A two-minute, AI-powered worm check arrives for Australia's sheep and cattle farmers

Deciding when to treat livestock for worms used to mean posting samples to a lab and waiting days or weeks — while parasites, increasingly resistant to drenches (worming medicines), kept working. Dawbuts, Australia's leading livestock parasitology service, is now launching the OvaCyte analyser nationwide: a point-of-care device from Telenostic that photographs up to 180 images of worm eggs from a small sample and lets an AI engine identify and count them on the spot. Sample preparation takes two minutes, needs no centrifuge, and the unit connects by Wi-Fi or phone hotspot — practical in a farm shed. 'It can distinguish the eggs of sheep barber's pole worms and pathogenic coccidia straight away,' said veterinarian Dr Playford of Dawbuts, 'allowing our farmers to make fast and confident drenching decisions' — treating when it is needed, and not when it is not.

SDG 2 · Zero hunger — Mechanism: tech innovation