PARASITOLOGY

Why carry out parasitological testing?

While a well-structured worming programme may control the parasitological burden on many farms, there is no doubt that faecal parasitology monitoring can greatly improve the effectiveness of such programmes. Information gathered from testing can be used to assess the effectiveness of your programme, identify the range of parasites on your farm and suggest important tweaks that might make your programme more effective – perhaps even using less drench at the same time.

In more recent years with changeable summer weather patterns, the range of flukes and worms present on farms has been altered. Our laboratory provides a complete testing service identifying the different types of fluke present and providing you with overall worm egg counts while identifying the presence of coccidia, nematodirus and cryptosporidia.

Calf Scour Multipathogen

Oldcastle Laboratories offers a complete testing package for scouring calves. The Calf Scour Multipathogen test offered includes detection of bacterial agents such as E– Coli K99 and Salmonella and viral agents such as Rotavirus, Coronavirus and Cryptosporidia. The Calf Scour test also includes a microbial sensitivity test to indicate the best antibiotics to use in treating bacterial infections.

Sheep Technology Adoption Programme

As part of the Department of Agriculture Sheep Technology Adoption Programme (STAP) farmers may choose to perform faecal egg count testing to establish if there is a level of parasite resistance to the commonly used anthelmintics (STAP Task 3). Oldcastle Laboratories is a designated laboratories for this testing. Samples from individual sheep should be taken pre and post worming to assess the effectiveness of the treatments used. We provide sample containers for the testing and results will be emailed back to farmers within 24 hours of arrival at the laboratory. Results are forwarded to the Department of Agriculture at regular intervals to demonstrate the farmer’s participation in the task