New World Screw Worm: The story of an old foe trying to make a return

Dr. Ron Gill with Texas Agrilife, helps to alleviate some of the fears horse owners may be feeling with the news of New World Screwworm making a journey northward. Good news - most likely we just need to keep doing what we have always been doing - monitoring our horses and treating wounds like normal.

Transcript

Kris Hiney: Welcome to Extension Horses Tack Box Talk series, Horse Stories with a Purpose. I'm your host, Dr. Kris Hiney, with Oklahoma State University.

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Kris Hiney: And today, we're actually going to be speaking with a member of Texas AgriLife, which is Texas' branch of Extension, who is going to share with us kind of some fact-based information to let horse owners need

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Kris Hiney: or to let them know what they need to know about a new emerging disease slash pest that is the New World Screw Worm. So, welcome to the podcast, Dr. Ron Gill with Texas AgriLife.

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ronaldgill: Thank you for having me.

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Kris Hiney: So, Dr. Gill, I think we probably should… would start at the beginning, because this is a, a fly, really, so the… the adult is a fly. Didn't used to be a problem, now on people's radar a little bit, so we want to do some basic background to get everybody on the correct factual page.

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Kris Hiney: About this pest.

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ronaldgill: Yeah, this is one that, supposedly was eradicated from the U.S, you know, in the 1960s. We did have incursions in the late 60s, and also in the

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ronaldgill: the mids… the…

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ronaldgill: 70s, I guess it was. I was still a teenager at the time. We had the last round of screwworms in Texas, and luckily, I had some experience with that as well, so…

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ronaldgill: We were on a ranch, had a lot of horses as well on the ranch, so we had quite a bit of experience with screwworms, even that late. So, it was pushed back down through Mexico following the 70s here in Texas,

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ronaldgill: And then what got it all the way down to,

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ronaldgill: through Panama in 2006, I think, when they finally got it to Panama, and…

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ronaldgill: They've been releasing sterile flies there at the Darien Gap for…

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ronaldgill: for this entire time, nearly the last 20 years, I guess. And…

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ronaldgill: holding them in check. There was a… escape out of that…

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ronaldgill: zone in 2020, in early 2021.

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ronaldgill: There's lots of reasons for that, but…

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ronaldgill: we all remember what was happening in 2021, and… Oh, sure, I do remember. Some things… some things did not get taken care of probably quite like they should have, and some issues occurred.

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ronaldgill: And there wasn't a large response as it moved up through Central America.

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ronaldgill: But when it got to Mexico, everybody really started trying to… Increase the control efforts.

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ronaldgill: And,

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ronaldgill: Prior to that, they'd only been needing 25 million sterile flies a week, because that's the only way to really control this pest that we know of.

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ronaldgill: It's to release sterile flies, and that's because the female only mates once in her life.

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ronaldgill: And so if we can get her to mate with a sterile male rather than a wild, fertile male, then she will not lay fertile eggs. So that's how this has been done since the 30s, is actually when they eradicated out of Florida and moved across the southeast, and then Texas, Arizona, New Mexico.

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ronaldgill: So, the same technique works, the…

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ronaldgill: the availability of flies is significantly less now, because we were just concentrated on Panama, and that was part of the issue.

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Kris Hiney: narrow, right? So that was the whole idea. We were at a very narrow place. Flies couldn't go to the ocean and get the whales or anything.

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ronaldgill: 25 million flies a week was plenty, and so…

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ronaldgill: they have now ramped up that facility in Panama, which is the only facility producing sterile flies.

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ronaldgill: And they're producing between 100 and 115 million sterile flies a week.

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Kris Hiney: Wow.

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ronaldgill: So, they are running at completely full capacity 24 hours a day to get that done.

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ronaldgill: The other thing about these flies is that they… if you take them to…

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ronaldgill: the fly stage, and then try to transport them, they don't survive that very well. So, to get from Panama to Mexico, they actually take the

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ronaldgill: pupal stage of that fly, chill it down, fly it to a distribution center, let it hatch, and then release it. So there's a lot of effort into getting this thing to the location that it needs to be, and then letting it mature, and then release them into the wild.

