Safe-Guard Feed Products: An Effective Alternative - Featuring Experts from Merck

In today's evolving parasite landscape, strategic deworming can play a key role in improving weight gain and overall health for cattle on pasture.

​On this episode, listeners will gain insight into current trends of cattle parasite management efficacy and how data-driven deworming decisions can support animal performance across different production systems. 

​Drawing from national fecal monitoring efforts and university-led parasite data, listeners will also learn updates and context around changing parasite pressures and what they mean for herd health and productivity.

This episode is eligible for ARPAS continuing education credits.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Voices of the Feed Industry. A Nutriblend webinar and podcast series created to connect industry professionals with the experts driving progress in animal nutrition. As a trusted partner to the industry, Neutrablend connects you to the latest technical insights, innovations, and real-world strategies shaping the future of animal agriculture. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Okay, well, uh, good morning, everyone. My name is Kevin Johnson. I sure appreciate you taking time out of your day today to join us for oh, I've got about 20-25 minutes of information around uh dewarming and around the product that uh that we manufacture at Mark called Safeguard. So really appreciate you taking your time today. And as we look at this first slide, um uh MutualBrend, a very valued partner for us uh as far as distributing our Safeguard products out to the industry, and we can't thank them enough for the partnership and uh their support of our product. But you'll notice that I've got uh a picture of some turkeys, some pigs, and some cattle up here. And so today I'm gonna touch on most of our information will be around well, around cattle, but I will touch briefly in case there's any of you out there that are servicing uh product or supplying product into the turkey industry or into the swine industry. But as we look at the safeguard feed products that are out there, uh by far and away, around 60% of our sales of these products go into cattle, and then the rest is distributed amongst uh the the swine industry, the poultry industry, as well as the uh wildlife industry. So anyway, I just kind of wanted to preface that, but mainly today, what I hope I don't lose a bunch of you, but uh we'll be focusing on uh the information I'm sharing today, mainly revolving around cattle. So I had the opportunity, uh, and I'll get into uh introduction here in a couple slides, but uh recently uh to attend a parasitology conference, a global conference. It was down on the island of Granada at St. Thomas University, and I saw on the right of the screen there, you'll see a poster. And I saw this uh up in the parasitology lab. And if you can't see it, uh it's a poster, take a look at it. It's basically uh looks like it's from the 1800s, and it was an advertisement that people were selling tapeworms. Okay, so tapeworms, something that we have in our dogs, our about all of our critters around the farm and around the ranch, uh you know, can have tapeworms. We see them in cattle as well. Uh but they were actually marketing tapeworms uh for human consumption as a weight control, uh, a diet, I guess you could say. Uh talks about eat, eat, eat, and always stay thin. We're gonna banish uh the fat with these tapeworms. And as I think through that, uh, he kind of kind of kind of chuckled because that was about the time that uh in today, you know, everything that we see on social media and is around all these new weight loss drugs and and folks that are using some of these different products that are exuberantly priced to to lose weight. And uh so I think that um my wife and I have discussed this, and and I guess at the end of the call, we're looking for investors. We may start us up a tapeworm farm and start uh packaging these things for some more economical uh weight control for folks if it actually works. But uh I say that it uh tongue in uh cheek tongue in cheek, but I did do a little bit of research on it, and it was a thing back in the 1800s. So I'm telling you that for a purpose or demonstrating it, and the purpose is uh there's a couple things I want you to remember today that when cattle get parasitized, uh they get a load of parasites. Uh, the first thing that we typically see is a reduction in intake. And if we're measuring that in a feed yard or a background in yard, uh pretty easy to measure uh daily feed intake, right? But I also want to demonstrate with this photo that you see, an aerial photo, and this was uh a photo of a uh of some paddocks at a research facility where a deworming trial was had been conducted and they took some pictures. And I think if you look at the two paddocks that were the dewormed cattle, you will see that they are a lighter shade of green than the two paddocks that had the cattle that were allowed to be infected with parasites. So here we're demonstrating, and this was a reference from Dr. Lou Gasberry at USDA, here we're demonstrating uh that lighter color uh demonstrates more forage being harvested by those dewormed animals. So we shouldn't just think about that intake and think of a feedlot or a backgrounding facility. Uh that's that's intake out on pasture, too, with our any animals that we're putting on grass uh as their as their source of nutrition. So uh if I one thing I want you to remember leaving here, what what do parasites do? Basically, it reduces their intake by suppressing their appetite. Okay, and that's not a good thing if we're trying to put weight on cattle. So uh just a little bit, uh I call today's discussion around production parasitology because uh we want to talk about controlling these parasites and managing them uh at a level that we don't see problems. And when I say don't see problems, those of you on the call that have been around cattle, you've seen a wormy animal, you've seen a calf or a cow that looks wormy. Uh, but once we get to that point, uh we're behind the eight ball. So what we're