Bridging the Gap Between Academia & Producers with Jessica Waltemyer

This month we sat down with Jessica Waltemyer - NY State Small Ruminant Extension Specialist at Cornell University. Jessica discusses her background in small ruminant production and her work on small ruminant parasite resistance and resilience. 

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Transcript

Sarah 0:29

Hello and welcome to our next episode of Baas Bleats, the American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners podcast. Today I'm very excited to be talking to Jessica Waltemeyer. She is the pro livestock New York State small ruminant extension specialist. For those of you who don't know, in New York, the Cornell Cooperative Extension is our, extension department through Ags and Ag and Market here in New York. And so Jessica works for them and she works exclusive maybe not exclusively, but heavily with small ruminants. You can tell us more about it. Welcome, Jessica.

Jessica 1:09

Thanks, Sarah. Thanks for having me on the show today. I'm grateful to have the opportunity to share with the audience, a little bit of a peak into New York State small ruminant research and experiences, and as well as some of my background.

Sarah 1:23

Yeah. I apologize a little bit because now all of a sudden, both me, the host and Michelle, our producer, are living in New York and from New York. And so I'm hoping to not make it too northern focus, our podcast. We need to get a few more people from the south and definitely the West Coast. I need to reach out and to some of my colleagues out in the, on the West Coast. But today, we are gonna talk about parasites. And actually, as Jessica and I were talking before we started actually I feel like this is not gonna be just a New York conversation because we're definitely seeing what I think is more common in the rest of the country up here a little bit more. But just to get us started give us a little bit of background about yourself. I love to hear about where you went to school, how you got to where you are. If you wanna talk a little bit about the pro livestock program yeah, we'd love to hear a little intro about kinda you.

Jessica 2:19

Sure. So I will say that I did not take the direct route into my professional status that I'm in now, which I love to tell that story, especially to those that also experience that kind of ladder climb or to our listeners that are still trying to figure out where maybe they wanna go as far as professionals. So I grew up in a small farm in Butler County, Pennsylvania, so that's located just north of Pittsburgh. I was always active in county, state, and national 4-H events, and I knew I wanted to pursue a career in animal science and specifically in large animal. So I attended the University of Findlay in Finley, Ohio for my bachelor's degree in animal science and bi- biology, and that's where I became even more passionate about whole animal production systems and the management of those animals. So instead of going to veterinary school or graduate school, like many of my classmates were, I decided to go more of a professional route. So I was looking for jobs in that production ag background, and I landed at Cornell University in the animal science department in 2010. So I worked my way up from the animal technician to a supervisor of animal care, and then into the Ithaca Farm Managers position. And in that position is where I took on responsibility of the 220 Cornell Uflock with an accelerated landing program three times a year that are used for teaching and research as well as some outreach workshops and events. And while managing that flock, we maintained 125 acres of vegetative management contract on nearby solar arrays, so supplying a service with small ruminants or with sheets specifically for those solar arrays. And I really had a passion for teaching as well. So I taught courses within the department, the sheep production and management course, the dairy sheep production and management course, the meats course, and a practical large animal handling course, which was designed for freshmen and sophomores. So really just give them confidence in handling restraining large animals as they were starting to pursue their goals of becoming veterinarians, maybe not large animal veterinarians, but still have to go through the rotation and wanted to make sure they had the tools that they needed in order to be confident. So in this position as the Cornell Pro Livestock Small Ruminant Specialist opened up in 2023, fall of 2023 I knew that this was where my next move or where I wanted my next move to be. Let's put it that way. So I've been in this position for just about two years. I started in January of 24, and I've really enjoyed what it's done as far as terms of growth for me professionally knowledge, growth, and as well as the outreach that it's provided. So the project that we're gonna talk about, our focus on today was one of my first applied research projects while in this position that allowed me to really get out, meet producers, meet those regional specialists, and have a collaborative proj- project that was gonna be beneficial to our producers in New York State.

Sarah 5:34

Awesome, awesome. Awesome. Sorry, just looking at my notes. So we have talked about parasites before. Obviously, you can't talk about small ruminants without parasites coming up on a pretty regular basis and resistance, obviously. So let's just jump into the project that you did today, this that we're talking about today. So basically actually, I'm just gonna let you introduce it because even though I've read over, the stuff that you gave me, it makes more sense for you to just talk about how it came about, how you picked your farms what your goal was, and yeah, let's just jump in.

