BIOWORMA, Feed Additive for the Biological Control of Gastrointestinal Worms with spores of Duddingtonia flagrans in Cattle, Sheep, Goats and Horses

Brand: BIOWORMA ®

COMPANY: INTERNATIONAL ANIMAL HEALTH PRODUCTS

DELIVERY FORM: Feed additive

BIOLOGICALLY ACTIVE COMPONENT: chlamydospores of Duddingtonia flagrans (strain IAH 1297): ≥ 500'000 spores/g

INDICATIONS: CATTLE, SHEEP, GOATS & HORSES

PARASITES CONTROLLED (spectrum of activity)

For population control of the following gastrointestinal worms species:

Sheep & Goats:

Cattle:

Horses:

Other Grazing Animals (including Deer, Alpacas and Zoo Animals):

DOSAGE & ADMINISTRATION

1. Treat animals with a suitable chemical wormer.

2. Move treated animals onto low worm pasture (ideally not grazed by the same animal species for a minimum of 6 weeks)

3. Commence daily use of BioWorma to minimize pasture infectivity and maintain the animal's low worm status.

4. Thoroughly mix BioWorma with feed or feed supplements. BioWorma will begin to wok immediately within the manure.

5. Recommended for strategic use during periods when weather conditions are conductive to larval development and transmission on pasture at temperatures above 5° C (40° F) throughout the year.

6. Use in conjunction with a recommended worm management strategy program for your area.

7. Fecal egg counts may be useful to monitor the effectiveness of the worm management strategy.

Daily feeding rates:

Bodyweight (kg*) Dosage (g/head/day)
25 1.5 g
50 3 g
100 6 g
200 12 g
300 18 g
400 24 g
500** 30 g

* Dose according to heaviest animal in the group

** For animals heavier than 500 kg use additional 6 g for each 100 kg

SAFETY

Poison schedule, hazard class: not applicable: it is not a pesticide

Withholding period (=withdrawal times) for meat & milk (country-specific differences may apply: read the product label)

Meat: Zero days

Milk for human consumption: Zero days

Environmental Safety: BioWorma is neither harmful to non-target soil organisms (earthworms, soil nematodes, microarthropods, etc.), nor to vertebrates (fish, birds, reptiles, etc.).

You may be interested in the following articles in this site dealing with the general safety of veterinary products:

Safety for humans

Safety for domestic animals

Safety for the environment

Hazard classifications of pesticides

MARKETING

Are the active components of this product ORIGINAL* or GENERICS**?

ORIGINAL: The IAH 1297 strain of Duddingtonia flagrans is patent protected.

*Meaning that they are still patent protected and generics are not yet available
**Meaning that they have lost patent protection and may be acquired from manufacturers of generic active ingredients other than the holder of the original patent.

COUNTRIES where this brand/product is marketed: Australia, New Zealand. Approved in the USA and pending approval in the EU.

BioWorma is a concentrate of spores (≥5'000'000 spores/g) to be further mixed with feeds, feed supplements, premixes or concentrates, available for feedmills, premixers and veterinarians

A ready-to-use formulation (3'000 spores/g) for end-users is also available as Livamol BioWorma. It contains Duddingtonia flagrans spores together with vitamins, minerals and other nutrients, available through resellers of feeds, feed supplements or feed stores or where animal health products are sold.

GENERIC BRANDS available? NO

Click here to learn more about GENERIC vs. ORIGINAL drugs.

PARASITE RESISTANCE

Reported in livestock & horses: NO
 Reported in other uses: NO

Learn more about parasite resistance and how it develops.

COMMENTS

BioWorma and Livamol with BioWorma are the world's first commercial products for the true biological control of gastrointestinal nematodes (GIN) in cattle, sheep, goats and horses. It also is the first commercial product for biological control of parasites in grazing livestock at all, a substantial break-through for the animal health industry worldwide. Click here to learn more about true biological control.

To ensure correct use and avoid wrong expectations it is crucial to understand how Duddingtoni flagrans works to kill the livestock parasites.

Mode of action of Duddingtonia flagrans

Duddingtonia flagrans is a so-called nematophagous fungus that is found naturally in pastures and in manure, occasionally also in soils. Nematophagous means worm-eating in greek. As all fungi, the body of Duddingtonia flagrans consists in a more or less extended network of cells (so-called mycelium). For reproduction, the mycelium builds microscopic spores that can be disseminated mechanically or by other organisms. When they find a suitable environment the spores germinate and produce new mycelia.

When treated animals eat the spores of Duddingtonia flagrans, these spores are passed unharmed through the animal's digestive tract into its feces. Once the feces get outside the animal, the spores germinate, i.e. they start producing filamentous cells (so-called hyphae) that result in a new mycelium. More or less simultaneously, the eggs of the GINs that are also expelled with the feces of the treated animal hatch as well and develop to larvae. The specific feature of Duddingtonia flagrans mycelia is that they trap such larvae, the hyphae penetrate into the worms and feed on them. The result is that they kill the worms and prevent them from becoming infective larvae. This means that re-infestation of pastures with infective larvae developing out of the eggs shed by infected animals will not take place. If the process is continued long enough, the pastures that have kept the treated animals will become progressively worm-free. Consequently the next time that animals will graze such pastures they may not need a chemical anthelmintic, or at least significantly fewer treatments.