talking about today is production parasitology, okay? And my name is Kevin Johnson. I've been with Merck and working with the Safeguard Molecule now for 33 years. Um, I recently went back uh about four years ago and went through a program to get my degree in veterinary parasitology at 53 years old. And I say that was uh I would if you're considering that, I'd say do it when you're younger, but we were able to get through it, and I'm now part of our beef cattle technical services staff. So before we get into the the nitty-gritty, I think sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words just to give you some insight into who I am, what I do. Um the program that I went through recently was up at Cornell. I've been about two years ago, got through that was a three-year program in veterinary parasitology. And then my wife and I and our family in the bottom left there, we are in that wonderful phase of life, uh, grandparent phase. So pretty much the world uh life now revolves around those two little kids in those pictures, and they are actually uh coming to my house today, and we will start turkey hunting tomorrow and be uh have the whole crew at the house for some turkey hunting in southwest Missouri. I live just north of Springfield, Missouri, spent a lot of my career in Texas with the company, uh, but we currently reside in Missouri. So I want to reference this back uh to kind of kind of level set real quickly, right? And that is uh the effects of if we look at the animal health technologies, cattle producers have a lot of things on the shelf today that they can turn to to try to increase their profitability through the use of technologies, right? And and what I'm talking here are things like implants, fly control, uh dewarmers, uh, ionophores, so products like Remensin and Bovatec. Iowa State uh did an analysis back in 2007, and at that point in time, and we don't think anything has changed since then, uh they still showed that out of all these technologies, that an effective dewarming program in the stocker segment on the right and the Cal Kef segment on the left is still a tremendous return on investment and was the leading technology. But you notice that I said effective dewarming. So keep that in mind. I didn't say dewarmed, I said effectively dewarmed. We'll come back to that a little bit later. Um, but as you can see here, uh in the stock, the Cal Kef segment, dewarmers lead the way, and you wonder how they get to that number. Uh, it wouldn't be very hard in today's market, but these numbers are based off the 2007 cattle market. Cattle were about half of what they are now. Uh so if I updated these numbers, it would uh you could almost double the economic impact uh when we look at those dollars. Um but you may wonder how we get to that number. That's more than just weaning weight in the cow kef segment. We're also looking at missing pregnancies because we do know that uh cows, when they become parasitized, it can have an effect on their pregnancy rates and uh therefore delivering us a kef. So that's what drives that number. As you can see, dewormers number one in the stocker segment, followed pretty closely by implants. If we roll over to the feedlot segment, you know, implants by far and away uh the most profitable technology, but in second place they're dewarmers. So hopefully you're seeing a theme here that effective deworming is a cornerstone uh for our animal health protocol. And I would say um uh Madison uh who's who's on the call today from NutriBland, as we go through this, I believe there's a place that you can submit some questions, and we will make sure that we answer those at the end of the session today. Uh I believe you should be able to find a QA there and or something in the chat, however you want to do it. But I just tried to put some numbers to today's dewarming um just to give us an idea, and I haven't updated these since since late fall, but you know, looking at a 500-pound steer bringing five bucks, uh strategically dewormed cow kef pear throughout the grazing season, if it's a spring keving herd and we keep uh that cow kef bear strategically dewormed, our data would say multiple trials that we would average somewhere around 29 extra pounds. Um, I think you can see there that as a if I back out the cost of deworming that pear, we still have a 13 to 1 uh return on investment. And I didn't even factor anything on pregates there. But then I looked at a stalker uh over on the right-hand side, uh, a stocker scenario, so some stocker kivs on grass, uh, where we uh implemented some strategic deworming on pasture versus just deworming them when we turned them to grass one time. Uh we went into these cattle and we dewormed them strategically through the feed, and we were able to get 17 more pounds. And so you see there that we still had a significant return on investment of 10 to 1. Um, so we'll get a little bit more into how to strategically deworm those cattle. But I think the the biggest issue that we have today uh when we look at effective deworming versus just deworming is we got to be aware of the subclinical disease, right? So clinically evident disease, um, very easily, you know, we can visually see this animal uh is is unthrifty and not looking well, but we can have cattle out there that look really good to the eye, but could be suffering from some subclinical effects of parasitism. And I'll demonstrate that on this slide. I think we would all agree. The heifer on the left uh would be a candidate for deworming if she was if that heifer was in my pasture, and probably some some some nutrition be thinking about some nutritional things of how this animal got to this point. But I think our challenge is over on the right. As I talk to a lot of producers that say, hey, I deworm, my cattle look great. Um, and uh, as we look at these two Hertford cows, we could have one of these animals that could be suffering from some subclinical parasitism because it uh sometimes we can't tell it just by looking and taking body condition scores. So we're gonna talk a little bit about. So, how do I know, right? Um, but before I hit on that, um we've talked about that effect on their