Gastrointestinal Parasites: Natural and/or Old-time Treatments

At the PFI Winter Workshops Jan. 15, 2000, there was discussion of treatments for internal parasites of livestock that might be accepted under the rules for organic production, in which synthetic wormers are banned or severely restricted.  I offered to make available the following listing of treatments, most of which come from veterinary texts published before synthetic wormers were available.  Thanks to the library of George Beran, Distinguished Professor of Veterinary Microbiology at Iowa State University, for most of these references.

We agreed in the workshop that, while we’re very curious about some of these treatments, we know very little about them.  Proceed with caution!  The general approach in olden days was to make treatments strong enough to kill, or flush parasites without quite killing the livestock!  Generally, they used something to kill worms in the gut (a vermicide) with or followed by something to flush the GI tract (a purgative or laxative).  They had no way of killing parasites in life stages spent migrating through the liver, heart, and other organs, so they combined strategically timed treatments with sanitation and separation of animals according to their susceptibility.

The uses listed below are for swine unless otherwise noted.  In the workshop Walter Goldstein, of the Michael Fields Ag Institute, suggested that Chenopodium, one of the more effective treatments for pigs, might be inadvisable for multi-gastric animals.

Practical Farmers of Iowa is working with ISU scientists to find effective materials and practices for managing gastrointestinal parasites.  If you would like to know more about this on-farm research, watch the PFI newsletter, come to some field days, or contact me, Rick Exner.