The Affect of Grazing Lespedeza Pastures on Lowering Parasitic Worm Load
Written by Mary Hathaway, OFRF’s Analysis & Training Program Supervisor, and Ed Crowley, FLT Program participant
Lambing for Mesta Meadows FLT trial started in January 2026.
Tucked into the hills of the Ozarks, Mesta Meadows sprawls over 235 acres. The ranch, owned and operated by Ed Crowley, makes a speciality of elevating a wide range of pasture-based livestock, together with lamb, beef, pork, and poultry, together with sheep dairy manufacturing and high quality wool harvesting. Ed prioritizes accountable land and animal stewardship, utilizing practices like rotation grazing, institution of native grasses, and offering low stress environments for all of his animals. The farm is at the moment in transition to natural certification.
Ed wears many hats–his off farm job is instructing entrepreneurship at Southeast Missouri State College, and his ranch hosts many micro-businesses, together with an on-farm retail retailer, the Atelait Creamery (a premium ice cream model manufacturing facility), and a nationally-renowned Fiber Pageant on the farm. He’s additionally Chairman of the Mayfield Entrepreneurial Middle.
Utilizing Forage Species as a Pure Deworming Agent
The ranch’s location in Glenallen, Missouri has very excessive humidity and normally sees greater than 60 inches of rain yearly. This leads to lush pastures, but in addition will increase the incidence of barber pole (Haemonchus contortus) worm load and a excessive lamb mortality charge after weaning. The remedy for barber pole worms is chemical drenches, nevertheless, Ed has seen elevated resistance to nearly all drenches for inner parasites.
Eager to discover a pure method to scale back the quantity of chemical drenches he makes use of to guard his lambs, Ed has been investigating the potential of various forage species as an addition to his pasture grasses of fescue and clover. Anti-parasitic results have been reported for various condensed tannin-containing forages, together with lespedeza (Lespedeza cuneata), a heat season perennial legume which is effectively tailored to the nice and cozy weather conditions of the southern states. In earlier research on goats in Oklahoma, decrease fecal egg counts (FEC) had been reported in goats grazing lespedeza in contrast with grass pasture. Ed is hopeful that working with lespedeza might assist with inner parasite load in sheep and turn out to be an economical, pure deworming agent.