Summarizing, BioWorma  is a tool for worm population control in the pastures, not for directly healing individual animals from their current worm infestations. In other words, you do not treat the animals, but you treat the pastures (i.e. the property), using the animals as "delivery devices".

Use recommendations

To our knowledge there is no particular recommendation regarding "how long" BioWorma must be fed to grazing animals to ensure a substantial reduction of the worm population. The reason is that this depends on many factors that can be different in each property: infestation level with GINs, pasture management (e.g. pasture rotation, stocking density), climatic conditions, presence or not of untreated wildlife supportive of GINs (e.g. deer), etc. Another important factor is that the larvae that infect livestock need more or less time to start shedding eggs (so-called prepatent period, which is species-specific), and once they start they can produce eggs during varying periods of time. Finally, most infestations with GINs are so-called "mixed infections", i.e. several worm species are involved, each one with its own life-cycle. The mix can be different in each property or in parts of it, with some worm species being predominant over other ones. The major tool for knowing the infestation level of a property and thus for the need or not for anthelmintic treatments are Fecal Egg Counts. See below for comments on this topic.

For the spores to build a killing mycelium in the feces of the treated animals it is crucial that the droppings remain almost intact. For this reason this approach does not work wherever the animal droppings are quickly tramped, destroyed or removed, e.g. in feedlots, in most dairy farms with reduced grazing surface, in zero-grazing operations, etc. This is why BioWorma is recommended for use in grazing animals

For best results it is also necessary that the spores arrive to the feces together with the worms' eggs, otherwise mycelium development will be weaker and efficacy insufficient. Since egg shedding by the worms can be intermittent (at least for some worm species) and there is no way a producer can anticipate when worm egg shedding happens, the animals must be fed spores continuously during a minimum period of time. This ensures that when eggs are shed spores will be also there to kill the hatching larvae.

It is also important that a minimum of spores reach the feces together with the worm's eggs, i.e. that the majority of animals actually consume enough of the treated feed. To make this possible, enough trough surface for feeding must be offered to the herd, otherwise a few animals may remain untreated or underdosed that will contribute to re-infect the pastures with worm eggs.

Climatic conditions are also crucial for the development of spores to mycelia and of worm eggs to worm larvae in the feces. Warm and humid weather are supportive, whereas cold and dry weather are not. This is why it is recommended to use the product only by >5° C.

Efficacy

The spores of Duddingtonia flagrans do not kill the worms in the gut of the treated animals, i.e. they will not clean them from worms, i.e. the product has no therapeutic or curative effect. This is why it is recommended to treat the animals simultaneously with a suitable chemical wormer as well (e.g. macrocyclic lactones, benzimidazoles, levamisole, etc.). The idea is that the number of chemical treatments required to keep the worms under control in the property will progressively diminished. Another objective of such treatments with chemical anthelmintics is to kill at least part of the worms (mostly in the form of infective larvae) that will infect the animals before they can cause damage to the treated animals and/or before they complete development and start shedding eggs, which will reduce the infestation of the droppings and thus make it easier for the spores to do their job. However, you must be aware that numerous chemical anthelmintics  (e.g. benzimidazoles, levamisole, etc.) have almost no residual effect, i.e. they kill worms only a few hours after administration, but do not protect the treated animals against re-infestations. And they may not kill resistant worms.

Another key feature of BioWorma is that, due to its mode of action, it is effective against any worm strains, also against those resistant to whatever class of anthelmintics.

In field trials (tracer studies) in sheep worm reductions of 57% to 84% were recorded after 2 to 4 months treatment with the product. In short-term trials in goats worm reductions between 81% and 99% were obtained after 7 to 9 weeks treatment. In comparable trials in cattle worm reductions between 75% and 88% were obtained after 6 to 7 weeks treatment. Similar studies in horses achieved worm reductions between 53% and 94% after 5 to 7 weeks treatment.

BioWorma has no effect whatsoever on those worm species that do not shed eggs through the feces. This includes almost all lungworms (e.g. Dictyocaulus spp), eyeworms (e.g. Thelazia spp), skinworms (e.g. Stephanofilaria stilesi). It is also ineffective against flukes (e.g. Fasciola hepatica) and tapeworms (e.g. Moniezia spp). For controlling these worms appropriate anthelmintics may be required.

Faecal Eggg Counts

In contrast with most external parasites (flies, ticks, etc.) infestations of livestock or pastures with GINs are not recognizable by the naked eye. However, it is possible to determine the presence of GINs in a property by adequate and rather simple analysis of the feces for the presence or not of worm eggs. Fecal Egg Count (FEC) is a simple technique that measures the number of eggs in a given amount of dung, usually in terms of eggs per gram (epg). Running such tests before and after a treatment with BioWorma (or a chemical anthelmintic) allows you to "see" whether the treatment works (diminishing epg) or not (constant or increasing epg). Other tests can determine the incriminated worm species. 

FECs must not be run on each animal in the property, but can be done for a small group of tracer animals used to "scan" the property or parts of it. Most veterinarians and extension officers can instruct on how to collect dung for such FECs and how to interpret the results.

In most countries with a strong livestock industry, such FECs can be done relatively quickly by many governmental or private labs for a reasonable cost. They are highly recommended for any anthelmintic control strategy, and also for producers that want to use this innovative biological control approach to worm control in livestock.

For additional information visit BioWorma's website.

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