Duddingtonia flagrans

I have been reading about this nematode eating fungus as being very effective in controlling barberpole worms in sheep/goats. It is not commercially available in the US (yet). Anyone know if this or other similar fungi are native to the Midwest, and if yes, how could I encourage them to set up shop in my pastures?

Here's some work that was done in Malaysia where they isolated D. flagrans from a fecal sample and cultured more of it. And in this study from Denmark, they did the same thing -- isolate it from a fecal sample.

There is nothing preventing you from trying the same trick, isolating it from a cow chip or a goat dud and then culturing more on some fungal spawn. All you need is a microbiology lab at your disposal. But before you reinvent the wheel, you might check with the people at Fort Valley State University who have done research and published papers on D. flagrans and see if they would be willing to part with some spores.

I could probably buy some from ATCC as well, but that tends to be spendy. And they recomend growing it on cornmeal agar. I'd like to avoid cornmeal, since I'm highly allergic. I'll try to read those two papers you found. I actually ran a micro lab for 5 years, but we did almost no fungal work at the time. I can check with the current crew to see what they have on hand for fungal growing...

I'm guessing that ID'ing the correct fungus would be the hardest part of isolating from the wild...

The lead author is still on staff at FVSU, here's his webpage. Kind of interesting to see this work being done just down the road from me.

Anyone have any luck locating D. Flagrans?  I'd love to add it to my natural medicine cabinet for my critters.

Anybody seeing anything on the long term effects on goats? This could get scary.

Looks like Premiere 1 is not distributing a D. flagrans supplement product.  
Cool, because a few years ago it was only available in Australia.

https://www.premier1supplies.com/p/livamol-with-bioworma

If I were running ruminants right now, I would give this a shot.  Anyone have any experience?

How it works.




It's a naturally occurring soil fungus, so my bet is that a robust pasture ecosystem already has some of this and similar organisms present.

I have read about folks inoculated pasture directly, as well.  Seems like you could perhaps mix some in with seed and distribute with a seed spreader.

Has anyone used this for years and can report on the effectiveness and affects on livestock (if any)?

A small side note: shaggy mane (Coprinus comatus) has also been shown to kill - and eat - nematodes. No idea how efficient it is, or if it attacks the species that are problematic for sheep, but I thought it was interesting. Also, since it's mostly a saprotrophic fungus, and grows in meadows and lawns, it shouldn't be all that hard to introduce it to a pasture where there's a nematode problem. Might be worth a shot.

A nice video about shaggy mane and other inky caps:


And here is the study he's referring to.
(Edit: It might not be the exact one, they mention an earlier study about this, but it's an interesting one anyway.)