meat sheep and goats

Deworming Meat Sheep and Goats: Sustainable Parasite Control

Protect your lambs' growth rates, prevent flock mortality, and fight multi-drug resistance. Discover the SPARC project's field-tested protocols for the meat sheep and goat supply chain.

The Challenge: Weight Loss & Multi-Drug Resistance

Systematic, preventive deworming is failing the small ruminant sector. Anthelmintic resistance in meat sheep is now recognized as a critical threat across Europe, with flocks increasingly showing simultaneous resistance to multiple classes of drugs. Even subclinical infections silently destroy profitability, causing severe weight loss, reduced average daily gain in young animals, and poor carcass quality. Furthermore, the spread of blood-feeding parasites like Haemonchus contortus is causing devastating anaemia and high mortality rates in grazing lambs and kids.

The SPARC Solution: Integrated Parasite Management

To protect the future of the supply chain, we must shift to precision veterinary medicine. The SPARC project promotes an Integrated Parasite Management (IPM) approach to reduce drug use by 30-50% and preserve the efficacy of remaining anthelmintics:

Precision Diagnostics & TST: Utilize Faecal Egg Counts and the FAMACHA© scoring system for anaemia to implement Targeted Selective Treatments (TST)—treating only the animals that truly need it.
Smart Pasture Management: Implement multispecies co-grazing and utilize bioactive forages (such as sainfoin and lotus) that possess natural antiparasitic properties.
Preserving Refugia: Maintain an untreated proportion of the parasite population on the pasture to intentionally slow down the selection of resistant strains.