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ronaldgill: You know, Secretary Rollins announced the establishment of a distribution center in Texas.

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ronaldgill: And that was the same thing. We were going to have to fly the pupa up to that facility, let them mature, and then release them if we need to. So, that was the first step that they tried to do. There are efforts to get a sterile fruit fly facility

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ronaldgill: re-tooled, I guess you could say, so they can produce sterile New World screwworm flies.

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Kris Hiney: Okay.

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ronaldgill: That's in Mexico. The U.S. has helped fund that to some extent, and Mexico's picking up the other part of that, so…

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ronaldgill: If that…

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ronaldgill: can be done, that'll add another 60 to 100 million sterile flies. But that's probably a 2-year process.

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Kris Hiney: Wow. So, yeah, I guess, and you clarified something for me when I had heard it, it was mentioned, the new center in Texas. I assumed they were producing flies there, but that is not correct. That's just a distribution center.

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ronaldgill: Well, since they announced the distribution center, they have come back with… they didn't have the funding earmarked for a facility. They do now have that.

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ronaldgill: So, they earmarked $750 million to build a sterile fly facility at that same location where the distribution center would be.

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ronaldgill: So, the distribution deal was to… if flies get to the U.S,

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ronaldgill: the U.S. has control of the sterile fly population, and so we can bring those to the U.S. to help fight sterile flies as they get here. So that leaves all of Central America and Mexico without a great deal of protection at all.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah. So that's not a very good…

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ronaldgill: Answer, but it is kind of what would happen, probably.

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Kris Hiney: Okay, because, you know, and just… and we'll get to the horses, but… but one of the concerns, like, so yes, if all the sterile flies are… are in the U.S, but, I mean, animals move across the border, we talk about controlling, you know.

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Kris Hiney: human-owned animals, like, that are on trailers, but, like, animals, right? Things, wildlife, every… you know, there's a lot of back and forth that potentially could carry the little larva with them, correct?

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ronaldgill: Yeah, the wildlife is probably the largest

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ronaldgill: Vector we'll probably have to fight coming across the border, because we can't do anything…

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ronaldgill: To really treat or control the infestations within the wildlife population.

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ronaldgill: Right now, cattle are kind of our sentinel animals.

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ronaldgill: If we have cases in cattle, we know we've got it in wildlife.

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ronaldgill: We're really not surveilling that in Mexico or Central America that I'm aware of.

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ronaldgill: And so we really don't know how…

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ronaldgill: prominent infestations are in the wildlife population. But those, if it ever gets to north, northern part of Mexico, those animals cross the river all the time. And so, where there's not a border wall or fence, it's going to be much easier for those animals to enter the United States, so…

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ronaldgill: That would be a very easy way to do it. The other reason they closed the border from the import of Mexican cattle was to

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ronaldgill: cut down the potential for flies to… or larvae to come across on those imported cattle. That's a very…

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ronaldgill: good and sterile technique they have there to bring those cattle across. It probably wouldn't have been a big

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ronaldgill: deal there.

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Kris Hiney: But…

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ronaldgill: you still would have all the cattle coming out of southern Mexico to our border for that purpose, so…

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ronaldgill: There's always a greater chance if we start moving cattle across the border that something will come across with them.

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Kris Hiney: Okay. So, I have lots of questions, so I never knew it took so long to build a facility to create sterile flies, so that really is a pretty involved process, then.

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ronaldgill: It really is. The new plant, if they started today, would be a minimum of 3 years before the plant would be built in the U.S.

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ronaldgill: It's not just the facility, but the amount of water and food source for those larvae is amazing, and they've got to be a biosecurity level 3 facility.

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ronaldgill: So that nothing gets out of there, so…

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Kris Hiney: Right, yeah, okay.

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ronaldgill: It takes a while.

