Wormy goats.....and fecal exams

[freemotion]

Last night I did my second big round of fecal exams. The first time was when I just got my microscope and supplies....I did a couple of samples to learn on, then a few days later did all four goats. I found numbers in the moderate/acceptable range, but I thought I should watch closely and would use a pharmaceutical if needed until I have this herbal thing all figured out.

In last night's batch, I found almost no eggs, except in the buck's poo. He joined our little farmlet about two months ago. He came from a farm that throws the entire pharmacy at their goats, they show their goats, so they have to. Not a criticism, just not what I want to do. Even his poo had very few eggs, definitely on the low side. I had to work REALLY hard to find eggs in my girl's doo-doo.

This really surprised me. Any thoughts? I have mature black walnut trees in and next to my pasture, and they drop their nuts and leaves into my goat's area. For anyone who has not exerienced walnut trees, at least here in the north, the leaves come off all at once as soon as the temperature dips at night....by morning, it is raining walnut leaves, and the trees drop all their leaves at once. The goats go to town on them. I wonder if that did it? Or all the pumpkins? Only one goat will eat the seeds regularly, so I doubt it is the seeds.

I also have black cherry trees and oaks, and they attacked the comfrey in the pasture on two occasions, ignoring it for the most part. I wonder how much they will self-medicate if given the opportunity.

I also put everyone on beet pulp and a big glug of beet kvass twice a day for the past couple of months....the kvass for the past month or so. Beet kvass is phenomenal for the immune system.

 

[ksalvagno]

Aren't black walnuts and the pumpkin seeds supposed to be natural dewormers? Maybe even the leaves have deworming properties in them. Not to mention if you are boosting their immune system, I bet that is helping too.

What is beet kvass and where do you get it?

 

[freemotion]

Yeah, that is the only explanation I could come up with.

Beet kvass is an extremely health-promoting fermented drink, high in probiotics and antioxidants and who-know-what-else. My root crop failed this year with all the rain plus a fat groundhog that evade my neighbor's efforts and munched in one of my gardens. My plan was to feed chopped root veggies this fall to promote twinning. Plan B became beet pulp with some beet kvass mixed in. At the very least, it is very good for man and beast.

And extremely easy and cheap to make. I use a couple of average-size beets, scrub 'em really well with a brush, trim the ends that can't be scrubbed well enough (and feed those ends to the goats), and cut them into about 1/2 inch cubes. Put 'em in a two quart jar and fill the jar with filtered water (well water will do, but chlorinated municipal water will suppress or kill the probiotics needed for fermentation.) Add a big pinch or two of sea salt, cover, and let it sit at room temp for a few days. It will get nice and dark and slightly thicker than the water you started with, and bubbles will form on top. I put a post-it note so I can keep track of when every jar on my counter is due to go into the fridge!

Then I strain off the liquid (the kvass) and bottle it and refrigerate it. I add more water and salt to the jar (a bit more salt this time to protect it from mold) and get a second, although weaker, batch. This one stays out of the fridge for only a couple of days, since the good bacteria are already growing well. I strain off the liquid again, and then feed the beets to the goats. And start another batch.

I use a good pour of the kvass to rehydrate the beet pulp along with some filtered water (again, avoid chlorine when using live probiotic-rich ferments) and distribute that among all the feed pans.

I consider it to be a very valuable supplement and for pennies, too. Free if I had a beet crop.

Before I was using beet kvass I was adding a spoonful of live sauerkraut on occasion for the probio's. Especially on the thinner dairy doe who gets a lot of food....at the first sign of clumpiness in her poo, she would get something fermented from my fridge in her next few meals. Problem solved instantly!

 

[Sweet Cheeks]

I'm new to goats and wondering what and when to worm.

4-H family I got the 6 month olds from said they used valbazen twice a year. My now 7 1/2 month olds were wormed by them in Aug 09.

I looked at their gums and they were very pale. Not pick at all.

I'm interested in getting a scope to check for worms so I know when to worm and what is working.

Any recommendations on scope brands, where to purchase, web sites to view, or books to purchase? Thank you for your help.

 

[freemotion]

I used the information on www.fiascofarm.com. She tells you what type of microscope you need and all the details. I found a nice lab quality one on craigslist....there were several listed, but I chose to buy from the person that knew what he had and how to use it. He and his wife used it to run fecals on their goat herd! Now one of them works in a vet lab and uses the equipment at work. So I got the 'scope and a lesson.

I found slides on CL also...someone bought a warehouse with some stuff still in it and it was veterinary supplies. I got a whole case of thousands of new slides for the price of ordering my supplies and having them shipped, and they threw in a case....a case!!!....of guaze 4x4's!

