SmartWorm®

The discovery of a new parasite management way

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SmartWorm enables farmers to treat ONLY the animals who need a drench and leave the rest untreated, without any production loss.

Prevent drench resistance

Our philosophy is Targeted Selective Treatment (TST), where only the lambs that need a drench are treated. This helps stop worms from getting used (resistant) to the medicine because not all of them are exposed to it. Through TST, we maintain a situation where we can eliminate more than 95% of the worms, leaving only a small number of resistant ones. This ensures that the medicine remains effective.

The basis of the TST philosophy is treating every lamb as an individual rather than group level diagnostics. Think about if there was a chest infection in your house. Only the person showing symptoms would take an antibiotic, not the whole house!

Return on investment

Every farmer is looking to reduce costs. SmartWorm is proven to cut drench use by 40-50% with an insignificant difference in production compared to monthly blanket treatment. This leads to three savings - a smaller drench bill, less time spent drenching and the prevention of resistance development. Tackling resistance now will allow you to keep using low-cost drenches, and avoid swapping to newer ones (3-4x more expensive).

Ease of use

The drench recommendations are delivered in the SmartWorm mobile app in real time, sheepside. Just follow the colour-coded indications (Red = Dose; Green = No Dose).

The app's user-friendly interface makes it easy to find your way around drenching sessions, statistics, alerts and reports. You'll need a weigh head and an eID reader to pair to the SmartWorm app. We integrate with almost all of them. We also integrate with auto drafters so dose/no dose lambs are separated more easily. And we integrate with farm management softwares so all your data ends up in the one place.

Peace of mind

SmartWorm is programmed to always select a % of every mob to be blanket treated, no matter what. This creates a Control group for comparison, showing you how the animals would grow if the entire mob were blanket treated. This allows you to compare performance of the TST and Control groups to verify there is no loss of performance, giving the peace of mind to have confidence in SmartWorm's drench recommendations.

"Living With Drench Resistance" - Using SmartWorm to keep wormers working

Hear from SmartWorm user Steven Johnston, a sheep farmer based in Ballymena, Co Antrim speaking at our 2024 Smart Sheep Farming Series held across Ireland. Steve shares his journey with diagnosed drench resistance since 2006 and how SmartWorm identifies:

  • which lambs are likely to need a drench in real time, so he can do TST and reduce his drench use by up to 60% without affecting performance

All this is required is to weigh and eID record your lambs monthly and SmartWorm will provide dosing recommendations in real time.

The Philosophy Behind SmartWorm: TST

The Problem: Worms!

Gastro-intestinal nematodes (worms!) are a major threat to food security and production as their infections negatively impact sheep health and welfare, GHG emissions, sustainable livestock production and farm profitability. They cost the global livestock industry ~€10 billion in lost production annually. Good worm control is highly dependent on effective drugs (anthelmintics). However, a direct and unavoidable result of continuous use of wormers is drug resistance. And so, the threat posed by worms is increasing as the drugs we use no longer work as well as they used to.

Drench Resistance

The more a drug is used, the faster resistance develops. This is particularly true when all the lambs are treated at the same time, regularly, whether they need it or not (i.e. blanket treated). Whenever you blanket treat, you kill only the susceptible worms inside the animal. The resistant worms survive the treatment, and are left to breed amongst themselves. Thus, their percentage of the overall worm population increases, eventually to the point that the drug no longer works. If you're really silly and blanket treat with the same drug continuously for 2-3 years, drug efficacy can easily go from 100% to <50%.

What is Targeted Selective Treatment (TST)?

TST is where we treat the minimum number of animals. This is done, not on the basis of the number of worms, but on the basis of impact on production, as that's what's important. With TST, we specifically only treat the ones negatively impacted by worms. Everything else is left untreated, including lambs who may have some worms but are not affected by them. TST is an excellent parasite control strategy because it eliminates the infection in negatively affected animals, but it's much more cost-effective than blanket treatment and prevents resistance.

How SmartWorm implements the TST philosophy

SmartWorm doesn't count the actual number of worms (like FECs do); instead it measures the impact worms are having on the lamb's performance (an indirect method involving an advanced algorithm). Once a month, farmers record weight and eID in the app, along with an estimate of pasture quality and availability (Poor, Average or Good). The algorithm also takes into account things like recent rainfall and temperature, and the physiological status of the lamb. Then, in real time, it tells you if the lamb needs treatment or not, and it's very precise in its predictions.

Benefits of TST and SmartWorm

TST is just as effective in maintaining the health of sheep as treating the entire flock, yet it requires significantly less wormer—about 40-50% less, according to our trials.

This approach substantially lowers the cost of managing worm infections and helps ensure that the treatments remain effective.

THE 80:20 RULE

The science behind TST

TST is possible because of the distribution of worms in sheep. They are distributed according to 'The Pareto Principle' (also known as the 80/20 rule). This principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from ~20% of the causes.

The chart here says it all from our QUB Belfast trials. The vertical axis shows the % of eggs that are being shed while the horizontal axis shows the % of lambs. Following the 80% mark on the vertical axis you can see that it intersects at about the 30% mark on the horizontal axis. In simple terms, 80% of the worms are hit with drench when we treat just 30% of the lambs. This explains why TST works. Most of the worms are in just a few of the sheep.

SmartWorm doesn't slow you down, it speeds you up

Demo with TruTest XR5000 weigh head, TruTest XRP2 eID reader and Te Pari Racewell.

Here we are separating:
← TST Dose
→ TST No Dose
↑ Sentinel animals (animals being blanket treated as a control).

