The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e80: Parasite Control for Small Ruminants

Episode Date: April 16, 2016

This time: Susan Kerr of Washington State University Extension Services joins me to talk about non-chemical forms of parasite control in small ruminants. I learned a lot. You will too.  Also: in which your hosts reads one of his essays. Episode photo care of Lydia Carpenter of Luna Field Farm

This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Marr. The Ruminant Podcast and blog wonders what good farming looks like and aims to help farmers and gardeners share insights with each other. At theruminant.ca, you'll find show notes for each episode of the podcast as well as the odd essay, book review, and photo-based blog post. You can email me, editor at theruminant.ca, I'm at ruminantblog on Twitter, or search The Ruminant on Facebook. Okay, on with the show.

Hey folks, it's Jordan. All right, so for last week's episode, we zoomed out to talk about a broader issue related to food and agriculture, and that featured my conversation with Stephen Lay, author of 100 Million Years of Food, which means that this week we're going to zoom in and talk about some of the practical aspects of farming. Now, it was a busy week and I didn't get the number of interviews recorded that I hoped, so here's what I have in mind. I do have one interview with Susan Kerr, who is an extension agent with Washington State University Extension Services. She is a livestock expert, and she came on the show to talk about non-chemical control of

parasites for small ruminants. So that was a pretty cool conversation, and stay tuned for that. And because of the absence of any other interviews to share with you this week, I thought I would read a, an essay that I wrote for the ruminant about a year ago. And, uh, it seems pertinent to this time of year, sort of. And also I just want to promote some of the writing that exists at the ruminant.ca. I'm not sure if you're aware that I have a section that includes some of my, uh, some of my essays. Uh, they're short generally, and I don't write them very often these days. But yeah, I'd love for you to check them out if you haven't already.

The one I'm going to share today is called On Losing One's Bearings. And to be charitable, I'm going to include it after the main interview so that you can shut this thing down. If you're just not interested in hearing me, read my writing out loud. Another post that went up recently on the ruminant is a photo based blog about a recent kind of R&D project I tried out. I built a 24 foot wide by 75 foot long hoop house. It's about seven feet tall. And I did it for under $1,500. And I included a bunch of photos of that project and I should stress a few things. This is not meant to be a substitute for a proper walk-in tunnel that can withstand winter conditions.

It's more meant to be a substitute for low tunnels. You know, those four foot high tunnels we generally make with wire or different kinds of hoops I personally being a big guy can't stand working and frigging around with with low tunnel equipment so I really like being able to walk into my tunnels and I was building the 12 foot wide kind of caterpillar tunnels for a long time and those are all right but I wanted something even bigger something I had a little more space in so uh using pvc pipe um that i painted to make it uv resistant uh and a you know regular greenhouse poly i built this this structure and uh it's been about six weeks now and and so far so good i've had to make some modifications um it is pretty

flimsy uh and so i've had to make some modifications for wind. But the thing's still standing and I've got a beautiful crop in there. So I'm going to add a few more photos from that to the existing photo base blog at theruminant.ca. Go check that out if you're interested. It might be of interest for those of you who also don't like working with low tunnels. And who want some season extension and a tunnel with lots of space to work in. Other housekeeping. We have a winner of a free book, a free copy of 100 Million Years of Food by Stephen Lay. In last week's episode, I announced a contest the publisher, the Canadian publisher offered to give away a copy of the book to a Canadian listener.

a contest the publisher, the Canadian publisher offered to give away a copy of the book to a Canadian listener. And that listener is Kim Wilton, who is an organic grain farmer in Manitoba. And Kim, congratulations. I will make arrangements to send the book to you. Also, I just want to remind people who listened to my interview with Robert Siegfried a couple of episodes ago about the contest that he offered. Robert is a provider of kind of really fancy but affordable sensor systems for farms. And he offered to give away a 40% discount to one listener. He set up a special page for that contest on his own website. But to get to it, you need to go probably to the ruminant.ca to the show page for that contest on his own website but to get to it uh you need to go

probably to the ruminant.ca um to the show notes for that episode and and and find the link because it's kind of a complicated link that i don't want to read out loud another thing you can do is just google mid mid atlantic farm sensors get to that site you're never going to find this special contest page but just email robert and let him know you want to be part of the contest at any rate he's going to let that go one more week before he chooses a winner. He's had some really interesting stories from people about why they want these sensor systems. And that was the basis for the contest. He wants to hear from you about what you would do with your system if you won this discount. And you can still do that for one more week. And I'm talking on April 15th, 2016 at the moment.

