Bioverm® in the Control of Nematodes in Beef Cattle Raised in the Central-West Region of Brazil.

Lucineide Da Silva Santos Castelo Branco De Oliveira De Oliveira,Felipe Guerra Santos Dias,Lorendane Millena De Carvalho,Andréia Lima Tomé Melo,Jackson Victor De Araújo,Edir Nepomuceno Silva

doi:10.3390/pathogens10050548

Lucineide Da Silva Santos Castelo Branco De Oliveira De Oliveira, Felipe Guerra Santos Dias + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens10050548

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Abstract

Cooperia, Haemonchus and Oesophagostomum are the genera of gastrointestinal parasitic nematodes most prevalent in cattle and constitute a serious problem in cattle breeding due to the impact they have on meat and milk production and the high costs of control measures. The objective of the present work was to evaluate the efficiency of Bioverm® (Duddingtonia flagrans) in the control of gastrointestinal parasitism of young cattle raised in the field, in the Central-West region of Brazil. The experiment was conducted on a farm located in the municipality of Jangada, MT, where 18 cattle, Nelore and Aberdeen Angus breeds, aged six to ten months, were randomly divided into two groups (treated group and control group) and distributed in paddocks of Brachiaria decumbens, naturally infested by larvae of gastrointestinal nematodes. The animals in the treated group received 1g of Bioverm® for each 10 kg of body weight, administered daily with commercial feed, throughout a period of six months. In the control group, each animal received 1 g of rice bran for each 10 kg of body weight, without Bioverm®, added to the feed. Stool and pasture samples were collected every two weeks. The treated group showed a significant reduction (p < 0.05) in values of eggs per gram of feces (EPG) and a significant gain of body weight (p < 0.05) when compared to the control group. The fungal formulation Bioverm® was effective in pasture decontamination and consequently in reducing the occurrence of reinfection by nematodes. The animals treated with Bioverm® showed a lower parasitic load and greater weight gain.

Highlights

In the first month of treatment, the low number of eggs per gram of feces (EPG) was probably due to t
The cattle in the group treated with Bioverm® exhibited a reduction in eggs per gram of feces (EPG) of 87.5% in the present study
Several studies using D. flagrans fungus in horses and ruminants have reported lower monthly mean EPG counts among treated animals compared to control groups in different locations and climatic conditions: for sheep in the USA [16]; for goats in France [17]; for horses in Brazil [7]; for cattle in southeastern Brazil [18]

Summary

Introduction

The helminths of the genera Cooperia, Haemonchus and Oesophagostomum comprise an important group of disease-causing parasites in grazing ruminants [2]. The most used strategy to control this problem has been the use of chemical drugs, which can present some disadvantages, such as ecotoxicity [3] and the development of populations of multidrugresistant parasites against most anthelmintic classes [4,5]. Biological control using nematophagous fungi has been tested in the field [6], by breaking the life cycle, capturing infective larval phases before migrating from the fecal pats to pasture and thereby decreasing relapses of helminth infections that cause damage to livestock and, in particular, cattle [7,8,9,10]

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