Treating Liver Fluke

When treating fluke make sure you kill all stages of development and don’t sell yourself short

Treating for liver fluke at and around housing has become an absolute necessity with warmer wetter summers and an increased snail population.

Fluke cause the animal’s liver to become compromised. This means that even low levels of infection, whilst not producing any obvious clinical effects can reduce the growth rate of cattle by 9% and feed intake by up to 11% compared with treated cattle. Furthermore heifers treated at grass for fluke and worms can show an 8% increase in weight gain over those just treated for worms. So there is a significant production benefit to be gained by administering treatment.

Timing your treatment to ensure you kill all the fluke destroying your cattle’s liver is very important. This is because not all drugs kill all the different life stages of fluke.

Fluke has three distinct phases:

1. An early immature phase moving from the gut and getting into the liver (up to 5 weeks from ingestion of infection off pasture)
2. An immature phase that burrows its way within the liver (up to 9 weeks from ingestion of infection)
3. An Adult phase, sitting in the bile ducts of the liver, this is around 10 weeks after ingestion of infection

The more mature the fluke the more susceptible to treatment it becomes. So the closer you treat to infection on pasture and the younger the fluke in your cattle the more you have to ensure you use a product that kills all 3 stages. The only drug to do this is triclabendazole.

Treatment at housing is always a good opportunity to treat for fluke and for roundworms too, this is where combination products are useful, like Combinex Cattle Fasimec Duo S 0.1 / 5%.

Some of these products only treat the later stages of fluke, so the recommendation would be to treat 8 weeks after housing, when all early immature stages have developed. Combination products like Ivomec Super are ideal for this.

So please ensure when treating for fluke you know you are killing off the whole problem.

Patrick Trail MRCVS, Mole Valley Farmers Veterinary Services Manager
 

Patrick Traill
BSc BVSc MRCVS
Veterinary Services Manager
Mole Valley Farmers