When you run a stud farm, or livery yard, and you know, from testing, that you have a high level of small redworm or tapeworm or both in the pasture,  managing pasture and parasites can quite often appear to be at the opposite ends of the spectrum.  What benefits one does not necessarily benefit the other.

I have many in depth discussions with every stud farm and livery yard that is registered with Intelligent Worming about the evils of harrowing in the UK and how it really is not encouraged…..  until this week! 

Stud managers and yard owners across the country received an urgent email notification to basically drop everything and harrow all empty fields as the temperature in the UK, at 30 degrees was hot enough to substantially reduce eggs and larvae in the pasture.

The time was perfect for one stud where their yearling tests had increased substantially, the sward length was short and they had spare paddocks to move the yearling in to, after worming.  The paddocks they had come out of, which we know have had a generous splattering [literally] of small redworm eggs were vigorously harrowed.  This now means that the parasite risk in those paddocks has reduced and we can evaluate bringing them back into the grazing pattern at an earlier point.

This example really brings home the fact that parasite management and worming is equally integrated into pasture management and the weather.  It is not static, one size fits all and in the battle against worms stud/yard managers need take all factors into account, all the time.  The traffic light system makes such a difference in this case as both stud and yard managers know which fields to focus on “graded red”.