[DartmoorLiz]

please post the links.  I like a challenge.

[Tim W]

please post the links.  I like a challenge.

There is some explanation/hypothesis here http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4744952/


A slide of the hypothesised process is attached

[DartmoorLiz]

  This is like all my Christmasses and Birthdays at once.  Up to date, on topic and undiluted.  Now all I need is a bigger brain. 

[Penninehillbilly]

This is like all my Christmasses and Birthdays at once.  Up to date, on topic and undiluted.  Now all I need is a bigger brain.

See what you mean DL, when I have an afternoon spare I'll sit down and try to absorb all that LOL.
Seriously, looks very useful and I will be reading in more detail later 

[Liz Kershaw]

With regard to mineral deficiency - are there tests for the land/soil to see if it is deficient, or should we do a blood screen of one of the ewes?  We don't have a huge worm problem. but I'm interested in the deficiency idea as our land has had sheep on for ages, and not just ours.

Also I thought the eggs lasted longer than 12 months? I thought I'd read 2 or 3 years somewhere, but I might be wrong.

[Tim W]

There is much we don't know & every time a bit of research get done we find a bit of an answer and 20 new questions----
However the message seems to be that ;
1) There is a good and measureable individual heritable response to worm infections
2) This has a decent heritability (0.19 [ish])
3) electing along these lines works
4) There are also alleles responsible for this that we have found but they are not identifiable on the current sheep genome and are only a few of many genes linked to paraite control/resistance

Which in practical terms means that selecting for worm resistance on FEC (or saliva IgA) is the best tool we have at the moment, in the future with much more research we may be able to find markers that allow us to genotype for worm resistance