Could I please ask a few questions.
1. Should I be worried regarding the mucus feces and any idea what it could be.
2. How soon can I worm after the ewes lamb
3. I have only ever used Ivomec (4 years) and know I need alternate any advice as to which wormer.
4. Had a hogget come back with no liver from slaughterhouse last year (1 out of the 4), ant idea why this could be.
Hi Ted, hopefully as a vet, I may be able to help.
1. Firstly regarding the slimy mucus faeces with blood, this could be a sign of a worm, a parasite or a bacteria causing diarrhoea. Coccidia, Campylobacter, Salmonella as well as worms can cause diarrhoea with blood. It may be worth asking your vet about sampling some of these odd droppings to see if they can find out what is causing it, and that way you can find the best treatment.
Coughing could be down to dry food, or it could be a bit of pneumonia, animals can also 'catch the cold' and suffer from respiratory infections when the weather is changeable as it has been! Again, might be worth a chat with your vet as they may need some treatment, but hard to say without having a look at them.
2. Worming is often done as ewes lamb, in large flocks, the easiest time is often when they are penned up with their lambs, just before going out. The bottle of wormer should tell you if it shouldn't be used within a certain time of birthing, but I don't know of any that can't be used pretty much straight away. In terms of preventing resistance, a percentage of sheep should be left unwormed to keep some worms that have never seen a wormer to dilute any that may have resistance on the pasture. With such a small number, if you have one particular ewe that is fit and in good condition that produces a single lamb, that might be the one to leave out.
3. Ivomec is a very useful wormer, and also works against things like sheep scab and lice. It is probably worth chatting to your vets again (sorry, am not trying to plug things, but your local vet will have very good ideas on what resistance there is in the area etc) and looking at testing some faeces for worm eggs. If worm egg counts are low, it is often possible to avoid some of the 'routine' worming, although lambs should generally be wormed for Nematodirus as this worm causes severe disease long before eggs show up. Egg count tests can also be used to check that your wormer is still effective. There is less resistance to Ivomec and that class of wormers as there is to the 'white drenches', but there is still some appearing. Latest I heard is that swapping classes of wormer from year to year doesn't slow down the resistance that much, because having a year off one wormer, the worms don't lose the resistance, so is often best to stick with one type of wormer until there's a problem, and then the others will be effective. If buying in stock in future (such as the ram), it would be a good idea to 'quarantine treat' them. This entails keeping them in away from the others, worming them with a specific type or combination of wormers that don't have much resistance at all, so as to kill all worms they are carrying, and keep them in until all worms have died and stopped producing eggs, then when they go out to pasture, they will not give you any worms.
4. Chances are the liver would not have come back due to fluke. It is fairly common to have a mild fluke infection that doesn't affect the animal too bad, so you don't see any loss of weight etc. Again, can be worth checking whether there is fluke in the area, and treating everything for fluke. British weather is great for leaving damp bits of fields where the snails that carry fluke live, so it is very common.
Hope these bits have helped shed some light
Suzanne
Topic: Slimy mucus feces, dry cough (Read 15558 times)