Jessica 6:15

Sure. So yeah, as small ruminate veterinarians and producers or industry industry stakeholders, parasites, internal parasites specifically in small ruminants are always a large topic. And not just in New York State or in the Northeast area. I was just at the American Sheep Industry Convention that was hosted in Reno, Nevada, and this was still one of our large topics at that convention. So everywhere is dealing with some level of parasite over parasite burden as well as the dewormer resistance. I work closely with the American Consortium for Small Ruminant Parasite Control. I'm sure many of you are familiar with that. Wormx.info has lots of different resources as well as training events for fimache certifications or maybe fecal egg count, events that could be used or passed to producers. So I was fortunate enough to be a collaborator on this project. Amy Barkley, the livestock specialist and team leader of the Cornell Cooperative Exemption Southwest New York, Dairy and Livestock Fields team was the other and one of the main spearheaders for this project. It was funded through the Northeast Risk Management Education Grant, and this was designed to assess internal parasite loads and dewarmer resistance across Southwest New York, specifically, but definitely applicable to all over as far as a applied and on- farm method of evaluating resistance in these animals. So this allowed us to work closely with 10 producers. We focused on deworming practices pasture management, nutritional improvement or changes if we could help supply any of that information for them, and mostly just giving those producers a tool, an additional tool in their toolbox in order to battle the problem that we already know that they potentially have. So these farms were selected or were volunteers that wanted to be on this project. Some were more hand selected in the sense that they had a continuum problem with parasites, and we wanted to be able to provide them with a service that could help them understand where that gap in their management practices was contributing to that paras- high parasite load, or was it, genetics on farm, or was this dewormer resistance? And those are just a couple of the categories, of course, that we evaluated. And so they were definitely they were willing, they were eager, and they wanted the help, and we were able to help provide them with that, with this project.

Sarah 8:57

Do most of these farms have veterinarians also that they were working with?

Jessica 9:03

Yes. So I would say 75% of them had a veterinarian connection. And when I say that they were, had their veterinary client patient relationship were able to obtain non-over the counter dewormers or options for their animals, but I would say that 25% of them were still struggling with that veterinary connection. And whether that was they didn't use their veterinarians often enough in order to establish that veterinary client patient relationship, or as most of us know shifts and changes in practices where maybe there was a retirement or a clinic had moved or shut down. So we also helped try to provide them with some resources of veterinarians in their area if they didn't already have an as- relationship with one.

Sarah 9:56

Awesome, awesome. And, as the veterinarian, sometimes you really don't know that your clients are struggling with things because they haven't really told you, or, they've talked to you about this one animal but you don't, and you go see that one animal and you maybe look around, but you don't unders- unless you're really talking to them regularly, they, you don't really understand the whole the whole issue. Do you happen to know if any of these farms were on the New York the NICE GAP program?

Jessica 10:29

None of the farms that were enrolled in this project were on that NICE GAP program, no.

Sarah 10:35

Okay.

Jessica 10:35

But that was something that I brought up and that's where I think that my role as well as these regional or county level livestock specialists can be that interim to the veterinarians as well. So helping bridge the gap as you stated, right? As veterinarians, you are, you're busy and everywhere, and sometimes it's a response to emergency, but not being able to not being able to or not knowing in order to help do the preventative medicine, right? So I think that's where us as CCE or state employees that could help bridge those gaps by providing some producer education so that they feel more equipped to take those initial steps and then know when that threshold or that cutoff is of what my capabilities are and then what I need to reach further as far as for veterinary assistance or further diagnostics in order to understand what the problem is. And that was what our goal was. We performed five point checks on every single animal and those flocks and sorry to speak out of term, there was one goat herd that we had in this project as well. So we had sizes between eight and 83 animals with the average being around 25, which is about, I would say our average in New York is maybe 50 and under animals. There, of course, are some outliners that have, 5,000 and several hundred. But I would say a lot of our flocks and herds are in that 50 animal window. Most of them were being raised for meat, but some were being raised for fiber and show and 4-H seedstock. And and the, then the variety as far as breeds was all over the board. Purebreds registered, cross-breed, so there really wasn't, we weren't able to compare as far as genetics from breed to breed or what that influence was. But what we were trying to provide was five point checks and educating those producers in those five point checks. So how to correctly do fimache scoring how to score for other, which of course is pertaining to our barber pole or homoncous contortis specifically and then also evaluating body condition score, haircoat quality are we seeing wool break? Are we seeing lack of luster in those coats that might lead us towards a, another species of strong gile that we would be concerned about? DAG scores, identifying what if it's diarrhea based on nutritional change or potentially stress induced versus parasite induced. Other things that we looked at, was presence of bottle jaw, identifying if it's bottle jaw or are we looking at an injury or we're looking at, an abscess or something and being able to give those producers an insight of those symptoms so that they can start to decide, is this parasite induced or is this something different? And then have that, be able to translate that knowledge, record that knowledge, translate that knowledge, to their veterinarians for further help or submit fecal samples for in- lab diagnostics if they don't have the means to do fecal egg counts and things themselves.

