A ruck of white - tailed deer lead through your field is a lovely picture , but for those who keep small ruminants , cervid are not a welcome visual sense . The lily-white - tailed cervid is the host for an internal parasite called the meningeal dirt ball ( Paralaphostrongylus tenius ) , also called the brain insect or cervid worm . The deer tolerate the parasite fairly well because it ’s the deer ’s natural parasite , but in an unnatural host , includinggoats , llamas , alpacas orsheep , the meningeal dirt ball can do a great stack of damage and can even stimulate fatality . ( musical note : Cows are not known to have problem with meningeal worms . )
Deer simply running through a farm attribute bewilder no job , says Tatiana Luisa Stanton , PhD , pocket-size ruminant telephone extension specialist for Cornell University .
“ problem occur if goats graze in areas where deer bed down or routinely graze . The medium boniface of the leech are [ sublunar ] snails and slugs . cervid ingest these as they graze , ” she says . “ [ Capricorn , llamas , alpaca and sheep ] like to rust fallen leave-taking . Since snail hide under leaf , it ’s easy for the brute to ingest them . ”
If the snail or biff carries the infective stage of the meningeal worm larvae , it can move through the deer ’s gut and into the central nervous system where they mature and bring about eggs . The bollock are then excreted by the animal , and the meningeal insect ’s life wheel starts over .
In affected hosts , after 10 to 14 twenty-four hour period of ingestion , the larvae migrate straight to the brain and spinal corduroy . They do n’t mature into adults ; instead , they move through the cardinal nervous system , causing gibbosity , which damage the tissue paper and creates neurologic symptoms . If the larva are in the animal ’s spinal cord , symptom include a hobble or weakness on one or more of its stage or partial or consummate paralysis . If the larvae are in the brain , symptom admit blindness , head rock and circling .
Most bloodsucking infestation can be diagnose through a fecal test ; however , because the meningeal louse in the ruminant does n’t produce eggs or larvae , faecal tests are n’t utilitarian . A necropsy examination is the only fashion to diagnose meningeal worms . Because there are many other issues that mimic meningeal - louse contagion , such as caprine arthritis encephalitis ( CAE ) , scrapie , rabies or copper inadequacy , sometimes testing the cerebrospinal fluid of a lively creature helps to name meningeal worm infection in the brain .
Treatment for meningeal worm usually includes large and repeated Lucy in the sky with diamonds of dewormer ( such as ivermectin , levamisole , albendazole , thiabendazole and fenbendazole ) accompanied by steroids . However , once the animal ’s nervous tissues have been damage , there ’s nothing that can be done to repair them .
Parasite managementis of import with all parasite control , but doubly so with meningeal insect because they ’re so hard to detect and curative . As most farmers know , keeping deer away from a gardenor farm animal is nearly impossible . Therefore , attempt to keep ruminants out of pastures where there ’s heavy deer traffic , or argue the livestock out of ponds and timberland . Remove animals from pasture when it ’s wet and nerveless ( a prison term when snails and slugs prosper ) , specially if the pasture does not drain well . A gooddeworming programdesigned by your veterinarian can also assist . It ’s important to understand that indiscriminate use of dewormers can lead to parasite resistor .
