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Worm control: how sheep may safely graze

May 09, 2005

microscope_thumb.jpgA young researcher at The University of New England has shown that innovative grazing systems can, as a bonus, help to control worms in sheep.

Alison Healey’s research has not only confirmed suspicions that intensive rotational grazing (that is, alternating short “grazing” and longer “rest” periods on a pasture) could have this effect, but has explained how it works.

“She’s done a terrific job,” said her supervisor at UNE, Associate Professor Steve Walkden-Brown. “She’s impressed us all with the clarity of her results.” In summarising those results, which represent her first 18 months’ work on a PhD project, Alison (pictured here) said that her trials of intensive rotational grazing with sheep had “drastically reduced worm burdens, reduced the percentage of barber’s pole worm (the most virulent parasite of sheep on the Northern Tablelands), reduced the number of drenches required, and eliminated lamb deaths during the summer of 2004/05”.

Dr Walkden-Brown said that Alison’s results had clearly demonstrated that intensive rotational grazing produced these results by breaking the worms’ life cycle on the pasture, with the short grazing periods of a week or less preventing auto-infection of the sheep, and the long rest periods of 60 days or more facilitating the death of infective larvae on the pasture. He pointed out that this was the first time these effects had been scientifically demonstrated in a temperate environment.

Alison presented a summary of her results last week to an audience of 75 people (including farmers, researchers and agricultural consultants) during a full-day symposium in Armidale that discussed a range of findings from the Cicerone Project, an organisation of experimental farmlets where she has conducted her trials. She has also spoken to farmers at a workshop at Deepwater, and is planning another workshop in Kingstown later this month. Her results have been received with enthusiasm, with farmers, she said, “asking a barrel-load of questions”.

Her interest in parasitology began when she worked as head technician for New England Veterinary Centres in Armidale. She said that, in taking on her PhD project (with funding from the Australian sheep and wool industry), she had wanted to produce “something that would be of use to farmers and that could be quickly transferred to them”.

Dr Walkden-Brown said Alison’s project was a valuable adjunct to a large-scale national project on “Integrated Parasite Management ” being funded by Australian Wool Innovation Ltd and involving three researchers (including Dr Walkden-Brown himself) and four PhD students from UNE. Parasite problems cost the Australian sheep industry more than $300 million a year, and agricultural economists have predicted that this could rise substantially as resistance to drenches increases. Dr Walkden-Brown said Alison’s work showed how and why pasture management could form an important part of an “integrated” approach to parasite control.


Media contact: Alison Healey, School of Rural Science and Agriculture, UNE (02) 6773 3239 or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.
The photograph of Alison Healey displayed here is available. Please contact Jim Scanlan on (02) 6773 3049.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at May 9, 2005 01:53 PM