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orange oil for dewormer


Guest herbertholmes

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Guest herbertholmes

I saw, I think on here, the results of a test done in regards to deworming sheep with orange oil. I believe it looked good. Anyone ha practicle experience using orange oil for dewormer? Herbert

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Hi Herbert,

 

I'm far from sold, but I think there's probably some room for further research. The first study was done on gerbils, and found that Haemonchus contortus were killed by orange oil -- the animals were opened up and fewer live worms were found in the stomachs of the treated group than the control. So far so good.

 

In the sheep study there is a major problem. There was no actual worm count -- only a fecal egg count -- so we don't know if the reduction in FEC is due to worms being dead or simply due to them not laying eggs. I'm suspicious because the reduction in FEC in the sheep was much greater than the reduction in worm load in the gerbils.

 

The gut of a gerbil of any other monogastric animal is going to be an inhospitable environment to the barberpole worm, which is adapted to ruminant guts. Ruminant guts are much less acidic than monogastric guts, so the worms might have been easier to kill in the gerbil than they would be in a sheep, which we all know they thrive so well in.

 

Another issue is safety. I don't know whether orange oil is generally accepted as safe. I know I wouldn't knowingly drink it. And without knowing that, and how the oil is metabolized in the sheep's system, I wouldn't feel comfortable administering it to a food animal, particularly in repeated doses over the course of an animal's life. Does it accumulate in the liver or other tissues, and can it be toxic? Tobacco is an excellent, all-natural sheep wormer; it just happens that it's also toxic to the sheep and to anyone who eats the meat.

 

And finally, efficacy. It's fairly common practice to judge the efficacy of sheep dewormers by looking at a reduction in fecal egg count. A 97 percent reduction in FEC 14 days post treatment would be considered fairly effective in a commercial wormer, but less than ideal. You're looking for 99 to 100 percent reduction in FEC, but with the amount of resistance that has built up, many farms get a lot less than that with current dewormers. Remember that a single Haemonchus Controtus female can lay 5,000 eggs per day. If you are starting out with a gut population of 10,000 worms, half of which would be female, you could be seeing as many as 25,000 eggs per sheep per day.

 

Cutting that to 750 eggs per day (a 97 percent reduction) sounds really good until you stop to think that every one of those 750 eggs will develop into a larva whose mother was not affected by the chemical. If we presume that the trait is dominant (and most chemical resistance is in nematodes) you have already started the selection process for the end of orange oil as an effective dewormer. In a warm moist climate where you have seven to 10 generations of Haemonchus per year, it won't take too long for this trait to become entrenched.

 

What would be interesting to me would be -- assuming that orange oil emulsion is safe in the human food supply -- to see whether it could be used to potentiate other dewormers and extend the life of drugs like ivermectin on farms where resistance hasn't already been established. If, for example, ivermectin kills 97 percent of the worms and orange oil emulsion kills 97 percent of those that remain, you have reduced the number of eggs shed by a sheep in a day from 750 with the ivermectin and to about 23 with the orange oil emulsion -- more than 99.9 percent total reduction in FEC.

 

But there are quite a few concepts that have to be proved before we get to that point.

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Bill,

I did a search and got lots of hits stating that orange oil, or the ingredient l-limonene, is GRAS, but the following CFR GRAS listing doesn't specifically name orange oil, just other orange products (peel, flowers), but since the suppart heading is "essential oils" I think one could infer that essential oils extracted from the listed parts of an orange are considered safe; the FDA sites I went to did all list the caveat of use within reason, which I take to mean not in huge amounts, FWIW.

 

J.

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