Author Topic: Liver spots on carcasses (Read 3531 times)

Kitchen Cottage · « **on:** November 29, 2014, 05:50:21 am »

The livers on my sheep were condemned because they had spots on the liver. My sheep were all wormed regularly and I thought this was an indication of worms that pigs get.... the pigs are next to the sheep. I have worms on my land because sheep bought in last year had them....

Gutted that something was condemned and concerned as to how to clear up the land

Anke · « **Reply #1 on:** November 29, 2014, 07:56:27 am »

could have been fluke rather than worms?

Bramblecot · « **Reply #2 on:** November 29, 2014, 09:59:54 am »

Or maybe tapeworm. Sometimes we lose some livers through tapeworm even though the only dog that runs on our land is our own and she is regularly wormed. Could come through other wildlife - foxes, deer... $:-\$

Kitchen Cottage · « **Reply #3 on:** November 30, 2014, 09:19:26 am »

Thank you.

My tenants have dogs and I will ensure they are all wormed. One tenants is done by me anyway. The lungs all came back fine (making dog jerky as we speak... so I will rest the field next year anyway... and make sure all chooks etc are up to date with their vaccinations (some belong to my tenants and live in their backgarden but still wander)

My guess would be tapeworm

Bramblecot · « **Reply #4 on:** November 30, 2014, 10:53:36 am »

You can worm for tapeworm. Off the top of my head I think it is Panacur

but could well be wrong - just check it out.

SallyintNorth · « **Reply #5 on:** November 30, 2014, 12:02:28 pm »

That won't help, Bramblecot.

I'm going to say this very clearly and loudly, because I know it takes a lot of getting your head around.

The only treatment which controls tapeworm cysts in the sheep is to worm the dogs who poo on the grass where the sheep graze.

You can only treat tapeworm in the terminal host, not in the intermediate host.

When you give Panacur to a sheep, you will treat it for the sheep tapeworm, which does it little or no harm, and does not cause it to have cysts in its tissues.

The tapeworm which causes the cysts in sheep's tissues has the dog as the terminal host. In the dog, the worm lives in the guts and makes egg-containing segments which come out in the dog's poo. The eggs are then eaten by grazing sheep, hatch and migrate into the sheep's tissues causing cysts. There is no treatment you can give the sheep which will impact this creature in the sheep.

And yes, I am a little sensitive about this, having sheep, as we do, on well-used tourist trails, and therefore being unable to control the exposure of our sheep to this harmful and untreatable parasite, except by education.

And so, again,

The only treatment which controls tapeworm cysts in the sheep is to worm the dogs who poo on the grass where the sheep graze.

Bramblecot · « **Reply #6 on:** November 30, 2014, 02:06:57 pm »

Thanks Sally

. I'm going to read up a lot more about this as it is infuriating me. I think we must have phantom dog-walkers coming on our land $:-\$ . How do you manage then, with tourist trails over your land? Do you lose a lot of the livers?

SallyintNorth · « **Reply #7 on:** November 30, 2014, 05:09:09 pm »

We just have to put up with it, sadly. English Heritage don't allow signs (although apparently the local taxi firm is exempt from this restriction.

) and it's on ground owned by English Heritage that we get the majority of 'townie' dog-walkers - it's mostly locals and country-savvy dog-owners who use the paths across our own ground.

We get reports from the abbatoir when we send the lambs off deadweight. Some years we don't get any reports of tenuicious cysts, some years we get several. Thankfully, at the moment we don't get the payment reduced unless the cysts are in the 'money meat', which generally they aren't. We maybe get a leg condemned once in three years.

As to the livers of our own lambs, it's a long time since I had any killed for myself. I had all ewe lambs in 2013! I'm looking forward to sending some of this year's boys off after Christmas

. They've run exclusively on land with no public footpaths, so

their livers should be free of tenuicious cysts - and I've fluked them frequently enough that they aren't condemned through fluke, either.

(Edited to explain that BH won't let me eat the commercial lambs; they're worth too much money, he says! So we mostly only eat 'my' lambs, ie., the primitives and primitive crosses.)

Anke · « **Reply #8 on:** November 30, 2014, 09:18:21 pm »

I have had tapeworm infection in the goats and also have seen suspicious droppings in the sheep field. Our fields have NO dogs on them, not even our own. So these tapeworm eggs can only come from wild animals - my guess is Mr Fox and maybe (

) also Mr Badger. I sometimes find that Mr Fox uses bits of my field as his toilet....

farmvet · « **Reply #9 on:** November 30, 2014, 10:23:54 pm »

One important point here - the dogs have to eat infected meat to pick up the tapeworm. Shop brought meat (ie passed meat inspection at the abbatoir) or well cooked meat should be safe. Pasture contamination is usually from farm dogs or foxes which are allowed to scavenge carcasses. Town dogs are rarely a risk.