on a risk-analysis basis. I have little fluke on most of my ground, so I only do them where I consider the place to be high-risk (I do them when they are on water meadows, in spite of never having found any with fluke damage there). I don't do them up on the chalk.


A good way to get an idea is to take a look at either your rate of condemned livers if you send them to the abbotoir or to have a look at any you have die - whenever I have a sheep keel over, I always have a look at the liver and lungs, even if I'm fairly sure what killed it.

[Blacksheep]

A good way to get an idea is to take a look at either your rate of condemned livers if you send them to the abbotoir or to have a look at any you have die - whenever I have a sheep keel over, I always have a look at the liver and lungs, even if I'm fairly sure what killed it.

SteveHants do you know if the abattoirs are required to provide you with this information if asked? We only 2 livers back from the 3 lambs we  have just taken in so rang to ask about the missing liver in case it was condemned for fluke, they said they probably just forgot to send it to the butchers, so wondered what the situation was as would be really useful to know if it was fluke, especially as we have a fair bit of wet ground but are not aware of having fluke problems.

[Dougal]

What a nightmare, sorry to hear about the tup. Liver fluke has been better this year due to the dryer summer as well which makes it doubly annoying.
The latest advice on liver fluke seems to be that since there is NO carry through of a flukicide then sheep may need dosed up to every 2 weeks in cases (thankfully rare) where the conditions are optimal for infestation.
By no carry through I mean that if you worm dose a sheep the sheep may be protected against worms for a period of time after the dosing. This is NOT the case with ANY registered flukicide treatment. This means that although you treat from fluke today the sheep can pick up eggs tomorrow and become reinfected instantly so can still be affected by acute infestation.
Optimum fluke conditions are moist and in excess of 6'C. The reason the winter is the worst period for the fluke is the fact that the infection rate in the pasture has had all spring, summer and autumn to build up and the sheep is at it's most metabolic stressful time through the winter.
Vets are getting better at advising on fluke issues such as treatments, preventions, pasture management etc. Moredun research institute is doing a lot of work on it at present.