appetite, which then uh reduces feed intake. Um, the parasites that we're mostly concerned with internally in our beef cattle here in the U.S., these particular parasites that are called nematodes, they like to live in the abomasum, so the stomach and the intestine of the cattle. And of course, what they will do there is they will just disrupt the function of those organs. So it'll lead to increased nutrient requirements, it'll decrease the ability of the nutrients to be absorbed through the small intestine. So those are some things that happen there. But the other fact that we have to uh consider is the effect of the immune system. Well, we know that these parasites, the immune system has a response when an animal gets these parasites. Uh, there's two sides of the immune system. I won't get into that, but if you'll just remember that if uh if animals are parasitized and we're able to clean out the worms, it allows that immune system to reset and and and work on other things. And an example that I will use is if we have a warming set of calves that typically are spring-born calves that don't receive any deworming treatment throughout the grazing season while they're suckling and we wean them and we deworm them. Well, it's going to take uh a few days for that dewormer to take effect, but it will clear it out. So then possibly when we come back and we're giving our booster vaccines 14-21 days later, it could help that immune system pick up those uh pick up those vaccines better. And in that scenario, the perfect example would be a pre-weaning uh program where those kids were you know dewormed and vaccinated the first time, you know, pre-weaning before we hit that stress event, and then we got the worms cleaned out. So when we wean them and they start going through some stress, uh we don't have the parasites, and possibly they could uh uh the immune system could better utilize the other technologies that were using at that point in time. So just keep in mind has affect, and I think a picture is worth a thousand words. I'll say that again. If you look at this photo on the left of the of the uh specimen jars, uh the upper left-hand corner is uh what these lymph nodes look like prior to infection. And these were infected, I believe, with ostratasia, which is that old brown stomach worm that we hear about. And then look at day 28 and look at the size of those lymph nodes. So just demonstrating the immune system's response, okay? And then there's a picture of those lymph nodes over there on the right to give you an idea. And I just always think back to when I was a kid and would go to the doctor, and maybe I was coming down with the flu or some sort of something. First thing that doctor did was reach up and palpate my neck, feeling for those swollen lymph nodes, right? So trying to give you some tidbits here uh to remember. But what do I want you to understand uh during the as we go through the session today? To me, it's utmost to to uh I always refer to it as uh at a producer meeting, who is deworming their cattle? Does everybody deworm and the hands go up? But unfortunately, today we have to preface that and say, are we effectively deworming our cattle? Because some of our products are just not performing the way they did when they were uh released by the FDA and we started using them back uh 30 plus years ago. So I hope I've already set the case that deworming is a big deal uh economically, and that Merck is here to assist yourself as well as cattle producers uh in trying to wade through these waters. So, what is our problem? You've heard me mention effective versus non-effective deworming, and I think as you look at this, you'll see a lot of these products on on shelves across uh the United States and our animal health stores and our bed clinics and other places, but there's two things that that I mentioned earlier that some of these products are not as effective, and why has that happened? And uh my personal opinion is is two things. Uh, number one is underdosing. I feel that we uh that a lot of our our dosing that takes place is done on the average uh weight of the animals in the group. And if we dose on the average, uh that's going, we're probably gonna underdose, you know, as many as half of those animals. Where I my recommendation is we always dose towards the heavy end, the heavy end or the heavy set of the animals, the heaviest end of the group. Um so I think that is one thing that is that is possibly a problem for us. And the other thing would be overuse. And I'll use an example of the ivermectin poron in the yellow box in the lower right-hand corner. If we think back to when the generic uh porons hit the market, the generic dewormers in general, uh they became very economical. And one of the things they became cheaper to use a product like ivermectin poron for fly control through the summer, uh, became more economical than the traditional fly control products that were not dewormers. So a lot of folks started using these porons. So they were using them for worm control in the spring and the fall, and maybe they were using them two or three times during the summer for flight control, and a lot of folks were reducing the rate. Um, but whether you reduce the rate or not, both both were bad. We were just basically overusing these products, and when we overuse, we can have the possibility of building up some resistance based upon lack of efficacy. So that's a problem that I feel like we're dealing with today. But the first part in understanding this, and I'll I'll lean upon you all to think back for flight control. Let's go back 20, 25 years ago. We started learning that with fly control we had to rotate products, we had to start understanding uh the chemical class and the families, and we couldn't just say we're going to switch brand names, right? We couldn't just go from one fly tag to the other because it was a different brand name. We needed to look at the chemical and make sure we were rotating chemical classes. Well, the same applies as far as the dewormers available to us. We have three chemical classes on the market. And over on the left, you'll see the benzemidazols uh were kind of