The integration enables SmartWorm to be used at commercial weigh/draft speed. If using a manual handler, just follow the colour coded indication for each animal.

We integrate with almost EVERYTHING

Works on Android + Apple unless specified

TruTest
S3
Eziweigh7i
XR/ID/JR5000 (Android only)
XR/ID3000 (Android only)

Gallagher
W0/W1
TW1/TW3
TWR1/TWR5

Shearwell ShearWeigh

TrueNorth Technologies WeighRite

Works on Android + Apple unless specified

TruTest
SRS2/XRS2
XRP2 panel (Android only)
XRS (Android only)

Agrident
AWR/APR sticks
ASR panel

Allflex
RS320/RS420
APR

PTS Technologies Stick (Android only)

Shearwell
SDL440S stick
SDL150 panel

Te Pari permanent eID panel

You can set up an automatic draft on the SmartWorm app that will sort lambs based on their treatment recommendation, thus significantly reducing drenching time. This feature works with any auto drafter fitted with a TruTest XR/ID5000 or XR/ID3000.

For example
← Lambs recommended to be dosed
→ Lambs not recommended to be dosed
Control lambs to be blanket treated

All SmartWorm data is exported via csv file and can be imported into most major sheep management softwares.

New to eID performance recording?

You will need a compatible weigh head and an eID reader to use SmartWorm (see list here). You can choose from our range below, and learn about available grants here.

Agrident AWR300 eID Reader €980,00 EUR
Agrident APR450 eID Reader €700,00 EUR
Printer for Agrident Readers €78,00 EUR
TruTest SRS2 eID Reader €705,00 EUR
TruTest XRS2 eID Reader €1.260,00 EUR
Printer for TruTest Readers €61,00 EUR

Set up a SmartWorm TST session in less than 60 seconds

Open the app, set up a TST session, connect your devices and away you go.

How to use SmartWorm (Ireland/UK)

Understand when you will use SmartWorm and how to incorporate it into your farm practices.

This events map is for a typical Irish/UK farm lambing in mid March.

Late April/Early May

When it's time to drench for nematodirus, blanket treat your lambs with a white wormer (1-BZ).

Record the weights and eID's of your lambs in SmartWorm. This will get them on the SmartWorm system.

June

4 weeks after the previous event (generally, can be shorter/longer depending on the year) bring in the lambs for another drench.

This time, record your lambs in SmartWorm (weight and eID) and drench them selectively based on SmartWorm's dose/no dose recommendation.

The app will also advise to blanket treat some of the animals so a % of the mob forms a Control group. This group provides a benchmark of what growth would be if the entire mob were blanket treated. You can then compare growth rates between the TST and Control animals over the course of the season. This will give you peace of mind in having confidence in the app's drench recommendations.

July

Repeat the process from last time.

August

Repeat the process from last time.

September

Repeat the process from last time.

October

Repeat the process from last time unless you are doing a cleanout drench with Zolvix or Startect. If doing a cleanout drench, do a blanket drench.

SmartWorm will produce a breeding report for your replacement ewe lambs and ram lambs. Use the info to select the lambs who have demonstrated a low drench requirement while maintaining high growth rates.

What Customers Say

Hear from Sheep Farmer Brian Nicholson from Co. Kilkenny, Ireland about the benefits of using SmartWorm on his farm.

What Users and Industry Experts Say

The TST concept and the SmartWorm app has many of our users and many industry professionals very excited.

Full Feature List

SmartWorm will push a notification to you when lambs need to be treated (generally every 4 weeks). Good stockmanship is key to using SmartWorm, so if you think the 4 week interval should be shortened, such as if lambs are dirty or the weather has turned wet and warm, you should shorten it.

3 mins of setup on the app at your monthly weigh/eID recording, and SmartWorm will then identify which lambs need treatment in real time.

SmartWorm helps you see how much medicine and money you save by using the app.

The worm tolerance report shows which lambs required the least amount of drench to grow optimally on your farm. Use on its own or incorporate into your broader breeding dataset.

We tap into both the worm resistance and resilience gene pool on your farm, across both male and female lambs, offering faster genetic progress relative to other worm resistance breeding tools currently available.

We maintain a full medicine database for sheep in Ireland, the UK and New Zealand, so you can record medicine usage at monthly handling intervals. It also provides advice on the best wormer to use from a dung beetle 🪲 friendliness point of view!

Our app is cloud-based so you can use SmartWorm on any Android and Apple phones and tablets, with an unlimited number of users. We are also launching a desktop version later in 2024.

Works offline in the paddock or in a yard with no service. Once you connect back to internet, your data will be automatically synced to our cloud servers.

We provide world-beating customer support via our novel 'Call For Help Powered by Zoom' function. This allows you to audio/video call and screen share with our team with one button press, and without leaving the SmartWorm app.

We integrate with almost every weigh head, eID reader and autodrafter on the market.

All SmartWorm data is exported via csv file and can be imported into most major sheep management softwares.

API integrations, whereby the files automatically upload to select management softwares, are coming later in 2024.

This feature is not currently live, but will be later in 2024.

We indirectly measure drench efficacy based on the response a treatment delivers in lamb performance. We analyse the growth rates of treated and untreated lambs. If treated lambs show a sufficient bounce in performance relative to their untreated peers, reduced drench efficacy is detected and notified.

SMARTWORM INTEGRATION

Weigh head integration

If you don't see your weigh head listed, please contact us to request integration.

SMARTWORM Integration

EID Reader Integration

If you don't see your reader listed, please contact us to request integration.

Chat with a specialist >

See if SmartWorm is right for you.

Phone

+353 86 330 1490
Call or Whatsapp

Email

info@cotteragritech.com