Sarah 13:59

I don't know the term DAG score. Can you define that for me?

Jessica 14:04

Sure. So we define DAG as the condition of what, whether it's diarrhea, so from wet to dry DAG. So we score that from a wet, a, not a sorry, a recovering score, so maybe there was a presence of diarrhea and now it's recovering, or are we dealing with no DAGS, which of course would, be able to identify that as well. So we score that and then we look and compare that to, do we also, are we also seeing a high FIMACHA score? Are we also seeing a low body condition score? And then we can start to differentiate what species of strong gile we may be dealing with. The me- the mes- method we use was the modified McMasters method for our fecal egg counting. So in that method, you cannot differentiate what species of strong gile that we are seeing on that screen. So we were, had to take the rest of that five point check to deduce those answers to translate them to the producers.

Sarah 15:03

Okay. So you I'm just gonna back up a little bit. You had these h- these flocks that you knew were struggling with parasites, and so you talked to them, and then went to the farm, and evaluated the animals. So the five points, tell me if I'm right about this, is a way to look beyond just just fimacha. But the five points are FAMACHA, bottle jaw, diarrhea, n- no- nasal discharge is one of them?

Jessica 15:36

Yeah, so nasal discharge isn't- Yep. So nasal discharge, body condition, and then an unofficial point we usually add in there is attitude. So are they bright, alert, reactive? Correct, demeanor. And then sometimes, and we added a seventh one as far as coat condition. So-

Sarah 15:57

Okay.

Jessica 15:58

presence of wool break or lack of luster since we know that could be a specific link to brown stomach worm, for example in addition with the diarrhea on, and of course the homuncus, we're seeing anemia, we're seeing a low, a lower body condition score and potentially a presence of bo- a bottle jaw.

Sarah 17:21

Okay. So you just went to these flocks, got a general overview of how the animals were looking and and so then once you did this assessment, did you start with fecal A counts?

Jessica 17:36

We did. So every single animal on the study, which was nine months of age and older, so we did not address lambs. The only time we did take some data on lambs is if lambs were by side and just weren't doing well, right? Because we're there, we're handling them, they're in the chute with the ewes, we might as well try to assist and see if we're dealing with coccidia per chance, right? Or something like that. We didn't address any of the young lambs, but we took fecal egg counts or fecal samples on every single animal individually. We ran those fecal egg counts through the modified McMaster test provided a parasite total strongile count to give us a baseline or a threshold. If those animals displayed, during our evaluation, if those animals displayed signs of anemia or bottle jaw, low body condition score a high DAG score, we did suggest to the producer 2D worm based on that criteria prior to the fecal egg counts coming back, just because we are there, we're handling them but we had much, it was very much a discussion. So we'd say something like to the producer"Would you normally deworm this animal based on what you're seeing?" And then we would go back and forth and give them a suggestion, right? And then typically and this is what we were seeing, is that when we get back to the lab those animals that we did deworm were showing a high parasite load or a high parasite shed. And then we were able to provide those numbers to those individuals. I think the biggest light bulb and service we provided to those producers were, there were, we'd get to an animal and she would have a lower body condition score, but fimache was fantastic, she looked bright, she looked alert, she looked reactive, and they'd say,"Would you deworm her because of her body condition score specifically?" And I said,"No, she just lambed, right? Maybe let's give her some time, let's look at your nutrition, let's talk about that side of it rather than rushing and deworming." And those fecal egg counts on that specific animal would come back very low. And so I think that was a huge service we were able to provide that those producers were shocked and they said,"Oh, I would, usually I would just de- worm," right? And then that's where we can start to, to separate that targeted and selective dewormer versus whole flock and really taking in all of the data that you're collecting. Now as producers, if any producers are listening, you're probably over there going,"That's a lot of work. I have to go through every single animal." The suggestion, of course, is during the hide the grazing season every two weeks to do that level of evaluation, and that's a huge undertaking for some of our producers to be able to do. And so in, in general, it's what you can do within your means, but we want to provide you with as much knowledge and background as we possibly can so you understand the benefits, of doing that whole flock evaluation and only selective deworming the animals that truly need it.