sometimes lumped in as the white warmers, we're oral products, uh be the safeguard uh suspension products as well as the safeguard feed, panicure, valves, and synanthic. We're all in the same chemical class. When you look over at the macrocyclic lactones, I'll just tell you that this includes most all of our injectable or poron dewarmers belong to this chemical class. And then we have a third class that you may see down here at the bottom, the emidazothizals, and these are products that are extensively used in small ruminant traditionally here in the U.S., but they are labeled for cattle, and we do see some use in cattle. And I will throw in there's one there on the screen, Balcor. It's kind of not in a box. Uh Zoetis introduced this product going on, I think, three years ago, and it is actually a combination dewarmer, so it can it actually has in it the Dectamax is the macrocyclic lactone, is in Valcor, as well as the lavamosol uh from the emidazothizol class. So it's a combination dewarmer that includes two of the classes. So um just keep in mind if it's an injectable or a poron with the exception of Valcore, it's in the same chemical class. And once a parasite uh becomes resistant to one product in that class, uh high likelihood we're not gonna see a response if we switch to another product in that class. That's not gonna be our best route to move forward. We're gonna want to change classes. Um, you're gonna see some Merck data, but I'm gonna go back here to uh a national survey that was done back in 2007 and 2008. Uh the data was published in 2015. It was USDA, Dr. Lou Gasbury, and 2007-2008, they were saying that some of these injectables and porons that we're using are not the same eff not performing at the same efficacy as when they were first licensed. Um, to give you an idea, uh Ivermectin uh released in 1984. Don't know if anyone on the call was deworming cattle in 1984, but Ivermectin, uh, Ivormect, the brand name and safeguard were introduced in 1984. And you know, we had the luxury up until uh the early 2000s, so a lot of years that any dewormer we picked up on the shelf was pretty effective. But unfortunately, we've lost some of that efficacy, and we just need to be aware of that and make our cattle producers aware of that. It's something that we can manage, uh, but if we don't have the education and the awareness, then uh we may end up in a problem. But Merck has kept a lot of data over the years since 2007, and what I'm reporting to you today is uh is our data set uh that comprises of about 700 uh fecal leg count reduction tests, and it basically gives us an idea of what the efficacy of the product is. And the way we conduct this is that uh a producer will call and say, I'm gonna I'm gonna work my cattle tomorrow, um, process them through the shoot and deworm them. Well, we would collect uh twin we would select a group of cattle, typically a younger group, so some keves, uh maybe some replacement heifers, first kef heifers, that type of an animal. We'd choose the younger animals. Um we would be there and collect 20 fecal samples prior to that deworming. We would come back 14 days later and collect 20 more fecal samples from that same group. And what we're gonna do is send those to the lab, they're gonna process them, and we're gonna count eggs in the manure. And that's what we're counting. So we would see how many eggs we counted in the samples, uh, the first 20, compared to the second 20, we want to see 90% reduction in the number of eggs being released being excreted in the manure. And if we're at 90% or greater reduction, we've had a successful deworming. And as you'll see here, if we look at our data, we've got about 150 tests of the porons. Uh on the left, you see the mean efficacy on the right is the median. Um, so mean efficacy, let's just talk there, about 60% efficacy when our our our standard is 90% or greater. The injectables, about 60% efficacy when we're looking for 90%. If we look at the benzole families, which would include Safeguard, you'll see there that we're still well above 97, 98% across the board. If we look at Safeguard, if we look at the Safeguard. Feed and mineral products, you know, a great good efficacy there, approaching 98%. And then if we look at our combination therapies, I mentioned Valcor earlier, being two products in one injectable shot. Well, here we look at using safeguard along with a poron or along with an injectable while we're processing those cattle. And you can see we bumped those efficacies up 99% and greater. So the fecal egg count reduction test is our way of determining the efficacy of our product on our farm and on our ranch. I will tell you this this is data from across the nation, right, in our database. And just uh to help folks with their comfort level of the safeguard feed, because I think the traditional uh assumption is that the feed products aren't going to work as well as giving them something in the chute. But I think you'll see here that across the board when we look at uh products when when these tests were done and it was reported that it was a feed product, um, you know, we had 28 tests. I'm not sure exactly what formulation to feed, but you know, nearly, you know, 99.9% efficacy, mineral 96%. Uh looking at our 196 products that are typically mixed into a total ration on the farm ranch, uh, strong efficacy across the board, all above 90% efficacy with these feed formulations. So you can have confidence that they will work. So I like to throw in not just MERC data, but we did collaborate with a few states back in 2022 and 2023 with the Extension Group within Kentucky. They selected random farms to do these fecal leg count reduction tests, and uh they reported the data back to us. And as you can see here in mature cows, those injectables, that macrocyclic lactone, which is those injectables and porons, reported about 75% efficacy. Once again, 90% is our gold standard. And in the younger animals, we were only seeing about 64% efficacy. So we wanted to work with some of the different extension groups just to validate, I guess you could say, our data and say it's what we're seeing in our database, what we're seeing out there