Parasite control in organic livestock - Research activities

FERNÁNDEZ, ALICIA SILVINA

Conferencia; 25th Annual Organic Agricultural Conference; 2006

Internal parasites (nematodes or roundworms) are one of the most frequent and worrying problems reported by organic livestock producers. Different research groups around the world are actively seeking solutions, each one concentrating on key areas that may or may not work in other parts of the world - mainly due to different conditions in livestock production as well as different parasitological aspects. In Canada, the OACC has joined forces with other universities and provincial government bodies and embarked on research activities to begin to understand the extent of the nematodes problem while attempting to develop a parasite control program. Research activities commenced very recently - spring 2005 - with a ‘parasite survey’ in cattle in NB and a pre-phase of laboratory research at OVC studying possible natural dewormers for sheep and cattle. A brief glance at this work will be given at the conference as well as a review of what is going on in other areas (e.g. condensed tannins, biological control). It is important to emphasize that our research is at its very early stage, thus results so far are minimum and just preliminary.