Janssen Animal Health’s broad spectrum water-soluble pig wormer, Solubenol® 100 mg/g Oral Emulsion, is now licenced for two-day treatments of finishing pigs in the UK and Ireland, as well as five day.
"This is a significant benefit for units which operate continuous production systems and sell slaughter pigs every week," says Phil Macdonald, pig and poultry business manager. "With correct planning these producers can treat finishing pigs every five weeks and, complying with the four-day withdrawal period, still send pigs to the abattoir every week."
Worming regularly through the finishing period will maximise growth rates and feed efficiency and minimise the chance of milk spot lesions in the livers at slaughter, he says. Livers partly or completely condemned because of milk spot lesions are a double blow to abattoirs – the lost sales value and the cost of disposal. The lesions are caused by the migrating larvae of Ascaris suum, the large roundworm.
Solubenol, a broad spectrum anthelmintic, is the only benzimidazole that enables producers to medicate pigs via their drinking water. The treatment can be administered via header tanks or dosing pumps. Janssen Animal Health developed the technique to form a water-soluble product with the active ingredient flubendazole, found in Flubenol®, the in-feed wormer used successfully by UK and EU pig producers for years.
The anthelmintic was also recently licenced to treat pregnant sows when used at the five-day dosing regimen. "This adds to the flexibility to target specific groups of pigs and the timing of treatment," says Phil Macdonald. The safety of the product has not been assessed in lactating sows. Use of the product during lactation should be subject to benefit/risk ratio assessment by the responsible veterinarian.
Worm infestations can be extremely costly. A recent trial1 in Yorkshire showed losses from reduced growth alone in the finishing period were £2.50 a pig, compared with pigs which had been treated with Solubenol for five days. "In a further study performed in 2003 the losses totalled more than £4.50 a pig when costs for extra feed, carcase downgrade and extra medication were taken into account; at today’s feed prices total losses would be more than £6 a pig. The cost benefit ratio of Solubenol treatment works out at more than 10 to one."
The effectiveness of strategic treatment with Solubenol using the five-day dosing regimen at 9, 15 and 20 weeks via the water system with finishing pigs was clearly shown at slaughter. The percentage of pig livers damaged by milk spot fell dramatically, by 66 per cent to 18.4 per cent, after just two treatment batches.
Says Phil Macdonald: "Strategic worming programmes have proven they can bring economic benefits and improve productivity throughout a unit. It’s a valuable tool to help producers to meet the growing pressures of increased costs and competition from industries elsewhere in the EU and beyond."