in the field. So Missouri, uh, they reported on 51 tests. They saw about 80% efficacy uh in mature cattle and about 70% efficacy in the younger stock. But I think you'll notice in all these states that the benzendazols, so the oral products are all working well above 90%, whether it was safeguard, valves, or semantic. And route of administration, uh, this question comes to me a lot is is an injectable better than a poron or vice versa? And I think you would see here that in Missouri there was literally no difference, 71% and 73%, if we round up uh efficacy based upon if it was reported as an injectable or poron, as you can see in Kentucky, 64 and 66 percent. Um, and then they looked at the name brand in Kentucky versus a generic, and you see a pretty pretty big difference between the performance of the generics and the name brand. So keep that in mind. Sorry for bogging you down on data, but I think I needed to set the stage and set the scene that we do have an issue going on here that we need to at least be aware of, and we'll talk about some ways uh that we can test for this and ways that we can help our cattle producers monitor their herds and make sure that they still have an effective product. But just some recent data that was published, California, they looked at eight herds, all of these herds, there was evidence of resistance to those injectables and porons. University of Arkansas looked at cydectin versus its generic equivalent called Turamox, and uh you can see neither of those groups reached 90% reduction on a fecal egg count reduction test. North Carolina State looked at a group of 90 Kevs. They only had 25% of the Kevs that achieved a 90% or greater reduction. So just trying to share with you some data that we do have a problem. So now we'll kind of turn into how do we fix this problem, okay? And I uh as I do producer meetings, I uh I think it's fairly routine that our cattle producers do some soil sampling uh occasionally to help them make decisions on their purchases of their products that they're gonna put, the fertilizer products, whatever they're gonna put on their pasture, uh, to help it uh you know be the most efficient for them and and get the best production. And then we routinely utilize hay and forage sampling uh to make sure and help us make decisions on our supplemental program. So I propose that once a year our cattle producer should be doing some fecal testing. And one thing that Merck does make available to our customers are these kits. And the kit is everything you need to collect 20 samples from a group of animals within your herd. Uh it's shipped right back in this box. It's everything you need, even a prepaid UPS two-day shipping label to the lab. And then Merck will pick up the cost of the testing. So this kit, 20 samples, most commercial labs, you're probably this the value of this is about $300. You're probably looking at $10 to $15 per sample to get these processed. So Merck will pick up the tab. So is an effort to try to help our customers understand what's going on from a parasite management standpoint within their herd. And I like to say it's so easy, a four-year-old can do it. Uh, my grandson and I collecting some samples over Christmas break and uh on a on a ranch down in Texas, and uh he sure had some fun stories to tell after Christmas break when he went back to school. So uh the instructions are in there. We just look at collecting random fresh samples off the ground, so not having to run cattle through the chute uh to rectively gain samples. So it's a pretty easy process. So, how can we fix this? Uh, I think the first the the next question that I get a lot is uh when is the best time to deworm to deworm animals? So I want to spend just a little time there to try and help help us answer that question. And two things that you see on this screen, you see if somebody working on a lawnmower and somebody or a picture of a pasture that looks like we got a pretty heavy frost. And these are the two indicators that that I encourage you to remember around our parasite control programs. And as we look at this, what it tells us is I'm gonna start here in the fall. When we get that hard-killing frost in the fall and our temperatures you know get down to 28 degrees, uh, the parasites that are active on our pasture during the grazing season, they will slow down their transmission. They will either die off or they'll become dormant and hang out for the next grazing season. Um, so depending on where you're at on this call, where I'm at in southwest Missouri, we normally have this by about Halloween. And uh so once Halloween comes around, we've typically had this hard-killing frost, and our parasites pretty much go dormant. So if I clean my cattle up then, um, you know, I'm gonna go through that winter supplementation program without any parasites robbing me, right? So there's some good timing. And then in the spring, I think about the lawnmower. And the first time we got to drag that lawnmower out of the garage, crank it up, charge the battery, sharpen the blades, service it. That's telling us that the grass needs to be mowed in the yard, and that's probably indicator that our grass on our pasture we've got enough moisture and warmth that our native native grass is growing, and that our parasites have once again become active on our pastures. So that typically happens for me uh sometime around March 15th to the to the end of March. We start uh I gotta mow that grass for the first time around 1st of April, something let's call it, okay? And we'll come back to that. But remember that lawnmower and remember that frost. But just remember our problem is on our pasture. Uh 90% of our problem is out there on the pasture. That's where these uh parasites uh develop and live. So we've got this animal that is uh this cow that's excreting manure, this cow or this kef, or heifer, and uh there's adult worms in that animal, and those worms are uh producing eggs that come out in the manure, and those eggs will develop into larva. They'll spend a couple of their stages of development right there in that that nice safe habitat of that manure pile, and then they reach a third stage