[epherdwicks]

Hi has anyone used herbal or other natural wormers on their sheep and do they work? Any suggestions re which to use welcomed.Thanks

[Anke]

No "natural" wormers for sheep. Whatever garlic granules or the likes claim, they do not work as a de-wormer, and as to keeping animals "worm free" the jury is out. If your sheep have worms (as indicated by a FEC count) then only chemicals will sort it. However management can help, and I have not had to worm my sheep for a long time now.

[SallyintNorth]

We use rotational grazing here - ponies follow sheep, sheep follow cattle.  We pick up the pony poo, and rest the ground after the ponies. 

With the sheep we usually worm any yearlings as they come into their second spring, otherwise I now only worm if I see a problem, which is usually something like one older ewe after a hard summer rearing twins, two lambs and maybe one of the sheep wethers.  (Out of 12 adults and approx 12 lambs.) 

I am trying to get plaintain established in the sward in some of the fields, which is the only natural wormer likely to grow on our exposed clay site.  But we were overstocked for a few years so it will take a year or two more of grazing less hard to get it established in the grazing fields, I think.  It grows fine where nothing grazes...

We also use minerals - everyone has a himalayan salt lick available at all times, the sheep also have a non-soya mineral lick most of the time unless they are sharing with the ponies for a week or two, and we now use Jonathan Guy's mineral drench once a year.  Keeping the minerals right helps the sheep fight worms and other parasites.

[Anke]

Another vote for Jonathan Guy's mineral drenches - I use them on the ewes post-lambing and again in October (if they are going to lamb following spring), and also on my goats (the copper one).


Keeping a closed flock and not too high a stocking density is going to help a lot to get to worm free.

[Tim W]

Back in the '80's when we first went organic we had 650 ewes and tried to treat worms with garlic---it worked but i think it was more to do with standing the lambs on concrete for 4 or 5 hours to empty their guts pre-treatment & the fact that we used 1/2 pint of heavily concentrated garlic drench on each lamb

Mixing the drench up /dosing lambs took ages ----and i stank for weeks