Sarah 20:44

And what per- do you feel like these people, the the farmers, they utilized fecal A counts before you guys got there? What percentage of these flocks do you feel like were doing from reading your thing, it sounds like most of them were just on a rotational deworming pattern, not selective. And so were any of them doing fecals ahead of time or on a regular basis?

Jessica 21:11

No, none of these producers that we visited on this study were already doing fecal egg counting not themselves, I should say. One, one producer was occasionally sending them out to labs when she had a high level of concern and that was directly linked to bottle jaw presence. So she knew that was a high symptom wanted to get these animals checked when was sending those result, or those fecals through her veterinarian to a lab. But we, each one of these producers was also required to take a FAMACHA certification course. Myself as well as Amy Barkley are both certified in FAMACHA training, so they were required as part of the project to take a FAMACHA certification course. So we weren't only doing it on farm and showing them exactly the benefits, but we were talking about it, from a training perspective, and that did include fecal egg counting. So they did learn how to do their own fecal egg counting. Do they have their own tools? They might have went out and invested in order to get those but not everybody has a microscope or, again, are gonna take the time to run those fecal egg counts on all their animals. So I would say that we at least gave them the knowledge base. We did, this project was May and then a follow-up in the fall. So we did initial testing in the, in May or guided these producers all summer as far as deworming recommendations and some fecal egg count reductions to, of those that needed deworming. And then we did another whole flock evaluation in the fall. And generally, we saw lesser loads in the fall. However, if you're in New York, we had a drought between, late June into early August, which could have been one of the factors in our lesser parasite loads in our animals for at least this year. And that was one thing that with applied research, you really can't control, especially if you're not doing any special, infection or any levels or anything like that. This was all natural infection.

Sarah 23:14

But a big part okay, so you went there and you collected this data and then you advised them, but a big part wasn't deworming, right? It was practice management. That was a huge part of your guys' goal was to teach these people how to deal with parasites outside of deworming.

Jessica 23:32

Correct. As we know the less that we can use Antymintics, the better both because of resistance of what we talked about, pretty heavily already, but also because of lack of availability of more if we become resistant to all three classes, which we're, we are at that point, we're starting to see resistance to all three classes that are available to us in the US. And so thinking a little bit broader and outside the box as far as using evasive grazing adequate rest periods between grazing minimizing the overgrazing and playing into the known fact that we, that those strongile cannot travel up a certain level onto the grass and we're keeping that threshold where we want it, as well as nutrition. We know nutrition and immune support is a huge factor in supporting those animals and fighting off those parasite loads if they're coming into contact with a large contamination. And yes, it was more of a whole management evaluation. We did a lot of questioning and walking around and evaluating their grazing schedules, as well as their nutrition availability, mineral pack or minerals availability. And we did find that many were not offering mineral or not offering adequate mineral. And so we had a large discussion about that, as well as what are, what's the next steps and what's upcoming in our resources to our small ruminant producers. So whether that be using something like Bioworma in order to help mitigate, larval hatch, right? Or is there other alternatives coming down the pipeline as far as forages that, with different, biochemical compounds that can help with disrupting that larva life cycle? And so we talked a lot about that too and we gave them, some l- resources both from Cornell as well as, you, the American Consortium so that they can continue to educate themselves as those new things start to, to come into play.

Sarah 25:43

So when you were initially at the farm and you were making deworming recommendations, were you starting with what they'd been using, what they'd already seen success with? Because I know on multiple of the farms you showed that they were resistant, so how did you start?

