Internal parasites were the No 1 cause of production losses on New Zealand sheep farms, Allister Body, of Fecpak International Ltd, told a breeders' seminar in Gore on Tuesday.

With drench resistance increasing, chemical solutions were fast becoming unsustainable, uneconomic, unreliable and unwanted by consumers, he said.

Yet in spite of that, New Zealand farmers still tended to over-drench – a practice that came with a cost.

Often the optimum drench time was missed because some farmers held to rigid drenching dates when weather or some other cause might result in a delay.

Successful parasite management was also farm specific and what might work in one year might not necessarily work in another, Mr Body said.

He stressed the importance of faecal egg counting as a management tool.

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Source: STUFF, John Cutt
November 10, 2004

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