Liver fluke can cause production losses in sheep, deer and cattle. Learning the lifecycles of parasites is a pastime restricted to parasitologists, vets and people with too much time on their hands, but bear with me briefly because this bit is relevant.
The lifecycle of the liver fluke requires the presence of a specific freshwater snail (all right - Lymnaeidae, if you must know). This snail requires dams, marshy areas or
slow-flowing streams to survive and hence perpetuate the disease. If your farm has these sorts of areas then liver fluke could be a potential issue.
The disease is generally seen from January to July. Disease can occur acutely or more typically as a slower chronic condition. Animals show poor growth and may have diarrhoea. Any number of disease states could explain these quite non-specific symptoms so it is a disease that is easy to overlook.
Fortunately we have some very useful tools for identifying the presence of liver fluke in your animals. Killing sheets are a useful starting point and they will often have feedback if there are signs of liver fluke involvement. In the live animal, there are testing options on faeces, milk and bloods. Bloods can be done on individual animals or pooled samples.
There are various products available that are useful in the control of liver fluke. They vary in their mode of application - oral, pour-on and injectable - and also in their effectiveness against different stages of the lifecycle of the fluke. Some are effective against all lifecycle stages whist others will only kill adult fluke. The other thing worth noting is a variation in the withhold period associated with these different treatments.
Rather than bore you with a list of all the product options, if you have any queries, Totally Vets would be only too happy to have that discussion.