All right, folks, let's get on to the main events here. So in just a moment, you're gonna hear my interview with Susan Kerr regarding non-chemical control of parasites in ruminants, specifically small ruminants. And then you will hear for a few minutes, you'll hear me reading an essay I wrote a while back. I hope you enjoy the show and I'll talk to you at the end. Susan Kerr, thanks for joining me on the Ruminant Podcast.

Glad to be here. Susan, I'm really delighted that you agreed to come on and share your expertise with some of my listeners. And what you suggested, which I thought was a great idea, is that we could start with a conversation on non-chemical parasite control for livestock. And if I understand right, we're going to probably be focusing on small ruminants today. Is that right? Correct. We're going to focus on small ruminants because this topic is most important for them. They seem to be having the biggest trouble with internal parasite control, and we're losing many thousands of animals every year, especially sheep and goats. Okay, well, I was just going to ask you to define the term. So is that as simple as that?

When we say small ruminants, we mainly mean sheep and goats? Correct. Okay. All right. Well, I'm sure there's a lot of places we could start but um well first i guess i'll ask you have you have you done research on this topic or are you just really well read on the topic where does your where does your knowledge come from other people have done research my my appointment is 100 extension so my my assignment really is to take research that

others do and make it accessible to the public and to producers who need it. I am doing some forage research with some corn silage and with some bird's foot tree foil varieties, but mainly I'm an extension educator. So I take research-based information and write articles and give presentations to make that information useful to the public. Awesome. You're so lucky down in the States. Farmers are so lucky to have people like you. We have a lot less extension up here in Canada. Okay, well, Susan, let me maybe start with this question.

Why are parasites such a challenge for those who are raising sheep and goats? That's an excellent question. Think about where most sheep and goat breeds originated. And maybe you're thinking for goat breeds. Maybe you're thinking about Africa, where the climate is very hot and dry, and the animals mostly browse, and they're very nomadic. All those things make the environment very poorly suited for parasite survival out in the environment. Or the other major place that goat breeds develop, especially the dairy breeds, are in the Swiss Alps, called the Swiss breed. Again, a very nomadic type of traditional herding and very cold climate and large temperature changes, all of which make the environment poorly suited to parasites.

Now, take those animals and bring them over to the United States, say the South, we'll say Georgia and Oklahoma, where there's great interest in goat production. And then we have a temperate climate that's warm and moist all year long, and parasites think they're in heaven. And unfortunately, those goat breeds are very poorly suited to those climates. They haven't had the selection pressure for generations to either evolve with their parasites or die. They're not hardy to parasites because

they weren't exposed to them. So we take animals that also want to browse, they prefer to browse, but we don't have enough browse for them. We have them in confinement and have them eating off the ground. So our management processes and systems and the amount of acreage we have them on, it's very different than their breeds and species were developed for. So it really is a perfect storm of paradise for parasites and management practices that are very poorly suited for best health for these ruminants. So then, Susan, I can imagine I could sort of apply what you just said into thinking that the warmer and moister the climate, then ideally the longer you need to leave in between stints for an animal in a given piece of field or soil,

because it's just the parasites can, it sounds like, survive longer in that soil or in that poop or whatever, with just more favorable conditions to allow them to survive and therefore have a longer time to be able to get back into the animal to complete their life cycle. Do I have that roughly right? Yeah, very good point. Because we're talking about parasites called nematodes. You can think of them as stomach worms. We could just call them that, but generally we can call them nematodes. And they have a similar life cycle in that the adults are in the animal's either stomach or intestines, males and females

in there, reproducing the females, shedding eggs out in the manure. And then there's a phase, several phases, actually, of the life cycle that's completely independent of the animal. It occurs out in the environment. If conditions are right, meaning it's moist enough and warm enough, the eggs hatch into larval stage one, which is free living. It's out in the environment and it's just eating bacteria in the soil and in the manure. It then molts into larval stage two, also free living. And then when that molts, it puts a cuticle around itself and becomes larval stage three. Because of the cuticle, it's now hardier in the environment, but it can't eat anymore. Its mouth parts are not open. So it's hardy because of the cuticle,

