Dewormers: What to Know
I don’t recommend going around asking your local shepherd about their dewormer use. You won’t like the answer…
Just kidding! When it comes to the food you eat, you have a right to know about all transparency. Nothing is off the table as far as I’m concerned. But that amount of inquiry also comes with a responsibility to know a bit about management practices yourself.
Anyone who knows about raising sheep knows about stomach worms. Sheep are known to be ‘wormy'. In a healthy system, worms are present in the pasture as well as the sheep’s gut, but at a balanced, healthy level. But like many areas of commodity agriculture, that balance has been way out of whack.
When a sheep’s worm load gets too heavy, they can become anemic. At best, their performance declines. At worst, they can die. I don’t want to get into the details for fear of giving an inaccurate history of dewormer use, but basically, poor management practices (not moving animals) led to increasingly heavy worm loads, and the industry’s answer was commercial dewormers. Dewormers kill almost all of the worms in a sheep’s gut. But if the reason they got too ‘wormy’ isn’t addressed, then it will likely repeat, and a reliance on dewormers forms. A couple of years ago when I was getting a sheep education and touring a lot of sheep farms, giving dewormers was a routine practice. Something that is done to all sheep, several times a year. It’s an industry standard. That overreliance on chemical dewormers has led to an evolution of stomach worms that are resistant, and so new dewormers are needed. On and on it goes…
So here’s my transparency on where chemical dewormers fit in on my farm. Here’s what’s in my barn. They’re technically safe for use for animals meant for consumption if timelines are met, but I’m not crazy about a reliance on a chemical that kills life (in the sheep’s gut as well as the pasture soil). And although I’m no organic purist, I’m not crazy about chemicals in my food. So I follow USDA organic standards for chemical dewormer use. I use one that is allowed for organic use (and has been shown to not kill soil life), and I never use them on a lamb meant for consumption.
More importantly, I use management practices that restore that ecosystem balance so that chemical intervention is a last resort to save a life. Practices like routinely moving my sheep, and managing my pasture for grass and soil health.
Improving grassland ecosystems while producing quality lamb with transparency for my local communities. That’s what I’m all about.
This dewormer can be found in my barn. It is approved for use in organic production, and is used only on certain individual sheep as a last resort. It is NEVER used on lambs meant for consumption.
Routinely rotating sheep through pastures with electric wire not only allows me to manage grass health, but it reduces the need to intervene with chemical dewormers.