larvae and they have a protective coat around a protective sheath around their body, and their job now is to leave the manure path, crawl up up on those blades of grass, utilizing a film of moisture, and be consumed by the cow coming along. And the cow consumes, and then that larvae is in her body, develops into an adult worm, and starts shedding eggs. So that's our life cycle. So, a couple things to mention there is uh they need this grass, so they need they need a certain level of warmth to develop, and then they need that film of moisture to get up and down that blade of grass for consumption. And just to demonstrate that, this is a a uh a magnified picture of a dew drop on a blade of grass, and all those squiggly little white lines that you see in there, uh those are those stage three infected larvae. Uh so just remember that the next time you walk out in the pasture and pick up that blade of grass and stick it in your mouth, and there's been a nice dew that morning or rain, uh you're probably going to ingest some of these uh these uh gastrointestinal nematodes. But fortunately, uh most all of those uh do not affect us. So you're safe there. And I can't emphasize enough that when we talk about parasite, internal parasite management, the reinfection of these cattle, that grass height plays a huge part. So first thing I look for uh when I pull onto someone's place, and I want you to note the stalker cattle on the left side, uh, looks like they're on uh the the stalkers, and note the height of the grass and then look at these pears on the right. I think we'd all agree a little more lush, taller forage. And the reason I point that out is as I describe those larvae that go up and down the blades of grass, if we survey the pasture, we find that about 90% of them live in the lower four inches of the forage. And why is that important to remember? Just that the tighter we graze our cattle, um, the conditions we put them in on short grass, they are going to reinfect more quickly and at a higher level than these pairs, let's say on the right, that have uh more grass. Now I said 90% lower four inches of the grass, but 10% of them, uh, you know, they will get up on the low on the higher grass and they will infect the cattle. But I want you to keep this in mind that I can have two neighbors that I'm calling on, and one can be very liberally stocking rate, uh they have a very liberal stocking rate and lush grass, and uh, we've got one program there, whereas the neighbor may be uh maybe slightly overstocked, uh, maybe they're grazing their grass down to a lower level, and they're just going to reinfect because as they put their head on the ground and graze, they're picking up more of the larva. So we talked about that post-frost deworming, and I think that is critical. Uh, I think uh you know, if we get that deworming into them after a hard-killing frost, we're gonna keep that animal. She's not gonna reinfect, uh, that cow's not gonna reinfect, or that stalker until those temperatures in the spring uh get back up to let's say 50 degrees day and night type average. That's what kicks off that spring transmission. Uh keep in mind what's going on if we got these that these are spring Kevin cows, you know, we're gonna be going through that winter period, kind of in that that latter trimester. Uh so you know, a lot of nutrition going down for that kef. Um, we've got our winter supplementation costs, probably our most expensive time as far as supplementation for our cattle. And uh, you know, we don't want them carrying parasites during that period. So if we look at that uh, you know, traditionally uh spring calving herd, we're weaning calves in August or September, maybe October. We're running these cows through the chute. We're typically deworming them because we have our hands on them. I'm just saying if we deworm them too early in the fall, they'll go back out, they'll reinfect, and they'll carry those parasites through the winter. So timing that fall deworming as close as we can to or after a hard-killing frost would just allow these animals to go through the winter, possibly with a lower parasite load. So, just to try to make it keep it very simple, we've got a clean cow here in southwest Missouri because I dewormed her around October uh 31st, around Halloween. She hasn't picked up any parasites, and now spring is upon us. And what should I do? Well, I've got this clean animal. Uh, you know, parasites have been managed because of my treatment in the fall, and I don't need to treat her as green grass comes on, let's say April 1st, because she should not have picked up any parasites over the winter. But what I can do is I can let her graze that spring grass for about six to eight weeks, and then I want to deworm her. Okay, and you may say, well, how did you arrive at six to eight weeks? Well, let's say April 1st, the transmission starts and she picks up her first infective L3 larva. Once it's in her body, it takes about six to eight weeks until that's an adult worm producing eggs and shedding them on the pasture. So we want to break that cycle. So if that happens here in Southwest Missouri, April 1st, I'm gonna look at uh you know, mid-May to the first of June would be the optimal time to deworm these cows for their spring treatment. If we're looking at stalker cattle, um, you know, we look at about a four-week life cycle of that parasite. So instead of waiting six to eight weeks, if it's stalkers and I I uh have them good and clean and deworm going out to grass, and I want to intervene uh in about four weeks with another deworming, uh let them uh harvest that larva off the pasture and then intervene and break that life cycle. Just the life cycle is quicker in younger animals. So if we did not treat after killing frost, uh you tell me, well, Kevin, I I early weaned some Kevs in August, September, and I went ahead and treated those cows and they reinfected. And so we're gonna have to treat now and in six weeks. But if we did the our fall deworming appropriately, like I said, we can delay that spring, early summer treatment till in my part of the country, mid-May, first of June, if you're down further south, just