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Kris Hiney: So it takes a while. Okay, well, now I don't want everybody to…

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Kris Hiney: To be nervous, but okay, so…

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Kris Hiney: So you said, thankfully, I… I will be honest, I've never had any experience with New World Screw Worm, but you did witness it, like.

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Kris Hiney: What is that like?

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ronaldgill: Well, the thing that was very different… well, my dad grew up in the screwworm era, in Texas, so…

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ronaldgill: His entire life, they doctored screwworms. And so, the way we managed ranches and cattle and everything else was based on the way they had to manage them to check for wormies and

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ronaldgill: and treat those cattle. So that's… that's what I grew up with. And so, when they came back.

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ronaldgill: We already had our cattle where we could get them up easily, hold them up in the pasture, look to see if there's anything

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ronaldgill: That might have an infestation of screwworms, and if they did, then catch them and treat them, or whatever we needed to do, so…

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ronaldgill: That… Wasn't that big a deal to us, even though it was a… work.

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ronaldgill: we run 2,000 head of cows, so we were pretty busy checking cows. But, that's the biggest thing. Everybody's kind of got out of the habit of checking cattle

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ronaldgill: every two to three days. And with these fly strikes, they can lay the eggs, they can hatch, be in a wound in a couple of days. So, when they do get here, or if they get here,

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ronaldgill: The need to check livestock, will be even… Greater than it was before.

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ronaldgill: That's one advantage of most horse operations. They are around the horses more often.

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ronaldgill: And so you just need to learn what to look for, and everybody sees the images of these big, massive wounds, but those are ones that have been left untreated for a long time. The ones we were trying to find are one that would be the very initial screwworm

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ronaldgill: larvae, not the secondary and tertiary lays of eggs in that same wound. And so they're very small. They might just be a nick on an animal, a tick bite, something like that, that would let those get started.

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ronaldgill: So you really have to pay attention. The first thing horse owners probably ought to do is look for those egg

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ronaldgill: Masses, because they're really distinct, little white masses of eggs laid on the edge of a wound.

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Kris Hiney: So you'll see them?

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ronaldgill: You can see them, yes.

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Kris Hiney: Okay, okay.

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ronaldgill: And so that would be the first thing to look for. Of course, if you have any kind of open wound, then that would be something you need to look for. They… screwworms really love the umbilicus on animals.

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Kris Hiney: Babies, yeah.

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ronaldgill: Yeah, and so…

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ronaldgill: in the wildlife population, it'll decimate about 80% of them, or it used to in the past when screwworms were pretty prevalent.

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ronaldgill: So, that's something else you'd have to worry about. The good thing about horses, once again, we normally foal in the cooler temperatures.

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ronaldgill: And so all of that would be healed up before the fly populations would become active, because there are temperature gradients that they're active at. The further north you have, the shorter window you would have for those

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ronaldgill: Flies to actually mature and go through the process of developing and fertilizing and laying eggs, so…

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ronaldgill: That's the good thing about being a little further north. You have colder temperatures, and it will shut them completely down, probably in a good part of Oklahoma at times. Texas, we're… we're borderline in the north part. South Texas, they'll probably fight them year-round at some level.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah.

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Kris Hiney: So I think that's an interesting point, so I'll kind of maybe go back a couple things. So, and I definitely… I don't know if in Texas if it's the same in Oklahoma. I'm going to assume it is, but you… you mentioned, like, the…

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Kris Hiney: used to be common practice to check them every two to three days, but now I know a lot of our cattle producers in Oklahoma, the cattle are kind of like a side…

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Kris Hiney: job, right? A side thing people do, and they're not out there

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Kris Hiney: Routinely, just because, you know, is that true there as well?

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ronaldgill: No, it's very true here.

