Barber Pole Worms and Famacha

If you are interested in reading other parts of this series:

Identifying and recognizing the effects of Barber Pole worms is one thing that every new small ruminant owner absolutely needs to know about. While there may be a million things that could go wrong with your animals, the vast majority of them are things you are likely to never encounter. The barber pole worm (or Haemonchus contortus) on the other hand is something virtually every sheep or goat owner will have to deal with.

The barber pole worm is the number 1 killer of sheep and goats. Sadly, many new shepherds learn about barber pole worms the hard way—through the death or near death of their animals. Worse yet, this heartache is almost 100% preventable through education. Understanding how to spot and manage this parasite is as important learning how to feed your animals properly.

We keep sheep so will mainly be referring to sheep throughout these articles. However, this information also applies to goats.

Let’s look at what the barber pole worm is

barber pole worms — Barber pole worms showing their ‘barber pole’ stripes.
photo credit: “Barber’s Pole Worm” by RItagrun, iNaturalist is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

The barber pole worm is a gastrointestinal parasite. It gets its name from its striped appearance, and it lives in the stomach of your sheep.

Most animal species can get parasites. The majority of gastrointestinal parasites, such as the ones cats, dogs, horses or cows get steal nutrients from their host. These parasites typically cause obvious symptoms such as a poor body condition, rough hair coat, or diarrhea. They are not often deadly, and are easy to spot and remedy before they kill an animal.

Unfortunately small ruminants are not so lucky. The most common, and by far most problematic parasite is the barber pole worm. Barber pole worms don’t steal nutrients, but rather blood. This blood sucking habit is a fairly unique trait. Unfortunately, this trait makes them very deadly because they will cause anemia.

Barber pole worms are capable of eating ALL of the blood inside of your sheep, and as you know, you cannot live with out blood.

Unlike with nutrient stealing parasites, you cannot just eat more food to compensate for blood loss. Bone marrow can only make blood so fast. This means that with a high barber pole worm load, it is easy for the parasite’s blood consumption to exceed the sheep’s ability to make replacement blood. Additionally, it takes weeks to make new blood cells. Even if you eliminated every single one of the parasites today, that can sometimes still be too late for the animal to recover from the blood loss.

Perhaps one of the most horrible things about barber pole worms is the speed with which they can kill an animal, particularly a lamb or kid. It is possible for the parasite burden to build up so quickly that a lamb can go from seemingly perfectly fine to dead in a weeks time. This is why it is important to be educated about when and how to monitor your animals for parasite problems.

When do I need to be worried about barber pole worms?

If you live in the majority of the United States, you should be concerned about barber pole worms. They are of particularly high concern any time the weather is warm and your animals are grazing pasture. They are a really big problem in the southeast where the summers are long, hot, and humid.

If you live in a colder more northern location like Vermont, you may only have a few months of the year where barber pole worm pressure is high. In the deep south it may be of concern 365 days of the year. People living in very dry climates such as California may not have to be as concerned. However, regardless of where you live, it is always a good idea to keep a close eye on your animals.

Watch your lambs and kids extra closely

group of black and white katahdin hair sheep lambs

You should keep a close eye on your lambs and kids starting in the spring as they are more susceptible to parasites than adults. They have less blood, and less developed immune systems so they are less able to tolerate and fight off parasites. You should also keep a close eye on your ewes during late gestation and early lactation. They are more prone to parasites around this time. As the summer warms, you should carefully monitor all of your animals until it has started freezing again. In a normal year the parasite burden will continue to rise as the summer progresses.

Barber pole worms will become more of a problem the longer you keep animals on a given piece of land. Just because you don’t have parasite problems the first year or two of keeping sheep does not mean you should assume you will never have a problem. The longer you have your flock, the more parasite burden your pastures build up.

Because this is an extremely important topic, we do not want to gloss over it here. In our next installment of this series we will be looking at the life cycle and management of this parasite. Equally importantly we will look at how to properly and judiciously deworm your animal to prevent parasite resistance. Parasite resistance is becoming a huge problem that is threatening small ruminant producers everywhere.

Before we do that though, we are going to take the rest of this article we are going take the rest of this article to take a closer look at how to “see” this invisible parasite. We want you to be able to detect it before you have a dead or dying animal on your hands.

How do I know if my animals have a high barber pole worm load?

sheep with bottle jaw — Sheep with bottle jaw. Notice the large swelling under her chin.

Barber pole worms are sneaky, tricky little things. There are no obvious outward symptoms until the animal is close to dying. In fact, often times small ruminants will go from looking fat and healthy straight to dead with no symptoms at all.

If you do have an animal that presents with symptoms, you are lucky. This animal needs to be dewormed with an effective dewormer IMMEDIATELY. You are in a race against the clock to save their life. The most likely symptoms you will see are bottle jaw, and severe anemia. They will also likely be dull and lethargic (laying down instead of up with the herd) with little to no exercise tolerance.

Obviously these are terrible ways to determine if an animal needs help. If your animal has progressed to this stage, there is a very good chance that it is too late to save them, and they will die.

There are two better ways to detect barber pole early

Thankfully, there are much better ways to determine parasite load without waiting for symptoms. Both of these early detection methods require a commitment on the part of the shepherd to be proactive in searching for problems. Even if your animals look fat, happy and healthy. You must remember barber pole worms are usually invisible killers.

barber pole worm eggs under microscope — Fecal egg count under microscope. A barber pole worm egg is at the tip of the white arrow.

