Download podcast #344: Liver Fluke in Victorian Dairy Farms
The 344th La Trobe University podcast interview is with Jane Kelley, a research assistant and honors graduate in the La Trobe University AgriBio.
The parasite liver fluke is estimated to cost the Australian dairy industry more than $90 million a year in lost production, and more than $10 million a year in treatment. Jane Kelley’s initial study of farms in the Maffra region near Gippsland found that on properties with liver fluke, around 80 per cent of the herd was infected. She estimated around $9 million a year lost in milk production, or more than $28,000 per farm in that area alone.
She talks about her research into the treatments of liver fluke, problems such as drug resistance, and the evaluation and development of new diagnostic tests.
You can find more content like this in La Trobe University’s free Animal Science iTunes U course, or in the Agricultural Sciences and Biosecurity collection.
Image: curious cows, from Flickr taken by orangebrompton.