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ronaldgill: is much more, maybe even more so, we have a tremendous number of very small operations that are… and some of the bigger ones, or mid-sized, are certainly…

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ronaldgill: If they check them once or twice a week, it'd probably be a Saturday and a Sunday, as they go out for the weekend to enjoy their livestock operations. So there's probably going to have to be a reset on how we think about… if we can't see them, somebody's got to go look at them, so there's probably going to be…

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ronaldgill: contract people that will go around looking at livestock and horses as need be, if their owners can't do that. In all honesty… Who knows? Yeah, yeah.

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ronaldgill: Drones would be a very good surveillance tool for a lot of places, because you can… animals have a very different behavior when these things are eating on them, as you would expect.

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ronaldgill: And so, you could detect abnormal behavior in a set of animals, and certainly then send somebody there to

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ronaldgill: to check on that… that animal. So, that's a very real possibility, particularly in a lot of these bigger ranches.

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ronaldgill: As well, they may fly helicopters or drones trying to check cattle, because they're really struggling trying to figure out

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ronaldgill: How they can go from…

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ronaldgill: The amount of people they used to have on ranches to now they're one person looking from 1,000 to 3,000 head of cows, and extensive.

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ronaldgill: operations. So, that's the other issue we've got with trying to get ahead of this and control it, because

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ronaldgill: you know, South America, they just… they don't have sterile fly releases, so they live… it's endemic in South America, they just treat everything as soon as it's born.

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ronaldgill: And so that's where they have… they have a lot of labor to do that, so every animal on the well-managed ranches is… is actually handled, and…

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ronaldgill: It was interesting to me, the fact that they actually punch a hole for an ear tag before they put the ear tag in, let the hole heal up.

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ronaldgill: Then put an eartag in it later.

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ronaldgill: That way, it can heal quicker than it would if the tags in there.

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Kris Hiney: Oh, sure, sure.

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ronaldgill: So, anything open like that will just, further invite a… Screw worm.

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Kris Hiney: Lay eggs on it, so…

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Kris Hiney: So, so we used to deal with it, you know, and I always want, you know, I think about this historically, like, so we used to be like, okay, it's here, and now it may come back, and it's a bigger deal now, or we just are like, hey, we haven't had to deal with it, so we don't really want to.

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ronaldgill: I think it's… it's the latter, probably more than any.

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ronaldgill: We will figure out how to deal with it if it gets here. There's estimates, if it gets here, it'll probably take us 10 years to get it out, once we get all the fly facilities built.

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ronaldgill: So, that's speculation, we don't know that for sure, but that's some numbers I've seen thrown out.

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Kris Hiney: So, so we want to alleviate panic now, right?

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ronaldgill: Yeah, they're… And that's something else, screwworms are not like a swarm of flies.

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ronaldgill: They're like a… you know, you'll see a few blowflies around, or a few old house flies around. New World screwworms are probably less dense than those two, even, so…

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Kris Hiney: Okay.

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ronaldgill: They're not like they're a swarm of flies coming at us, and so that's something else we need to realize that… and they don't…

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ronaldgill: Go to traps very well. So a lot of people think they can put up traps and catch them.

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ronaldgill: There are some they're trying that will probably help kind of monitor

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ronaldgill: whether flies are coming or not, there's something along the border right now that we've…

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ronaldgill: had set out to kind of do that, see if it works. But most of the other fly traps don't attract them, because they're attracted to a very specific odor, and so they're trying to make some traps that they will come to.

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Kris Hiney: Okay.

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ronaldgill: The other thing that any… anything you can do to control flies on a horse operation.

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ronaldgill: will help in controlling screwworm flies. And so, if you've got a well-managed horse operation, the permethrin sprays kill screwworm flies, so if they've got stalls, maybe putting misters in, you know, to help

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ronaldgill: Keep the facility, treated as well as the animals, maybe something to think about as well.

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Kris Hiney: Just a question, because we had talked… actually, literally just yesterday, did a podcast with our livestock entomologist, and we were talking about control methods for flies. And so we spent a lot of time talking about filth flies, but this is separate, right? Because the eggs are laid on the animal.

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Kris Hiney: Right? So it's… in this case, our cultural methods of manure removal, that's not really a part of this, right?