but it has a limited lifespan because it needs to eat. Limited lifespan, but still variable depending on environmental temperatures. The larval stages 1 and 2 and the eggs 2 really don't like it to be hot and dry. So it's really healthy for animals to be raised in deserts. Eastern Washington and Oregon, very good places to keep parasite counts low. And the southwest of the United States is very hot and dry and those parasites shrivel up quickly in the environment. But places where it's temperate, meaning I'd say like above 70 and there's moisture and humidity, those parasites can live quite a long time in the environment. And we want to leave at least six weeks between grazing on a pasture

with sheep and goats before we go back there again. And also, I think the major mistake people make really is just simply too many animals on too little land. People will say, I can't wait six weeks before I put my animals back on that property, then you really probably have too many animals for your land. Right. Okay. So before we get more into this topic, I just want to ask about chemical control. So, you know, I really don't want to get into specific chemicals, but there are synthetic or chemical medicines and controls to deal with this stuff. Aside from a certified organic grower who, you know, just isn't allowed to use them, what are some other reasons to consider not, like, what are some unwanted consequences

to using the chemical, let's call it, you know, the chemical controls for these parasites? Well, one of the problems is many of the ones that are licensed for use in sheep and especially goats aren't effective anymore. They've been over the counter available for years in sheep and especially goats aren't effective anymore. They've been over-the-counter, available for years and years and years, and many parasite populations are resistant to them. And the others are not approved for use in goats or sometimes sheep. And so to use them, which sometimes we have to to save their life, you must work with a veterinarian to use the proper medication

and administer it properly at the proper dose. And people are learning on the Internet about some of these medicines and using them improperly and putting human health at risk because they're not taking into account the meat and milk withholding times that go along with these medications. So people really have to understand that they have to work with a veterinarian to make sure that they're keeping human food supply safe. And then I guess also buried in that answer is just that if it's really regimented like that,

I assume some of these medicines are expensive for the medicine or for the veterinarian time. I assume some of these medicines are expensive then for the medicine or for the veterinarian time. Right. So that's another reason to not want to do the chemical deworming is, like you say, organic, but also decrease costs. You're decreasing animal stress because you're not for them to wrangle these animals and they hurt their back. So any of this wrangling you can prevent is great. Right. Okay. Well, Susan, let's get into talking about some of that thinking involved and some of the methods for non-chemical parasitic control. for non-chemical parasitic control.

You already touched on one. As a rule of thumb, you're suggesting ideally six weeks before you have your animals back on the same pasture. What else would you suggest to folks who are trying to do a better job of controlling parasites without chemicals? And I want to back up and say six weeks before you put them back on, if the grass has regrown to the extent that it can be grazed again, because that's another major mistake people make. And they're making it right now, turning animals out onto spring pasture just because it's green. And you really should be waiting until it's at least six to eight inches high before you turn animals out.

You really should be waiting until it's at least six to eight inches high before you turn animals out. I know it's tempting to get them out so you don't have to do chores as much and you cut down your hay bill and you get the manure out there. But if you're grazing plants that are less than six or eight eight inches, then they can sacrifice half of that height through grazing. Right. Well, you've just sealed your fate. You're going to have to come back on for another interview just to talk about that. But, okay, so, all right, moving on, what are some other techniques for controlling those parasites? What are some other techniques for controlling those parasites? Remember I talked about that third larval form that has the cuticle on it? Its only job in life is to get eaten by the correct species of livestock where it can complete its life cycle and become an adult. And it's crucial in this to realize there's no internal multiplication of adults.

The only way an animal, livestock, gets more internal parasites is by ingesting these nematode larvae. If we can minimize the larvae they're taking in, we can get a hold of and control of the internal load that's causing them the damage. hold of and control of the internal load that's causing them the damage. If you realize that the vast majority of these larval parasites can only go up about three inches into the grass field that's there, what's one thing you can think of to help keep those numbers down? Oh, I think I'm going to embarrass myself. But does this go back to of the of the forage before you turn the animals out or am i missing something exactly nope you're along the right lines it's the length of forage if most of the parasites are three inches or below let's make sure we never graze down that low ah okay okay yeah right when you see horses out there and sheep too all livestock unfortunately grazing to the point that it's basically a putting green.

With every bite, they're taking in lots of larvae, and they're self-infecting again, and contributing to increased internal parasite load. In a perfect world, we'd have goats browsing all the time. How much fecal contamination is there at browse level? Sorry, I don't even know if browsing, moving around eating, you mean? Eating at eye level. That's what goats really prefer to do. Oh, I see. So very much, much less fecal contamination, almost none, I would think.

