MANAGEMENT OF SHEEP NEMATODE PARASITE RESISTANCE ON COMMERCIAL FARMS IN THE UK

Procurement: With reference to Tredundle Farm, Pipers Pool, Launceston, Cornwall, PL15 8RE and Higher Tredundle Farm, Egloskerry, Launceston, Cornwall, PL15 8SQ (RDVM0527 study farms), the Sub-Contractor shall provide APHA with reports on the progress and results of the Sub-Contracted Work as follows:

• To assist in drawing up and disseminating an individual farm plan for conducting SCOPS procedures.
• To provide a point of contact and communication for reporting diagnostic results with veterinary interpretation where necessary.
• To provide overall responsibility for all animal health and welfare issues relating to this study.
• Attendance at Visits 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (annually for each of the 2 years) to carry out procedures and sample submission as detailed on the attached visit plan, chargeable at £300 per visit. This may include additional attendance on farms, which will be pre agreed with APHA and occasionally fewer.

Project Objective 1: To optimise SCOPS usage and evaluate infection levels and production in lambs and anthelmintic use on farms: The study will be carried out on the sixteen farms engaged previously and selected based on a 2 cube factorial design with 3 factors known to affect worm epidemiology, which are: control regime (Best Practice/Traditional) (Leathwick et al, 2006, 2008, Sherrill et al, 2006), farm type (upland/lowland) or climatic region (South West/North East) (van Dijk et al, 2008) to maximise experimental power and allow robust statistical analysis of all results. Each farm will have a private veterinarian already trained and experienced in the experimental procedure, allowing full and effective application of the best practice procedures on the farms allocated to this treatment group. Epidemiological and resistance data for each of the farms has been collected since 2007 for comparison to the data generated in the course of the proposed study.

1a) Management plans for each of the Best Practice study farms have been developed by discussion between APHA veterinarians and private veterinarians assigned to each of the farms based on historic management, treatment and epidemiological information collected over a number of years and an annual plan will be updated before the start of each lambing season.

Low risk farm management principles to be used on the Best Practice farms will be:

• Effective quarantine drenching.
• Partial or no treatment of adult ewes at tupping and lambing.
• Selective treatment to lambs. Farmers will agree either not to treat a proportion (20%) of the heaviest animals on routine drenching or carry out selective treatments based on diagnostic results generated during the study (i.e. treat only when faecal egg counts (FEC) exceed a threshold level).

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