Dosing

First thing here is to look at the active ingredient, and switch if possible from what would have been used throughout the year especially with calves to break any resistance. Fluke is problem most years here, but this year its going to be a bigger problem. Using a product which will hit early immature Fluke will be important.

Route of choice here is through the needle or down the hatch. Pour on for lice once the whole shed has been done. This year its dosing each at approx 2 weeks after housing. Working with endofluke,bimectin injection and then at a later stage ectospec for lice

Cost is another factor, oral doses are cheaper compared to some pour ons.

Egg samples are the key to a lot of dosing

Fluke is a major problem here due to the wet nature of the ground

This is the dosing that has been done at grass. Suckler calves this year have only got one dose due to lungworm in the summer dairy bred calves have only received 2 doses. Store cattle only 1 again due to lungworm. A bit of rumen Fluke showed up in the store cattle and advice from the vet was to only do the ones that had dirty backsides.

A lot of dosing is not needed unless and is only feathering the pockets of merchants and drug companies

The winter housing time is a great chance to break the Fluke and worm cycles, with a bit of clever thinking and use of products. Some Fluke doses will require cattle to be housed for nearly 12 weeks before they will work. These are often where you have to dose twice in the winter.

Lice is condition that is in the environment and spreads quickly. The best job with lice is to do everything in the shed on one day. If there is issues in 3-4 weeks, do again and that will hit the remaining problem.

There has been a program with the DAFM and the vets rolled out where they will provide 2 faecal samples and a consultation with you for 30 mins. It's very helpful and informative. It's free of charge, ask to see are your vets doing it and when they are coming to do some planned work it can be easy to do the consultation then. The vet asked if he could see the products used, the ahi beefcheck profile on icbf. Having this it gave a great picture of where small effective changes could be made. This year it was to test prehousing for Fluke about 2-3weeks pre housing and to test again 2weeks after dosing. With the year that has been in it, I left off the test before housing. But will test after I finish the dosing.

The key is to make sure we have the products we have and that they will be effective in the future

Is there any inclination it will run next year

OP - I use this as a guide.

@greysides can I dose with a Triclabendazole oral drench for fluke and also use an Ivermectin based pouron for parasitic control at same handling? Is it the vet that would know about Triclabendazole resistance or how do you know prior to selection?

@Herxules - see bottom of link above for info on injecting.

Yea probably best off having separate pots for the cows and calves. Give you a better overall picture for dosing them then.

Pour-in treatments are easy to apply and relatively inexpensive. However, they may be less effective than other methods and may cause some discomfort to the animal. You can consult.

Animal Health Ireland - Listing of products available in Ireland for parasite control in cattle 2023.

Well worth doing a print out - handy to have in the medicine cabinet.

Anyone any advice or thoughts on this

@greysides

Can you advise, in your opinion, what is the best vaccination policy for buying in weanling this time of year. I buy a few batches in Oct/Nov from marts. The day after they arrive I inject with IBR Live Marker and Bovipast, as well as giving an them an Ivermectin injection. I house them for the first week until they settle down and try to let them out. If cases of pneumonia arise, they tend to happen a week after they land.

I give the wormer as often in the weeks after arriving they can be coughing and it's hard to tell if it's from hoose or the start of pneumonia, other than temperature checking them.

Is the day after arrival too early to give them the pneumonia vaccines, I've heard it argued that you should wait a few days for their immune system to pick back up after the stress of the mart.

TIA

It couldn't be the hair, absorbed through the skin. The follicles would remain after shaving

When it comes to administering medications or treatments to cattle, there are different methods available, and the choice of dosing method may depend on various factors such as the specific medication, the desired effect, ease of administration, and the expertise and preferences of the person handling the animals.

Looking at the example of Fluke. If left untreated animal performance will suffer greatly and in extreme cases to animal death due to damage of the liver. Having a look at the lifecycle of Fluke it needs the host of the mud snail for it to breed and then its ingested by the animal to continue the next stage of the lifecycle. With winter housing it give the best chance to break this cycle. Think of the Autumn we have had it was perfect for snail and the up take of liver fluke. Housing cuts the access to the snail and stops up take of the larvea. The only Fluke you have to deal with is the Fluke currently in the animal and not what can be picked up via larvea

Lung worm leads to the damage of the lungs and higher cases of pneumonia and again death. Chronic cases leave the animal on a tightrope

Dosing at housing is an animal welfare issue. Now we are encouraged to use sampling pre and post dosing to only use the correct product. Even organic famers can does again based on evidence and sampling, but with a doubling of withdrawals.

Lung damage

Yes and wet weather like this summer/autumn which is prone to hoose pneumonia. You will hear them coughing when moving them or when calling them to the feed troughs.

On the advice of our Vet we treated all the bought in spring born dairy x beef calves with the equivalent of Levacide injection on the 14th of Sept (the day of the herd test reading) as there was a number of them with a persistent (tongue out) dry cough. TBH there wasn't much improvement after when they came to the troughs for meal and we had to treat a few for pneumonia. Again on the advice of our Vet we treated them on the 7th of Oct with Dectomax. We had got them weighted for the dairy/beef scheme a few days before so we knew their weights. Thankfully they haven't looked back and are thriving.

Neither, only fluke.

Looks like the only oral dose is Levamisole for lung/gut worms only, according to my new Bible.

Dectomax is the the business.

The longer it stays at the price it's at the better.

You can test for Lungworm, costs a bit extra I think.

The link here maybe of benefit to show the Fluke problem this year. Just found it on Met.ie.