Gastrointestinal helminths and lungworms of French dairy goats: prevalence and geographical distribution in Poitou-Charentes.

A study was conducted on 81 dairy-goat farms in western France. Faecal samples were collected once and 31 culled goats were necropsied in order to assess their gastrointestinal and respiratory helminth species, their prevalences and the intensities of infection as well as their geographical distribution in six subregions of the surveyed area. Fifteen species of helminth were recovered. The most frequent were Muellerius capillaris, Trichostrongylus colubriformis and Teladorsagia circumcincta with a prevalence more than 90%. The two latter species represented respectively 50.9% and 30.2% of the total worm burden of the digestive tract. Other prevalent species were Haemonchus contortus, Strongyloides papillosus, Trichuris spp., Moniezia spp. and Dicrocoelium lanceolatum. The occurrence of Dicrocoelium lanceolatum was related to the presence of calcareous or alkaline soils and restricted to the south of the surveyed area. No area at particular risk was defined for the other helminth infections, probably because of the relative homogeneity in climatic and topographic conditions of the six agricultural regions.