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ronaldgill: Correct. This is one of the few flies where, manure management will not help.

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ronaldgill: They do pupate, go through the final pupil stage in

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ronaldgill: in the ground, but it's normally not manure, or in those kind of areas. So, they'll drop off an animal, and then bury her into the ground for a few days, and then come out and emerge as a fly.

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Kris Hiney: So.

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ronaldgill: most of our cultural practices will not impact them. You know, the feed-through larvicides and stuff like that, no impact whatsoever.

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Kris Hiney: Okay, okay. So now, I wanted to loop back, because this is, I was part of a working group meeting yesterday, and you talked about treatment, so I want to talk about

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Kris Hiney: what possible treatments there are, and then maybe put a cap on it to avoid hysteria. So, tell us first about how you, treat animals that may have, a New World Screwworm larva infestation.

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ronaldgill: Well, it's very much like you'd treat any other wound, other than the fact that you need to get all the larvae out of the wound, so it may take tweezers and pulling them out one at a time. It's not pretty, so cleaning out a wound is not a fun thing to do.

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ronaldgill: But it has to be done, and then you seal the wound up the best you can, just like you would any other wound, to keep other flies from coming and laying eggs on that same wound. Because that's a common practice. Once a wound is opened up, other females, or the same female, will come back and lay multiple hatches.

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ronaldgill: In the same wound. And that's where you see those big, massive

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ronaldgill: wounds, we all show everybody to scare them to death. But that's not normal in livestock, because we get to them before that if we're actually checking. So, that's not something that would happen from one

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ronaldgill: one fly laying one hatch of eggs, that's going with several hatches in the same location. That's the other thing, when you start looking at a wound.

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ronaldgill: there may be… Two to three levels of larvae in there.

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ronaldgill: The younger ones on top, the bigger ones in the bottom, so it's, in older ones.

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ronaldgill: So it's a really interesting…

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ronaldgill: parasite to get a hold of. There are some permethrin sprays right now that are labeled

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ronaldgill: For treatment of screwworm wounds.

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ronaldgill: There was a… Oh, conditional…

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ronaldgill: licensing, I guess you could say, for a dewormer product in cattle. I don't know that it would have any utility in horses. I hadn't even thought about that until just now.

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Kris Hiney: But it, because…

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ronaldgill: You know, these larvae take in blood, a systemic insecticide

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ronaldgill: like some of these dewormers, will kill any flesh-eating bacteria, so it was conditionally approved last week, I think, for use in livestock.

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Kris Hiney: Okay.

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ronaldgill: That… I don't even know if it's possible to use it in horses, to be honest with you.

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Kris Hiney: So, so that's what I want, like, I don't want our horse owners to think that now they need to start

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Kris Hiney: No. Putting a bunch of things on or in.

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ronaldgill: -

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Kris Hiney: Okay, good.

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ronaldgill: No, do not, do that.

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ronaldgill: We're trying to… that's one fear we have, that everybody will overuse these products, and then they won't even work for the dewormer component after we don't have screwworms anymore.

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ronaldgill: So… They're gonna be really… A big need for judicious use of all products.

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ronaldgill: So that they do work. We don't have hardly any of the products we used to use for screwworms, because they were too caustic and left too big a residue issue in food-producing animals.

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ronaldgill: Since we don't do that to horses anymore, there may be some things approved for them that would not be approved in food-producing animals. That's going to have to be worked through in the equine industry as well, and through the veterinary practice there. So, that's going to be interesting to see how that turns out.

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Kris Hiney: So, so we're gonna… I'm gonna repeat this, right? So, we want to monitor the animals, treat any wounds, like we always do, right?

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ronaldgill: Absolutely.

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Kris Hiney: We don't want wounds, right? So any wounds are going to be treated. Do not…

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Kris Hiney: I hope you agree with me, do not apply any extra caustic or any other new idea to the wound, right?

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ronaldgill: Correct.

