[Chicken_or_Egg]

Evening everyone,

We have recently (beginning October) introduced 3 young Ronnie lambs onto our land that was previously only grazed by old heavy horses for a couple of years and prior to that, cut for haylage. The field was empty for approx 2 months before the sheep were put on it.

We were due to have 2 castrated but one was so thin and anaemic that the vet was worried he wouldn’t survive the procedure and we treated them with ivermectin for worms (they had previously had yellow drench back in August), with a view to have him done at a later date. There were obvious tapeworm segments in one’s poo but not in the others and none of them are scouring. Just had FEC done and there are multiple species of worms in at least one of them. The farm we bought them from have no issues with worms.

Will we be fighting a losing battle just treating them as we have no other pasture to move them to? And where on earth did they get the worms from if there have been no sheep there? Deer?

Thanks for any advice 😊

[twizzel]

You absolutely need to treat them; because otherwise the worms will multiply and cause serious problems. Once the lambs have matured a bit they should have some natural immunity to worms, hence why many farmers do not worm adult sheep. Really you should have given them a quarantine drench before they hit your pasture- don’t believe anything farmers say when selling with regards to worms and scab. As to where the worms came from, it may be they’ve come with resistant worms- can you do a faecal egg count reduction test to see if the wormer has worked- your vet should be able to advise timing etc.

[shep53]

You say the farm had no issue with worms and yet wormed in august ??  so either the wormer given in august wasn't given correctly eg  wrong amount or spit back by the lamb  or the lamb got reinfected quickly  ( most wormers have no residual effect ) because the ground was wormy  . As twizzel says speak to your vet about a different wormer group and then testing to see if it works , personally i would also ask if any fluke eggs in the sample and also take some bloods to check mineral status .

[landroverroy]

I absolutely agree you need to worm again. And would also doubt the previous owner's assertion that they had no worm problem. In fact yellow wormers were well known for producing worm resistance 40 years ago - so in my book I would only use them if I'd tried everything else and still had a worm problem. In addition, the fact that your own field had been grazed by horse and cut for haylage in previous years would mean that it was more or less worm free when you put the sheep on it, so the only way your bought in sheep could realistically have had such a high worm burden is if they brought it with them.


I would now worm with Panacur, and I would treat them for 5 days . This should get rid of the rest of the worms, plus the tapeworms. Treat all 3 a half dose for 5 days.