Your thoughts on herbal wormers

[Calliopia]

Coppicing !!!

Best Idea Ever It is a long term plan though.

 

[cmjust0]

Strip disking!

Seriously think I'm gonna make a limited go at it this Spring, just to see what comes up. My neighbors are gonna LOVE me when it comes up in purple thistle, but that's ok...I'll just sell them goats to control it.

 

[Calliopia]

I can't strip disk ... only 1/2 an acre. Hubby won't let me buy a tractor until we have 5 acres.


But yeah for acreage.. Strip disking!! I'm right there with ya.


My father just bought 14acres that has been cattle pasture for the past oh 30 years. I sooo want to get at it and play around with forage growth options. Right now it's under the guise that it's for his pigs

 

[Beekissed]

I don't know if my methods would translate over into goats, as they seem to have more trouble with parasites on the whole than do sheep.

Also I have a breed of sheep that is more inclined to parasite resistance. But I've had my sheep for two and a half years now and have not used a commercial dewormer.

I have used a drench of concentrated, freshly juiced garlic, unpasteurized ACV and sometimes a little Shaklees soap. I use this about four times a year. I have also used the garlic powder instead of the freshly juiced in the interest of time.

I also feed pumpkins, the seeds of which also act as a natural dewormer.

They all got nasal fly bots this summer and I searched desparately for a natural way to rid the sheep of these. They hadn't been drenched since spring, so I decided to try this first.

I just upped the garlic in my drench, wiped out their nasal passages and applied Vicks with a long Q-tip. The symptoms were gone the next day and have never returned. I had read the larva do not like the garlic taste in the bloodstream~apparently this is true.

I've never actually used the herbal dewormers as I have found my own methods to be sufficient. I check my sheep against the FAMACHA chart and gauge their general health/conditioning to measure success of these methods.

I'm quite satisfied.

 

[cmjust0]

Sheep are naturally adapted to grazing which almost certainly makes them more parasite resistant than goats. Despite how similar goats and sheep seem to be, it really is an applesranges comparison.

 

[rebelINny]

I am really glad to see this post in all honesty! I am about to give up raising goats because of this year alone! I have had such a bad time of worms and sooooo many deaths in my young goats that it is terribly distressing. My poor 8 year old son lost all four of "his" goats this fall alone. The last of his four just died this morning and he didn't even "look" sick or down or anything. Cold could have played the part in this death, he was 8 months old. I do fecal testing on my goats (just started) and they all have high worm loads. One in particular that had really high amounts of eggs I dosed on Ivomec to kill them all and she died the next day. I am thinking it killed too many off at once thus causing alot of toxicity and death. I have had in total a loss of eleven goats, only one was an adult the other ranged in age from 13 weeks to 8 months. All from this summer/fall until now. I had 40 goats in spring. I have been using Molly's Herbals since summer and though I don't think this is why I am having so much trouble I do think that I should have killed off the worms first with a chemical wormer and then maintained that with the herbs. Either way, I am ready to give up and I really don't want to because I love goats! I so need a helper/mentor and someone to finish building the barn so I can put the adult goats in for the winter!!!!

 

[rebelINny]

I will also add that I had very rarely wormed AT ALL before now which is why they are so loaded. I am trying desperately to get good stock that will handle their worm loads but they are just gonna have to be wormed with chemicals right now. I have 19 goats due to kid between the first of Feb through the end of May. I have three mutt goats (all dairy breed) that are the healthiest goats ever and are thriving though they aren't hardly ever wormed. They have never been sick a day in their lives and they are 4 years, almost 3 years and the kid from the 4 year old that is 8 months now. Even though they are mutts I am thinking on keeping their kids this year. They are so much more resilient.

 

[SDGsoap&dairy]

We maintain our herd in mixed deciduous woodland and the goats seemed to do really well on browse rather than pasture. This decision was more out of necessity than anything else since we're smack in the middle of 14 acres of woods and don't have any grass on the property with the exception of the lawn surrounding our house. The more I learn about parasite management the happier I am with this arrangement.

Given a choice the goats didn't TOUCH the grass until fall when the leaves had come down and it was the only green vegetation available! Then they snarfed it.

 

[cmjust0]

I have had in total a loss of eleven goats ... I had 40 goats in spring. I have been using Molly's Herbals since summer and though I don't think this is why I am having so much trouble I do think that I should have killed off the worms first with a chemical wormer and then maintained that with the herbs.

I do think that's why you had so much trouble. Think about it...had the herbals worked, you wouldn't have *needed* to kill anything off with a commercial dewormer. Right?

What happened to you was that your goats effectively didn't get dewormed all Spring and Summer, which means they were picking up more and more larvae and cranking out more and more worm eggs as time went on. Toward the end of summer, going into fall, your goats -- and your pastures -- were incredibly contaminated, which explains the timeline for the deaths..

That's what people need to understand about the barberpoles...they're quite cyclical. They have a pretty predictable life cycle, and they depend on certain resources (grass, humidity, certain temperatures, etc) to be able to carry on -- just like everything else that lives.

The life cycle for a barberpole, in a nutshell, is:

Spring -- Overwintered larvae wake up, molt into adults, begin sucking blood and making eggs to contaminate the pasture. Goats eat the new larvae as they eat grass, then those larvae molt, suck blood, produce eggs, etc.. Pasture and host contamination rise as more larvae molt and produce more eggs which produce more larvae which produce more eggs, etc. -- it's a slow rise at first, but the rise is exponential in nature.

Summer -- Pasture/host contamination continues to worsen. Weaker goats begin to show signs of infestation. Spot deworming begins, but goats simply pick up new larvae right away and the problem continues to worsen.

Late Summer -- Contamination is at its worst. Some goats will require frequent dewormings to stay alive. If your pastures are overstocked with weak goats (which, to me, means PUREBREDS), things can be **really bad** right about now. You may start losing animals to worms, despite your best efforts.

Fall -- Worms begin to go dormant. Weaker goats try to recover before winter; some do, some don't. Stronger goats start pinking up.. Problem seems to be subsiding.

Winter -- The last of the adult worms are dying off naturally and any new larvae being picked up are remaining dormant in the host as they wait for Spring. Barberpole larvae aren't good at overwintering on pasture, so the vast majority of larvae on pasture die off in winter. Pastures aren't necessarily "clean" come Spring, but they're actually pretty close. The vast, vast, vast, VAST majority of barberpoles which *will* cause you difficulty *next summer* are already inside your goats as dormant larvae.

Spring -- overwintered larvae wake up, molt, suck blood, and lay eggs. Etc., ad nauseum. Round and round she goes.

 

[rebelINny]

So what plan of action do I have? They will pick up worms and larvae and all that crap I know but how do I manage them. I don't want to constantly use chemical wormers. I want my goats to be resilient and have constitutions to handle the wormload but I don't want to lose my whole herd either. Yes, I do have purebreds for the most part, Alpine, except the three that I mentioned earlier that were my first goats and hence mutts for sure but highly strong hardy goats.