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Kris Hiney: So, like, proceed as normal.

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Kris Hiney: Unless you see white eggs, right? Not botfly eggs, guys, so if it's on the hair, we're fine, it's still just botflies. White eggs near the wound, or larvae. And if you do see, like, it would look like a maggot, right?

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ronaldgill: Yes.

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Kris Hiney: That's what you contact your veterinarian or county educator, collect samples, but again, do not panic.

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ronaldgill: No, it…

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Kris Hiney: Period.

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ronaldgill: and I don't know how Oklahoma is gonna handle this, but here, the Texas Animal Health Commission is the entity that's gonna… our state veterinarian's office, I don't know if y'all's is run through the Department of Ag or how it's run there, but…

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ronaldgill: We are to contact them, let them come take samples, and then submit those names out of. So that's how we're currently doing it in Texas, and we have quite a few people that are finding a lot of larvae.

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ronaldgill: and they're kind of panicking, but when you see pictures, you know they're not necessarily screwworms. But it is… it's reassuring to me that people are looking for things, and so that's what we're trying to do, is heighten the awareness to just be… be sure you're looking and monitoring.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah.

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ronaldgill: And there's no need to panic, we're a long ways from ever panicking on this thing. Right. And honestly, if it gets here, don't panic, you just gotta do what you gotta do, and…

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ronaldgill: monitor your livestock. Like you said, it's not going to require any additional

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ronaldgill: Effort, probably, particularly in the horse world, because you don't want to scar, you don't want anything else, so you treat every wound as quick as you can, and the main thing is to get them sealed up to where other flies can't lay into that wound, and make sure you're monitoring it, and

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ronaldgill: treating it probably for 3 to 4 days till it kind of seals itself up. So that, once again, work with your veterinarian on how long to…

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ronaldgill: treat these once we get to that point, but there is no need to panic. The other thing to think about,

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ronaldgill: They don't necessarily have to have a wound to lay eggs. They will lay them in mucosal.

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ronaldgill: Tear ducts, for example, anywhere there's moisture that they can lay those eggs. That's why we see a lot of animals with infestations in their head and around their eyes. They can, in the reproductive tract, the external reproductive organs of a horse or cow, they can lay eggs there, too. So, once again, you gotta

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ronaldgill: Check your animal from end to end.

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ronaldgill: The other thing, and I don't know how many people have been paying attention, but there's a lot of these things will wind up in the sinus cavities.

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ronaldgill: And that's something we don't think about much, but most of the human cases we're finding, they're actually in the sinus cavities.

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ronaldgill: You're kidding. I am not kidding.

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Kris Hiney: I thought this was not panic podcast, and now you're making me go the whole, like, can you go outside safely?

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ronaldgill: Well, you know, there's some… there are some, sanitary procedures we probably all need to follow, as well, so…

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ronaldgill: We even talk about when you're working with a wound, certainly use gloves, and then as soon as you get them all, you know, quit working with a wound, don't carry any of those eggs with you somewhere. Scratch your face, do anything. But a lot of these people have slept outside on the beach, and

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ronaldgill: in Central America, and the lady that came back from El Salvador and wound up, I think it was in Massachusetts.

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Kris Hiney: Yes.

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ronaldgill: She… that's what happened to her.

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ronaldgill: in the…

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ronaldgill: I don't think hers was very bad, but you'd think you'd have a pretty bad sinus, headache if that were going on. So, the thing is, you just can't ignore any signs in livestock or people.

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ronaldgill: If something's odd going on, get to a professional and see what the heck it is.

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Kris Hiney: Okay.

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Kris Hiney: But you're saying it is still okay to go outside.

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ronaldgill: Oh, yeah.

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ronaldgill: No, the whole time I was growing up, we never had anybody that I know of that was ever infected.

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Kris Hiney: Okay.

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ronaldgill: With screwworms. In fact, they used to use screwworms to clean up wounds.