I look at the inner eyelids, not the gums. You have to pull the lower lid out and look beyond what you can see on the edges, and do it outside in good light. Should be a darker salmon color. There are charts online somewhere....but that is just one test. Fecals are critical if you want to reduce use of chemicals. Every property has a different worm burden, and each year brings different weather conditions that impacts numbers and types. Each goat is different, too.

Years ago I managed a private horse farm, and learned a lot about worms. I would send fecals to be run regularly ($4 each!!) and discovered that one pasture had a higher level of worms than the rest. It had some wet areas, too. Well, moist at times, not even swampy. It was interesting.

 

[chandasue]

Here's a chart of the eye with levels of pink:
http://www.scsrpc.org/SCSRPC/Files/Files/Misc/famacha card.jpg

Does anyone have any experience with Molly's Herbals for worming?

 

[freemotion]

I just bought the kit, expecting a worm load on this past fecal set and itching to test her formula's effectiveness here in Western MA, but now I am going to wait until the numbers rise a bit again. Like anything else natural, it will depend on the individual goats and the individual farm. I think.

 

[no nonsense]

Last night I did my second big round of fecal exams. The first time was when I just got my microscope and supplies....I did a couple of samples to learn on, then a few days later did all four goats. I found numbers in the moderate/acceptable range, but I thought I should watch closely and would use a pharmaceutical if needed until I have this herbal thing all figured out.

In last night's batch, I found almost no eggs, except in the buck's poo. He joined our little farmlet about two months ago. He came from a farm that throws the entire pharmacy at their goats, they show their goats, so they have to. Not a criticism, just not what I want to do. Even his poo had very few eggs, definitely on the low side. I had to work REALLY hard to find eggs in my girl's doo-doo.

This really surprised me. Any thoughts? I have mature black walnut trees in and next to my pasture, and they drop their nuts and leaves into my goat's area. For anyone who has not exerienced walnut trees, at least here in the north, the leaves come off all at once as soon as the temperature dips at night....by morning, it is raining walnut leaves, and the trees drop all their leaves at once. The goats go to town on them. I wonder if that did it? Or all the pumpkins? Only one goat will eat the seeds regularly, so I doubt it is the seeds.

I also have black cherry trees and oaks, and they attacked the comfrey in the pasture on two occasions, ignoring it for the most part. I wonder how much they will self-medicate if given the opportunity.

I also put everyone on beet pulp and a big glug of beet kvass twice a day for the past couple of months....the kvass for the past month or so. Beet kvass is phenomenal for the immune system.

What you have to understand about fecal exams, is that just because you are seeing few or no eggs, does not mean that your animals are worm free. It is very possible that the worms are just not producing eggs at the time that you ran the fecal, but they could still be there, happily robbing your animals of needed sustenance. Using things which stress but do not kill the worms are good ways to stop egg production, leaving you with a false sense of security. Multiple successive negative fecals are required, every 10 days to 2 weeks apart, before you can be reasonably sure that your animals are worm free. BTW, black walnut, black cherry and comfrey are all known to be toxic plants.

 

[freemotion]

Thank you, nn, I am aware of all that and plan to re-do the fecals every two weeks.

As for the toxicity of plants, all anthelmintics are toxic, even the chemical ones, in certain amounts. There are safe dosages.

Many plants get a bad rap due to misuse or overuse. Comfrey is a good example, and a quick google search will reveal why.

Sometimes one part of a plant is toxic and another part is not. Sometimes one part is more toxic than the other, and sometimes it is toxic at certain stages of growth and not at others. Sometimes a plant is ok fresh or dried, but very toxic while wilting. It goes on and on. That is why I plan to grow and gather my own herbs. There is a lot of laziness and fraud in the herbal industry....the useful part of black walnut is the husks, gathered and dried while still green. Since I have no clue as to whether the producer of any herb I buy is scrupulous or not, I gathered and dried my own black walnut hulls in preparation for this experimental year.

I can't remember which herb it was, but a few years ago an herb was banned in Germany when a manufacturer encapsulated the entire plant, including the roots, when just the leaves were safe. Many people suffered liver failure from ingesting the concentrated roots. The entire plant was vilified, when in reality, it is still a very useful herb.

It would be like banning cherries because thoroughbred mares suffered spontaneous abortions left and right when tent catipillars ate cherry leaves and pooped concentrated toxins in the water troughs, causing the mares to abort. No one figured it out until later in the season, after hundreds of valuable foals were lost.

I have not remove the cherry trees from my pasture, but I would not put a water tub underneath one if there were caterpillars munching above it.....

 

[kstaven]

People far to often take those toxic lists as gospel without further researching the realities of the individual plants.