back it up. You're all gonna base everything on when that spring grass growth begins. So that is kind of strategically deworming our cattle versus just deworming them when we have them in the chute. And I like to think of it as we're utilizing that bovine animal, that cow, that kiff, that stalker, uh, to be a vacuum cleaner for us. So that six to eight week period uh that they're out there, they're consuming this larvae, they're helping us clean up our environment where we're bringing them in, and we're deworming them before they're shedding more eggs back onto our pasture. So, just to finish up uh the talk today, um, you know, the value of our safeguard feed products at Nutriblend does a wonderful job distributing for us. I want to talk about that, and I think I just mentioned it, it allows us to deworm at the best time because most people would tell me, Kevin, I I'm not gonna gather my cattle again in the fall, I'm not gonna gather my cattle in May or June. I do all my other processing to them in April or I do it at weaning. Um I said, well, good, well, we have another option, and that is through the feed products to be able to help us deworm at the best time. So just to let you know, Merck, uh, what we make and sell out, we make our safeguard 20% premix that would go to a national to a distributor like Nutriblend. They're gonna blend this down into the different formulations that you uh purchase uh that you're gonna maybe blend down into a finished product or you're gonna ship directly to a farm for utilization. Uh but it's a very concentrated type A product, so it requires a federal feed mill to have this product on premise. But that's what Mark, that's what we sell at our door that then gets blended down into the products that you see, like the 0.5% pellets, the 1.96% flake meal, different products like that. Um, this just gives up one of the products uh that's most popular that is the Safeguard 196. And you may say, Wow, what a name, and why is that most popular? Well, that is the most concentrated type B uh formulation of safeguard uh that is allowable by the FDA. So this is a great product that's used by regional mills that may not have a federal feed mill license, uh, that they can come in then and and make 0.5% pellets, they can make range cubes, make different products, right? They could make type B's or type C's. And uh just to give you an idea, uh, when we look at the an expanded label for this product, you know, when that pre-mix goes out our door, uh, this 196 can be can be labeled for cattle or can be fed to cattle, horses. Uh, we have zoo and wildlife on that particular covered. We have swine, we have growing turkey, and we have wild quail. So that's everything that that premix is approved for. That then the 196 can be used for. Another product that Nutriblend distributes for Merck is the safeguard uh deworming blocks. Okay, so Nutriblend doesn't make this one. Uh, Merck has this made, but uh Nutriblend is a distributor, and a very popular product, probably one of our most popular uh feed products is our block. And I like to say that's because it's pretty bomb-proof. Okay. Um, probably the biggest question is how do we know all the animals get their dose? Well, this is a free choice product, so it has salt as a limiter. And what we will see is yes, uh, with about 17% salt, we put these out. You know, we we we we're careful in our placement. We make sure we put them out in a place, we make sure the cattle know what a block is so that they will consume it. They're in the first time they've seen a molasses block. And with the 17% salt, we'll see the more dominant animals come up, of course, and always consume first, but there's enough salt that they'll back away, so the more timid animals can come up and get their dose. And uh, these blocks uh uh are you know been on the market a long time and still a very popular way for folks that don't have uh good working facilities or folks that want to utilize these in their strategic deworming program, and they supplement their cattle with some sort of molasses tub so their cattle are already adapted. Uh, one question you may say is, well, Kevin, you know, some of your safeguard feed is we feed it for one day, but here the block is labeled to be fed for three days as a free choice. How does that work? Well, with any of our multi-day feeding, uh, we're looking at the cumulative dose effect. And the thing to remember is that the safeguard that's in the product, when it is consumed, um, it goes to the fat tissue of the worm and that's where it stores. It doesn't get go through the animal's body. So it stores up in the fat tissue of the worm until they've consumed enough of the feed product uh to get enough of the safeguard to kill the parasite. So we call that the cumulative dose effect. And so just just remember it builds up in the fat tissue of the worm. Kind of like if uh if my wife decides the insurance money uh looks really good and she wanted to get rid of me, she'd probably feed me some arsenic uh little doses in my in my break in my cereal in the morning, and I'd eventually kill over. That's the same way Safeguard works in the parasite, does not leave the body. But a very popular product, uh also that's on the market are the 0.5% pellets. Uh, you probably see these in a variety of package sizes. Uh, the one I have pictured for you is a 25-pound bag. These products are currently uh all labeled to be fed in one day. They are type B with mixing instructions, and uh, NeutralBlend has them available in 10-pound and 25-pound bags, and a very easy feeding rate to remember one pound of pellets is going to treat 1,000 pounds of cattle. Safeguard range cubes, another popular way to supplement cattle in certain parts of the country, so the cattle are adapted to consuming range cubes, so we can deworm them through the range cubes. Neutral blend has this available in a product that we feed at a rate of five pounds of cubes per thousand pounds of body weight. And once again, this is just a one-day feeding, and then you would just go back to your non-medicated range cubes after you've selected the proper time to deworm and fed this animal. And once