Large Animal Consultations

Faecal Worm Egg Counts And Drench Testing

Worm burdens can cause significant production losses in livestock, including reduced body condition, scours/diarrhoea, poor feed conversion rates and even death. Here at Kojonup Veterinary Hospital we offer our services and advice to help assess the presence and burden of worms and drench outcome/effectiveness. 

Faecal Worm Egg Counts

Faecal Worm Egg Counts (FEC) are an important tool in assessing the worm burden of your animal. FEC's are also a valuable tool in ensuring the drench treatment that is being used for worm control has been effective.

Here at Kojonup Veterinary Hospital we perform FECs in sheep, cattle, horses and alpacas.

Drench Resistance Testing

Minimising unnecessary drenching in flocks is strongly recommended by the Western Australian Department of Agriculture  to help reduce worm resistance. Drench Resistance Testing allows us to examine the effectiveness of an individual drench on the worm burden in an individual or a group of animals. It allows us to assess if there is resistance in worms against an individual drench (or if the worm egg count is not reducing properly/at a suitable rate).

What does Drench Resistance Testing involve?

A drench resistance test involves:

• Taking a sample of faeces before drenching and bringing these in for a FEC
• AND a sample of faeces 10-14 days post drenching and bringing these in for a FEC 

If you have any questions about Faecal Worm Egg Counts and Resistance Testing, please feel free to contact our clinic

Disease Investigations

Post-mortem Examinations

Postmortem examinations can be conducted to investigate sudden death/s, ill-thrift or unresponsive disease within your herd or flock. Dead or moribund animals can be examined. If a diagnosis is not found at the time, tissue samples are sent away to external laboratories for bacterial culture, cytology and histopathology. If numerous animals are affected or there is a possible bio-security risk (such as neurological disease outbreaks) there are grants available to help cover the cost of the disease investigation. Please contact us if you are experiencing unusual losses or disease.

Liver Fluke Testing

All livestock including horses that enter WA must be liver fluke treated 21-35 days post arrival and faecal tested 90-100 days post arrival in WA. The samples must be collected / collection supervised by a veterinarian and the sample tested by an approved laboratory.

For more information on liver fluke see this website. http://cht.net.au/liver-fluke-and-restricted-goods/

Brucellosis Testing - Sheep

Brucellosis causes epididymitis in rams and is a significant cause of in infertility in sheep enterprises. It's most often detected because of low lambing rates and / or palpable lesions noted in rams' testicles. Eradication of the disease through culling and re-stocking is the only means of treating the issue. For more information on Brucellosis or to discuss your sheep enterprise risk please call our veterinary hospital.