Developing parasite control strategies in organic systems

Kurzfassung

This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. Organic farmers have taken a lead in attempting to reduce dependence on pharmaceutical control of parasites in farmed livestock. Focussing on management and nutrition, the objective of this research is to further develop control strategies, which can support and increase the flexibility of clean grazing systems for sheep and cattle. The approach has been to combine on-farm epidemiological studies, with replicated experiments, in order to develop and demonstrate better systems of control applicable to UK organic farms. Preliminary data from the first years' epidemiological studies are presented in this paper.