The first of two ways that you can determine parasite load in your sheep is by do a fecal exam to look for parasite eggs. This is an excellent way to determine the species and number of parasites. It is a tool we highly recommend using. It can help you determine if there are other parasites besides barber pole at work inside your animal. It can also help you to determine if your dewormer is effective.

However, this tool is not very useful for making decisions on the fly out in the field when you are handling your animals. It is best used when combined with another tool called FAMACHA.

FAMACHA sounds weird, what is that?

FAMACHA is a technique used to determine anemia levels quickly out in the field with no special tools or equipment. It was developed in South Africa as a tool to help producers there determine when to deworm their animals.

FAMACHA if used properly can be a very helpful management too. It can help you to accurately determining anemia levels in both individual animals and within your entire flock. This can help you make both deworming and other important management decisions.

FAMACHA doesn’t tell you the exact number of worms present like the fecal egg count. BUT, it does tell you if an animal is in danger of dying from them. On a day to day basis, this is the singularly most important piece of information. It allows you to determine what animals are struggling so that you can deworm them before they are at risk of dying.

How does it work?

official FAMANCHA card — Official FAMACHA card showing anemia scores 1-5.

FAMACHA is based on a visual examination of the animal’s mucus membranes to identify anemia which is the major symptom of barber pole worm damage. FAMACHA uses an anemia scoring system on a scale of 1-5. 5 being extremely anemic and 1 being not anemic at all. This color coded chart takes the guess work out of deworming. If your animal scores a 1 or 2 no deworming is necessary. If they show a 4 or 5 you need to deworm them immediately.

3 is a bit trickier. If they show a 3 they may or may not need deworming. Whether they need dewormed or not at a FAMACHA 3 depends on many variables. If you are confident that your animal will clear the parasites on their own (such as with our Katahdins right after lambing) it is ok to closely monitor and take a wait and see approach. If you don’t think they will clear the parasites on their own, such as is the case with young lambs, you should go ahead and deworm them.

A few more preliminary details….

Before we take a quick look at how to check your sheep’s mucus membranes for anemia. We need to discuss some other details. The recommendation is to check the mucus membranes of every single sheep every 2 weeks unless you have a high level of anemia present. If you have a lot of anemic animals it is best to check them weekly. Sheep, particularly lambs can go from borderline anemic to dead in 2 weeks time.

In colder weather you can check less frequently, perhaps every 3-4 weeks rather than 1-2 as long as you are not seeing anemia in your flock. Keep in mind that your ewes and does will often have a large parasite bloom around the time that they lamb. It is a good idea to monitor your late gestation/early lactation ewes more closely.

It is an excellent idea to both familiarize yourself with the normal membrane color of your animals eyes and to purchase a FAMACHA card. The FAMACHA card will give you a non-subjective color to compare you sheep’s mucus membranes to. This will take any guess work out of the process.

To obtain a FAMACHA card you will need to take a course on the topic. The course can be taken in person, or alternatively, University of Rhode Island has a free online course that will allow you to purchase a card at the end. Please keep in mind that it is best to purchase an actual FAMACHA card. Cards printed off of the internet may not represent the colors accurately.

Now, lets step out into the pasture to see how to do FAMACHA properly

First you will need to catch and restrain your animals so that you can work around their heads. It can be very helpful to have a partner to help you, particularly if your animals are not used to being handled. Once you have your animals restrained, stand next to their shoulder so that you can push one side of their head against your leg. Once you are here you can begin the process of looking at the mucus membranes in their eyes to determine their anemia levels.

Step 1:

Hold their head gently against your leg. Then you push their upper eyelid closed with your thumb

You can see I am holding her head against my leg and am starting to push her upper eyelid shut with my thumb.

Step 2:

Once their eyelid is closed, gently apply pressure to their eyeball to push it back inside their head a little bit. Doing this is in no way hurting them.

Step 3:

While applying pressure to their eyeball, use the thumb of your other hand to pull downward on the lower eyelid. At this point the mucus membrane is exposed.

Here you can see I have pulled downward with my other thumb to expose her mucus membrane. She is ready for me to compare the color to the FAMACHA card I am holding below her eye.

Step 4:

Compare the mucus membrane to your FAMACHA card. Don’t compare your card to the inner eyelid color, but rather to the mucus membrane that you pushed up next to the eyeball. You need to do this quickly as the membrane will color up more the longer you hold the eye open. If you wait too long to compare you will get an inaccurately low number.

DO NOT try to just pull down the lower eyelid. This will not give you an accurate anemia score as you are looking at the eyelid not the mucus membrane.

Also, sometimes when you attempt this step the animals 3rd eyelid will bulge out. It will be white and may look scary. Don’t be alarmed, simply remove your fingers from their eye and try again pushing a little bit further back on their eye.

Here you can see the 3rd eyelid popped out of the corner of the eye. This is not what you want to color score.

Step 5:

Repeat with the other eye. Make your deworming decisions based on the color of the more anemic eye (highest FAMACHA card number).

That’s it. Simple as that.

In our next article in this series we are going to look at the lifecycle of barber pole worms and how we can control them through deworming and management practices. We are also going to talk about parasite resistance and why it is so important for everyone to follow the best management practices put forth by the American Consortium For Small Ruminant Parasite Control. If you wish to read more on this topic they are an EXCELLENT resource full of not only information, but also links to university research on topic.

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