Jessica 26:03

Yeah, that's a great question. So we didn't want these producers to have to go out and buy something, find something that they didn't maybe already have on hand or weren't comfortable with or didn't have access to, right? One of the farms on this study was in the plain community, so limited access to acquiring, potentially a dewormer class for him. So we wanted to make sure that it was within their means. So we would start with dewormer of choice is what I'm calling it. What's one that you would normally use? So I'll just throw it out there. If it, if it's ivermectin drench we'll use ivermectin on this first deworming. We'll supply back the initial fecal egg count and then the fecal egg count reduction. So we would follow up within three weeks, two to three weeks after that first dosing, do another fecal egg count. If we didn't have a minimum of 75% reduction in that fecal egg count it was showing that we were seeing resistance in that class of dewormer since the research tells us that if it's if you're not seeing a reduction with specifically, ivermectin, it's a whole class resistance. So even switching within that class is probably gonna show resistance to that dewormer. So we would supply that information and then we would switch up classes of dewormer because the recommendation is to use one class of dewormer until it doesn't work anymore, right? And the only way you're gonna know it doesn't work is truly through fecal egg counts and fecal egg count reduction. We don't wanna rely on that, it's not working because my animal's going downhill. We wanna actually have some concrete numbers that are showing us it's not working. We would love to see 90% efficacy in our reductions, but 75% we can handle, right? And then we would then move on to the next class. So some of these producers were showing mild or severe resistance to one or all classes of dewormers. So the question probably follow up is now what, right? What do we do now? So we started to even dig deeper into your nutrition program, your mineral program, supporting the immun- immune system of these animals, and diving even deeper, diving any, even deeper into your rotational schedules, and your grazing techniques and rest periods so that we can Mitigate this differently and not have to use dewormers. If we do need to dual deworm, we tried to do that specifically on isolate cases, but we didn't have in this case any one animal that was showing severe enough symptoms to recommend dual deworming.

Sarah 28:55

And so over the summer while, you were talking about the grazing and stuff, so you would follow up with these animals, do multiple fecal A counts. There was one graph in your, and Michelle will put a link to your project in the notes so people can look at it. But there's literally a graph that makes you wanna cry because it's like fecal egg count one month retest, ret And what is there, five or six? And every single retest where the animals have been dewormed, the fecal A count just goes up up. And then what happened between the last two where it finally came back down? Is that where you used maybe they were integrating and everything clicked all at once?

Jessica 29:38

Yeah, so that specific graph, we had one producer that had a very small flock and it was show focus. So these were animals that were very concentrated in, a niche of the industry. And believe it or not, with more conversation, we were able to link back those high counts to one maternal line. So as much as we, of course, we wanted this producer to benefit, we wanted to provide her with as much information as we could, we had to have that car- hard conversation with her that this all links back to 1U and these are her offspring that are showing, the resistance. And so now we're seeing genetic influence into this flock that some of the others weren't a factor, and as veterinarians, I'm sure most of you are aware, it's, if it's a show flock, a small flock, a hobby flock, a pet flock, it's very difficult to have those conversations with those producers to say,"You might need to cut your losses," right? And so that is not something that we wanted to even explore in this project, but we had that conversation. She was able to take in that information, she understood the information. We gave her as much resources as we could as far as, these are some options to deworm, these are some options to help with immunity in the offspring, et cetera. But truthfully, i- in the end, it was her decision to decide, moving forward what she wants to do. That was a very isolate case, which threw our numbers off on that graph but we, it is, it's real. That is a real life situation that many of you are dealing with as well as our educators are. And we just had to have a really deep conversation about that and say,"I think we're out of options and this potentially is a genetic influence you may need to consider." And one of our suggestions was, who do you use for a ram, right? She didn't have a ram on site, so is it possible to pick a ram that, go through the National Sheep Improvement Program or work with another producer that has some really great records and data points that are showing that this RAM is providing genetic resistance to parasite load and EBVs are the best, but even some on- farm data to show that this animal has never had a high parasite load and offspring or thriving, et cetera, can we now start to change the narrative by infl- by introducing some great genetic resistance into your flock versus the traditional, root of deworming and now we're starting to s- be out of options.

