Monitoring faecal egg count

On 21st March 2019 Avington had Dan and Di from the McKinnon Project on farm to train staff in sampling, measuring and monitoring the worm burden in our sheep.

McKinnon is a consulting group that Avington has a long association with and are based at the Vet School of Melbourne University.

Four staff participated in the workshop and will now be able to carry out accurate faecal egg count (FEC) sampling and testing on farm.

FEC testing enables us to determine the number of worm or fluke eggs present in a specific mob or individual animals and thus measure the parasitic burden.

From this information we can make more educated decisions regarding the need to drench or make stock movements.

By having the FEC testing facilities and training at Avington we can collect samples and get results quickly to avoid unnecessary drenching that can result in resistance.