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Kris Hiney: Well, I talked to Dr. Cammack yesterday, and we were talking about that, I mean, that used to be a pretty normal term. I didn't know if it was screwworms, but they used maggots to debride

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Kris Hiney: Decaying flesh to get you back down to new flesh, but…

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ronaldgill: Yeah, that… like I said, the maggots will take that decaying stuff off. If you need… get rid of proud flesh or something like that, you can actually use screwworms to do that. I wouldn't recommend it, but.

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Kris Hiney: Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

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ronaldgill: That is something they used to do, and something you may want to edit out of this podcast.

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Kris Hiney: Don't, don't try to make them. Nope, nope.

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ronaldgill: No, no, there's better options nowadays, that was

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ronaldgill: Pretty, primitive means of doing things, so… But it, you know, those are the images that conjure up panic, and we don't want people to panic.

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Kris Hiney: Right.

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ronaldgill: And you can't leave things untreated.

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ronaldgill: Whether it be on yourself, dogs… a lot of people don't realize how many pets

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ronaldgill: Get infested as well, so… Every horse operation I know has got dogs.

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ronaldgill: And they may actually be the first… first ones to get infected on a horse operation, might be your dogs. So, check them just as regularly as you would your…

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ronaldgill: horses, and if they're coming in the house, you better have a pretty good inspection process there as well. So, we've gotten to where we live in such close proximity to our animals that we run the risk, I think, more now, so…

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ronaldgill: Than before, transferring those things.

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ronaldgill: between species.

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Kris Hiney: So we want to still let your dogs in the house, people. I'm a dog person, so bring them in.

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ronaldgill: I just realized there's a… there's a potential there, and so it might not ever happen.

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ronaldgill: And what we find is that most of the really well-managed operations have very little issue with screwworms, because they're doing preventative measures, they're checking livestock.

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ronaldgill: They're treating anything they find as soon as they can find it.

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ronaldgill: And they just have very little trouble with it. That's even true in South America, where it's endemic. Most of the cases there are in what they consider

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ronaldgill: these operations that aren't being checked, not well managed, I guess you would call it.

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Kris Hiney: So…

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ronaldgill: you know, I think that's… most horse owners are very vigilant in looking at their horses, but…

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ronaldgill: Once again, you may need to make a little deeper inspection than you do just…

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ronaldgill: Looking at them while you're brushing them off, so…

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Kris Hiney: Sure, sure.

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ronaldgill: That kind of thing, so…

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Kris Hiney: Sure. All right.

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Kris Hiney: Well, I think this has been super helpful, super informative. Again, we want people to be up-to-date, but rational about what is happening, and it's really just informational purposes and trying to allay fears, and again, preventing anybody thinking they need to prophylactically treat in any abnormal way. Don't do that, right?

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ronaldgill: Right. You know, even in the livestock side, they've…

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ronaldgill: Labeled that dewormer for a preventative.

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ronaldgill: But it's not a…

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ronaldgill: it's to prevent reinfection of a wound, primarily. So, if you have a wound, then you can give it and help keep it from getting reinfected. So, even with the label on it, it's kind of mis…

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ronaldgill: Leading, that it's a preventive tool.

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ronaldgill: And so we gotta be really careful how we do that.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah.

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ronaldgill: overuse dewormers, you create additional health issues, and so…

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Kris Hiney: I believe I've discussed that on this podcast.

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ronaldgill: saying it, because.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah.

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ronaldgill: We can also kill livestock by overuse of dewormers and allowing other parasites to then

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ronaldgill: take over and damage the linings of their stomach or kill the animal. So, we have to be very judicious in how we use any of the tools

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ronaldgill: Put before us in this effort.

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Kris Hiney: Well, I appreciate those words of wisdom, and really appreciate, hearing from our counterparts in Texas. So, always appreciate all the wonderful work that Texas AgriLife does, and shout out to my colleagues from the South.

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ronaldgill: Thank you.

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Kris Hiney: Well, thank you again, and this has been another episode of our Tech Box Talk, Horse Stories with a Purpose.