Sarah 32:28

Yeah. And we all know this. It says it in your project, that 80% of the worms are in 20% of the animals and yeah, when you have those bigger herds and flocks and you can convince them to cull, that's great. But yeah, on these smaller ones, especially, when they win the gold medal or they win the blue ribbon at the fair, it's hard to convince them. Even if you can't convince them to cola, convincing them to stop breeding it, to whenever it's shedding get it away from everyone else. I've, I think I've probably told this story on the podcast before, but I had this one client who owned one bore dough, one. And the first year, and he knew they, she couldn't live alone, but she was already bred. So he's"She'll have babies and then she'll be fine." She was the worst for parasites. Just absolutely the worst. And her babies, I think he bred her three times and all the babies died every time from worms because, and no matter what we did, and she was just always full of worms, and finally he got a key goat to be her friend, and that goat was awesome. Like they lived together and it never had parasites and never had issues. And that's the other thing is convincing people, they're like,"This animal is very parasitized. I feel like I need to deworm the whole herd or flock." And no, you don't, I know we need to figure out who, but it's very hard to convince people that if this animal's struggling with this, it doesn't mean everybody is, and yes, everyone's exposed equally, but just like people, we all have different immune systems, your animals have different immune systems, they have different abilities. That's, it's really hard for me to convince clients with Maine that you don't have to treat everybody because yeah, they're all exposed, but look at your animals. This one is Mangi, this one is not. It's very obvious, Mage, you can see with your eyes. Not the animal, the parasites, but the effects of them.

Jessica 34:27

Yeah I agree. I feel like I, that was one observation, and this is just a me observ- a personal observation. I, coming from, academia and coming from, Cornell management where we were from ACHA, scoring and we were selective deworming and we were doing all the guidelines, right? I was slightly under the naive impression that when it went out into the world that was more common knowledge. And it's I think our educators and our county level educators our regional educators are doing a fantastic job, but there are still producers that are just not networked in in order to get that, those, that education opportunity or the, the webinars or anything like that. And so those are the people that are thriving and or starving, I should say, for the most information and it's difficult to get to everybody, but I think that from if veterinarians and county educators and state edu- educators can all, work together, we can collaborate, we'd have a much further reach than, it's not a single person job. It is in everybody a industry level job.

Sarah 35:34

Yeah. Yeah. So since this project, have you touched back base with these flocks? How are they doing?

Jessica 35:41

Yeah, so we touched back in the fall, of course, after our last visit and I've received feedback from many of them, and I was fortunate enough to see many of them at the Cornell Sheep and Goat Symposium in November, early November. And so many of them said, it was great. The knowledge that I was able to obtain and continue to obtain, and I'm looking at things differently and we're seeing improvement. So those that needed the improvement, I think got the tools that they needed in order to continue to improve. Now, winter is here upon us now. And so of course, parasites, even though I think that's all I talk about is lesser on producers' minds at the moment, right? But as we're going into spring, we're gonna touch back with those producers and just see, how they're doing and follow them. It's not part of the project, it's more of us just wanting to stay in contact, but reach out to them and see how this spring maybe is gonna be looking and what type of tools they're gonna be implementing to, to help them get through this grazing season.

Sarah 36:40

So I just wanna make sure I didn't miss any of your non-dewormer helpful things that the farms can do. We talked about grazing, we talked about genetics, we talked about nutrition, so high nutrition, minerals. I guess the only other factor that I can think of, and tell me if I'm missing something, is cleanliness, right?

Jessica 37:02

From grazing, if we're talking about strongyles, we're specifically talking about, grazing because that's where the infective where they're gonna get infected. But to add into that if you do need to bring them into the barn or confinement of some sort for a rest period, right? If they're resting off of pasture and they need to come inside, we're still, of course, worried about hygiene keeping those bed packs or those pens clean and dry because if we're not worried about strongyles, we may be worried about something like coccidia that's gonna thrive in those wet damp areas. We know that, bed packs can help kill off some of that infection, especially our strongyles are not gonna survive in that type of scenario, but if you're super diligent at cleaning your pens every single day, you're actually, taking out some of that factor that, that helps, in a bedtacking situation. So we did talk about coccidia while we were there especially because in spring, particularly, we still had lamps by side. So we were talking about how improving inside the barns, inside your confinement, especially if you're gonna use them as rest areas, so that way you're not causing an, a different issue, even though you're trying to solve your pasture, pasture rest period. The other aspect of that we talked was about lane ways to pastures. So if it's a common traffic area, whether that be where water is supplemental feed or the lane way to get out to pasture, being able to narrow those lane ways so there's no forage or vegetation in those lane ways because if you're in confinement and the first thing you come to is a blade of grass right outside the barn, that's gonna be an extremely highly contaminated blade of grass that every single animal has passed by. So those are some other things that, we did try to suggest and get a picture based on farm to farm scenario.

