What if measuring worm resistance didn't require high parasite burdens and ALSO delivered double the heritability of egg counts?

Sarah Preston, Lecturer at Federation University and cofounder of Swabtec, explains the development of their saliva-based test designed to measure immune responses to gastrointestinal worms in sheep, allowing resistance to be assessed without relying on high worm egg counts.

She and Mark discuss why egg counts often fail to reflect adult worm burden, particularly in mixed infections and with species that regulate egg production, and how this affects breeding and management decisions in well-managed, low challenge systems.

They also discuss progress with the development and validation of Swabtec. Work is underway to validate the test across breeds and environments, with plans to develop breeding values as the data builds. The test has been found to have a heritability of 0.4 (compared to a heritability of 0.2 for WEC), meaning that flock improvements based on the insights and data from Swabtec testing can accelerate twice as fast!

Find out more about Swabtec below:

https://swabtec.com/

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For more information on our fundraising efforts for the 'Cure Brain Cancer Foundation' visit this link:

https://fundraise.curebraincancer.org.au/fundraisers/markferguson/twentysix2000

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