On farms,the emergence of protozoan parasites such as Neospora caninum and Toxoplasma gondii may have severe consequences for the health of livestock and/or humans that consume products of these animals.In order to investigate the risk of pathogen transfer by rodents,we screened 250 brain tissue samples from 9 species of feral rodents and insectivores originating from 10 organic livestock farms for the presence of both parasites.Samples were conserved in 4%paraformaldehyde solution and later analyzed by real-time PCR.For N.caninum,31 samples (12.4%) originating from 6 species tested positive,with the highest numbers found in common shrews (33.3%) ,wood mice (17.6%) ,harvest mice (16.7%) ,house mice (15.4%) ,white-toothed shrews (10.8%) and common voles (4.2%) .Remarkable was that 27/31 (87%) of the positive samples originated from farms where dogs were present.For T.gondii,the overall contamination level was 4%,with only 3 positive species: house mice (9.0%) ,common voles (4.2%) and white-toothed shrews (2.0%) .Also,several co-infections were found,especially among house mice (3.8%) .The results underline that rodents are a risk factor in transmission of these protozoans to livestock.