Sheep producers in flood impacted areas are reminded to monitor their livestock for Barbers Pole Worm.
Flocks that have already seen cases are most at-risk as they now have heavy pasture larval contamination. Speak to your local vet or ag advisor about worm testing, prevention and treatment.
Barber’s pole worms are voracious blood feeders that suck blood from the lining of the stomach of sheep and goats, causing anaemia. The worms are about 2.5 centimetres long and look like a barber shop’s pole with red and white stripes. These stripes are the worm’s reproductive organs and digestive tract (that is full of blood) wrapped around each other.
Rain and warm weather over spring provide ideal conditions for Barber’s pole worm. It takes about 21 days for the worm to mature, so about 3-6 weeks after the rain event is when clinical signs in sheep are first observed.
Barbers’ Pole Worm Lifecycle: Adult worms live and lay eggs in the fourth stomach. The female worm is a prolific egg producer, depositing up to 10,000 eggs per day onto pastures. Eggs pass in the faeces and hatch within a few days. Larvae emerge and, in favourable conditions, migrate on to pasture. Worm larvae are eaten by the sheep during grazing. In the sheep’s gut, larvae develop into adult worms in about three weeks.
CLINICAL SIGNS OF BARBER’S POLE WORM IN SHEEP:
•Affected sheep will have pale gums and conjunctiva (inside the eyelid).
•They may develop bottle jaws
•Will lack stamina, for example want to lie down when being mustered or moved
•Often the sheep go from looking fat and healthy to dead very quickly with few symptoms.
Sheep showing clinical signs of barber’s pole worm infestation will often lag behind the mob when mustering and collapse.
On post mortem of a freshly dead sheep, you will see the Barber’s pole worms in the fourth stomach (or abomasum) – this is the stomach with the shiny smooth internal lining. The Barber’s pole worms can be seen with the naked eye. They are about an inch long and about as thick as a human hair.
The sheep carcass will be pale. The muscles won’t be dark red but will instead be pale pink or white and the sheep’s blood will be watery. If the sheep has been dead for longer than about an hour, the worms in the fourth stomach will be digested and you won’t see them – all you will see is a dark brown/red liquid in this stomach; this is a tell-tale sign that worms were present when the sheep was alive.
HOW TO MANAGE AND PREVENT BARBER’S POLE WORM:
•Integrated control programs, including paddock management, monitoring and quarantine drenching, can help reduce the negative impacts of BPW.
•Producers should start doing testing for worms in Spring (Sep/Oct) and continue over summer before drenching.
•Prevention of high worm burdens is extremely important to reduce our reliance on drenches and to reduce the likelihood of drench resistance. There are a variety of methods, and the combination of these will vary from property to property, year to year.
•Grazing management – creating low worm risk pastures for high-risk classes of sheep (generally lambing ewes and weaners) by keeping stock out of selected paddocks
•Breeding sheep to be more resistant or resilient to worms
•Use of barbervax vaccine (for barber’s pole worm only)
•Use of Bioworma®
•Ensuring optimum nutrition
•Performing regular worm egg counts – these tests give an idea of whether a mob has a worm problem before they start showing signs of disease. They can be done through the NSW state veterinary lab with a kit available from our offices, or through private providers.
HOW TO TREAT BARBER’S POLE WORMS:
•Please do not reach straight for the drench gun. Do a worm test first. Free worm test kits are available from your local LLS office. The worm tests come with 10 vials, gloves, submission form, and easy to use instructions for how to test to collect faeces to test for worms.
•There are plenty of drench resistant strains of barber’s pole worm so producers need to get sound advice on worm management. Call your District Vet and arrange a Drench Resistance Trial on your farm. A good drench program and pasture management is essential to minimise losses caused by worms.
•Treating a mob affected by worms involves giving a medication (drench) to kill the worms. As a general rule, drenching with two or more active ingredients (drench classes) is better than using a single active drench. Treating a mob this way is important for animal welfare – without drenching, more sheep will become ill and die.
•With all drenches, leave sheep in the yards for 24 hours after drenching, with access to water. This will help them to empty out the remaining worm eggs in their digestive tracts before being put out to clean pasture. A clean paddock means one that has been spelled (ie not grazed) for six months over winter, four months over a mild summer, or one month over a hot dry summer
**Information provided by Central West Local Land Services.