again, I can't reinforce as we're calculating how many pounds of body weight we're going to be deworming. We need to make sure we include all the body weight in that pasture, and then uh versus trying to dose, you know, and let's dose to the heaviest animals, okay? Let's uh let's not dose to the average. If if we've got uh a set of cows out there and and you know the the heavy end of them are 1,400 pound cows, then I certainly wouldn't try to feed them a thousand pound dose, right? We want to we want to treat towards that heavier end. And just some other products from Nutriblend that you'll see that that are readily available and utilized. Uh, there's a 0.6 product, so uh the 0.5 that we saw earlier was one pound per thousand. Uh this is one pound per 1,200 pound of cattle, so uh some people prefer that particular formulation. Um, then they have a 0.9 and a 0.72 product. I've got listed there the different uh presentations that they come in, 10, 50 pounders on the 0.72. Typically see these products used in swine, and you'll see they're you know, either four ounces per 250 or 2 ounces per 100. So a variety of products that we try to have available to fit anyone's particular need. I guess just in closing, I would say, you know, we want to be thinking about feeding these cows and not the worms, and whether that feed is coming through a bunk, a self-feeder, or if they're out there on pasture, we want to be able to manage these parasites at a level that the cattle can perform to their genetic potential and not have any production hampered by these internal parasites. So I'm gonna leave this last slide up for a minute. I once again want to tell you how much I appreciate your time today and And uh and letting me walk through uh something that I'm very passionate about. And I guess just to summarize, uh, remember that parasites reduce intake, so it just basically suppresses their appetite, they just don't eat as much. Uh, they really mess up that abomasum and small intestine. Uh so as far as our nutrient absorption and the feed that we're putting into them, we're not getting the most out of. And it will have an effect on that immune system. Uh, keep in mind that a lot of these injectables and poron dewarmers are not working at a 90% efficacy. And if that's the case, uh, we need to switch to a different class, family of products, and that we can do that through testing. Um, and that's about the only way we can do it is through a fecal egg count reduction test. And remember that Merck offers that for our customers, and we pick up the tab for it to try to help them make good, sound decisions around their having a sustainable parasite management program. And then lastly, just remember have confidence in the feed products. Uh, safeguard swine fed over a three to 12-day period. We've been using that product for years and years with lots of success in the safeguard blocks, the different products that we feed over multiple days, or if we're just doing a one-day feeding, we're highly confident that with some basic management we can get these animals dewormed and get them back to performing at their potential. And uh that kind of summarizes the key points I had for today. Um, so I'm gonna stop sharing, uh Madison, and I'm gonna uh go back here to the QA and see if anyone has uh it looks like we've got one in here. Okay, it says if deworming at spring turnout. Okay, we talked about that, and uh then retreating six to eight weeks later. Do you recommend using a different product for the two treatments? Great question. Um, in that scenario, I would think that today uh most of us would consider the gold standard if we're deworming at turnout is we would be using a combination deworming program. So at turnout, we would be using something from the benzymazole class as well as something from the macrocyclic lactone class. Okay, uh, so a combination that's what we're seeing. Our highest efficacy is with that. And then as we're going to deworm them six to eight weeks later, um, typically uh I would say most folks want to do that on pasture, and really our only source, our only choice there would be the safeguard uh fenbendazole products on pasture. If you were bringing them back through the chute, um, you know, we could you have the choice of doing the combination again. Uh we see a lot of people having success with just safeguard for that second treatment. So I think the key there is monitoring. Okay, and that's what I'll say is that if I'm working with someone on this, I'm gonna ask them to do a fecal egg count reduction test behind each of these dewormings to make sure we're still having a high level of efficacy. So um I think too that this could be alluding to, I know when I started in the business in '93, we've learned a lot about parasites, not just we at Merck, but as an industry. Um I think at that time there was some rotating of dewormers, and that was something that was um talked about was you know, use one class in the spring, use one class in the fall. And I'm not saying that whether that was successful or not, it seemed to work then. I think most of the parasitologists uh that I get to go and hear at conferences speak that have been doing this a long time, would say that rotating is probably not the way we need to go today, we need to go with the combination therapy. And the reason for that, as you saw, uh I'm gonna use this example of safeguard alone at 98%. And if we use safeguard with an injectable, let's say, and we get that efficacy up to 99.5%, most people would say, big deal, what's 1.5%? But when we start considering that the average, I'm gonna say an average wormy cow may have around, let's just say, 30,000 parasites in their system. When all of a sudden we kill 1.5% more of 30,000, we've killed a significant amount of parasites more than it than if we'd have killed it, than just safeguard alone. And so less parasites going on to our pasture. Um that that would be uh the general feeling today, and I hope I've answered that question. I guess uh with that we'll wrap things up. Madison, thank you again for the invite today, and uh really enjoyed getting to visit with you about some parasite management.