Sarah 38:55

And do you talk about with them deworming one thing that it's harder for me, I feel like to get people to ta- talk about this, but deworming, give them, giving them the dewormer if it's injectable or poron, it's different, but like the oral ones like, before you feed your grain, there's just some like little practice tools that I feel like help a little bit. I'm trying to think what else, but to, and dosing and all of that and, did you convince any of them to stop deworming on a schedule?

Jessica 39:28

I really do think we were successful in that part of it. Of course, when we're talking to producers if they're stuck in their ways you have to be a little creative about your delivery to make sure that you're still giving them the information without, causing a riff, right? Just put it lightly. So definitely was, I think the key was explaining why it's beneficial, dosing especially, don't underdose and don't overdose. We know that some dewormers are gonna have a lower level of safety, so that's one reason we really shouldn't overdose. The other, of course, is, as I explained it to my producers is, and I try to do this to explain it in a way that everybody understands is that the more you expose these species of strong gils to the chemical or to the dewormer, the more fuel of adapt- adaptation that you're giving them. So if you're underdosing them, they're getting a little bite of it, and they're getting exposed to it. If you're overdosing, you could be affecting animal viability or animal health, and we definitely don't wanna do that. And we don't wanna give these worms an overexposure of those that are still left behind when the dewormer has been effective, or hopefully has been effective. So explaining it in that sense, explaining also that if we can give it oral, that's the best route because it's trying, we're targeting those gastrointestinal worms and what's better to target a stomach than something that's going directly into the stomach versus a poron or an injectable. But again, most of the, almost, actually I should say all of the producers on this study were using an oral dewormer and we're not using an injectable or a poron. So we didn't come to that hurdle of convincing them to switch administration routes.

Sarah 41:22

All right. I think- I think this has been a good overview kind of our concerns with parasites, how some other ways thinking outside the box to try to address herd issues. So I'm really ec- excited to ask you my final question that I ask everybody because I feel like, you're not, you're coming at small rumens from a different path than most people I interview. So I'd really like to hear what you think the next big problem is that researchers or, people in the small ruminate world really need to address that we just really need more information and knowledge about.

Jessica 41:58

Yeah. I think that one of the next problems that we're probably need to address, and honestly, Michelle and I have talked about this is the limited availability of on- label drugs and vaccines that are available to small ruminant producers. We are using extra label for quite a few and you and I talked about it, a prime example is safeguard, right? It's prescribed for goats, but it's not prescribed for sheep. And not all producers are under the full understanding that they're not the same. And that's probably one of the first things that I show producers in a fimata training is the dosing charts and how a goat dose is about double on average around double what the sheet dose would be on that exact same antemintic. So I think that from a research standpoint, we need to have a more of an understanding on how those extra label drugs metabolize so that we can shorten withdrawal periods so that those producers, especially those that are using small ruminants for business and income can start to back down, on those suggested withdrawals so that they can maximize productivity, whether that be for meat production or dairy production and maybe also some long-term usage effects of those extra labeled drugs on our small ruminates. We, for whatever reason, we know that they're just a little bit more finicky than those large ruminants, and we wanna make sure that we're not causing long-term effects whether it be mineral absorption or, effects to that, that rumen biome. And so I think that more research on specific drug usage in our small ruminants so that we can provide our producers with more tools for their toolbox or potentially better targeted tools in their toolbox that are on label and can then return those animals to production at a be- rap- more rapid pace or at a a better timeline.

Sarah 43:58

Yeah, fully. I totally agree with that. And, AASRP, we are doing what we can to push this forward. We, we send representatives to the minor species committees to try to get more drugs out for these minor species and, we are constantly pushing, especially, it's really frustrating when there's great medications, vaccines approved in other countries that aren't approved here yet. Know that your AASRP dollars are going to help push that that agenda forward as much as we can. Yeah, that is a really huge thing. And yeah, I think that's a great topic. Jessica, thank you so much for chatting with us today about your project and parasites and thanks again for joining us today.

Jessica 44:47

I appreciate you having me on and I just wanted to share that you could contact me. My, my email is jrk272@cornell.edu, and feel free to contact with research ideas applied or in lab things that we can work together, as well as keep updated at the cows.cornell.edu/prolivestock for events, options, or other research updates will be on that new pro livestock site.

Sarah 45:15

Thank you so much.

Jessica 45:17

Thank you.