Bad news: we have high worm counts in our lambs and goats, both kids and adults. We had been feeling rather smug about our clear counts this year but the recent warm, wet weather has obviously seen a bit of a population explosion and as such the numbers of both eggs and worms will have increased. We were due to do a faecal egg count in the next week or so but brought it forward to this week as unusually we have some mucky bums in the lambs and so 'wondered' whether we might have a worming issue. One of the mucky bums is our Suffolk/Mule cross and the other two are Muckle’s lambs, BOTH of them. Muckle herself has also been a tad mucky and so we have to conclude that these three must all have been grazing together in an infected area with Muckle possibly shedding eggs that her lambs then have picked up. They are a very close family and rarely apart so we aren’t really surprised! The other lambs had medium worm counts but still need treating! All the kids have medium to high counts too and weirdly, Sorrell's count is back up. She had put on weight but recently we have seen that she has possibly shed a bit again and so now we know why.
It is frustrating to have to deal with worms in our animals but we know we are doing pretty much all we can to avoid them. We have moved the cows in to graze the top three-acre this week so they will hopefully do a bit of a 'clean-up' job for us. They will then move down to the bottom three-acre and stay there until it starts to get too wet, hopefully ar least to the end of October!!