Right, right, exactly. And they nibble here and nibble there they keep they keep moving on and they really don't come in contact with their feces or the larvae that um the larvae can't possibly make it up that that far the larvae need a little moisture layer and they follow either rainfall or dew just come up a little bit in the summer you know a couple two three inches and uh the occasional one can get up to 10 inches but um browsing is great but unfortunately we run out of browse on our small acreages pretty quickly wow it just it just uh it really seems like uh you know your your stocking density is really

important as you said at the outset you just you have to accept that you can't be overstocking your pastures. Exactly. And the other thing to, we can include in our management plan is developing multiple paddocks or pastures, whatever you want to call them, and keeping animals there no longer than four to five days. We'll say on day one, they pass manure and those eggs hatch. It's going to be about a week at the earliest before the eggs hatch and they can go through the whole cycle and be infective. So if we move our animals before that even happens, that whole process happens behind the animals. The parasites are ready to go into the next host, but there's no host there.

And then we wait them out and hopefully they die before we come back with the animals again. Okay. Well, Susan, another question I have on a similar topic regarding these larval stages, I think it is, let's call it, it's kind of received wisdom that pairing up your small r ruminants with for instance birds like laying hens or you know pastured hens or pastured broilers uh can allow those those birds to go and and eat some of those problematic larvae what does the research have to say about that like do you endorse that idea or is there not a lot uh in the science uh i don't know that there's any science on that yet i i haven't read any, but I also haven't

done an in-depth search, and I'm really interested in doing something along those lines, doing some farm-based research, because I really didn't know until recently that chickens will just eat sheep and goat pellets whole. Apparently they love them. So I can't help but think well gosh they're these um these eggs and the there's there's some eggs that have some larvae started in them they probably can't uh make it through the acid stomach of a pair of a chicken or hopefully ground up through the gizzard too and it'd be interesting to see that's a way to quote unquote clean up a pasture by just running chickens after sheep and goats. I know that beef owners really like to run chickens after maybe two or three days after cows go through and the chickens get after the flies and the eggs that have hatched from the cow patties.

But to eat the pellets whole, I would think that would be a pretty good way to kind of get those eggs off there entirely. Well, I wouldn't get too excited about doing the research yourself, because it probably sounds like you'd be analyzing a whole bunch of chicken poop, which isn't the nicest poop out there, but you know, someone's got to have the stomach for it. Anyway, Susan, I should, I should, I should start to wrap this up, but I do want to ask you, we focus mostly on kind of preventative techniques and in, in how to avoid increasing the larval load within the digest, within the, within the ruminants. What about, what, what about once you have, you know, problems in your animals, do you have any tips for non-chemical control of the parasites that make it into the animals? Non-chemical control, the parasites that get in there.

Well, one thing we can do is actually to help animals become more resilient in the face of parasites is to overfeed protein by about 20%. In other words, if you feed extra protein, basically what you're doing is giving that to the worms. Parasites' major effect on the body is to compete with the host for protein. And if we just say, here you go, parasites, take this 20% extra that we're giving, then the host won't be affected as much and can hopefully stay healthy despite the parasite. So what, I mean, not being a livestock guy, what is the functional or easy way to get that extra protein into your animals? Well, if you haven't maxed out the amount of dry matter

they can consume in one day, you can just feed more of something high protein you're already feeding, like a little bit more alfalfa. Or you could add more things like, well, sunflower seeds are very high in protein and oil and also fiber. And they're a nice food for small amounts of animals. Alfalfa pellets, it really just depends on what it where are the protein supplements available in your area, and how cost conscious you are or aren't. Often though, a way is just more of what you're already feeding. Well, Susan Kerr, that was so interesting and I think probably very helpful for some of my listeners who are raising small ruminants. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show and talk about this topic. You're welcome. is, remember I talked about how poorly suited many small ruminant breeds are for farming in

the United States, given our climate. We can become Mother Nature and apply that pressure, meaning we can remove from our breeding programs any animals that aren't able to thrive on our property. We have to treat them. We have to be concerned about their health and welfare. And if they have clinical parasitism, we have to treat them. We don't have to keep them for breeding though. And in just a small amount of time, just a few years, if you keep good records and you measure various aspects of their health and parasite load, no, not very much time, you can have a pretty thrifty herd that is able to be both resistant and resilient to parasites. I'm really glad you made that, that extra point, Susan. Listen,

thank you so much for joining me. You're welcome. Talk to you again, I hope. Talk to you again, I hope. All right, folks. So what you're about to hear is an essay I wrote in early to mid-June of last year, 2015. I called it On Losing One's Bearings. And once I'm done reading it, I'll give you a little bit of an update. This particular essay is about bearings,

but more specifically, the experience of losing them. Last year was a good year on the farm. I exceeded my revenue targets and my crop quality was respectable. But for me, and I suspect I'm not alone, my business is a house in a state of constant renovation. The house might already look pretty good, sure, but I always think it could look even better. Heading into 2015, the better I was after was a healthier balance between work and leisure. Last year, there were too many days in which the last hour I worked, usually keeping me outside into the 7 or 8 o'clock range, was one hour too long to be able to hang out my hat in a good mood. Worse, those late punch-outs were preventing me from enjoying one of the best things about living on a farm, preparing and enjoying food you grew yourself with people you care about. Last November, I set a goal that in 2015, I'd knock off work by

6pm at least five days a week and take at least half of Sunday off. I couldn't afford to sacrifice revenues to do so though, so I knew I'd have to improve my efficiency in order to realize it. Over two months, I analyzed all my systems every which way and concluded that I was growing too many unprofitable types of veggies, I was spending too much time distributing my harvest, and that my early spring and late fall crops weren't worth the effort to produce them. Eliminating veggies from one's crop plan is the farmer equivalent of a dad deciding which of his children he prefers. Theoretically, he's not supposed to have an opinion. But come on, dad, we all know your son Skyler's kind of a shit.

In my case, I had a few kids like that. Cabbage, broccoli, kale, all the brassicas, really. None were profitable, either because of their going price or because of the many pests that love them as much as we do. I eliminated them all and replaced them with more of the salad greens that love them as much as we do. I eliminated them all and replaced them with more of the salad greens that always seemed to be in short supply last year. An even harder decision was to eliminate my West Bank and Penticton home delivery routes in favor of sales elsewhere. It felt like I was letting down some loyal customers, probably because I was, but those routes were serious time sucks compared to some of my other options for selling

my stuff. So here's the problem. Some renovations are so drastic that right in the middle of them, you don't even recognize your house, and you're not sure you made the right choices. A week ago, a colleague asked me how my season was going, and I didn't know what to tell him because I wasn't sure. With less early spring production, I had skipped the first few Penticton farmers markets. That gave me some extra time off, much of which I spent fretting that I wouldn't make up the income in the main season. So far, I've been knocking off work by 6pm most of the time. Mission accomplished, right? Except, well, no, maybe not. I won't truly know until the end of the year when I can tally my gross sales. I still need to court some new restaurant customers, expand my home delivery

program for Peachland, and overall, find a home for all the crops I shifted from the shoulder seasons into the main one. Which is why it feels like I've lost my bearings a bit. The farm I'm running is a lot different than the one that too frequently made me grumpy last year, and there's a very real possibility that, come fall, I'll realize that all my extra free time hurt my bottom line. It's nerve-wracking, but I've got to try. As Gandalf told Frodo, all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. And I've decided that at six, I'd really like to enjoy a good meal and a glass of wine with my wife, rather than weed just one more bit. All right, so that's it. And here's the epilogue.

It kind of worked out. I'm not going to go into a whole bunch of detail, but I was able to knock off at around 6 p.m., yeah, five or six days a week last year. And I also took, generally speaking, about half a Sunday off. So it kind of paid off. And in addition to some of the strategies I took to kind of realize that goal, it's also probably noteworthy that just in the last couple of years, I took to kind of realize that goal, it's also

probably noteworthy that just in the last couple of years, I've just spent a little more on labor so that I can have a little more time and my help can pick up some of the slack. All right, so that's it. Hope you liked that episode, folks, and I will talk to you next week. Here's my wife, Vanessa, with the ruminant outro song. See ya. Spring water and peaches will owe nothing to this world of thieves and live life like it was meant to be. Because why would we live in a place that don't want us? A place that is trying to bleed us dry We could be happy with life in the country With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands

I've been doing a lot of thinking Some real soul searching And here's my final resolve I don't need a big old house or some fancy car To keep my love going strong So we'll run right out into the wilds and graces We'll keep close quarters with gentle faces And live next door to the birds and the bees

And live life like it was meant to be. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.