worming every month??!!

I was in your same boat when I started out...I had two major herds within bike riding of my farm, yet they didn't do anything themselves. I already knew how to disbud, but their husbands did most other management and learning to trim feet with a pocket knife when you are woman simply doesn't work. The first time she show shaved a goat for me she threw her down on the ground and sat on her! Shoot I fit my goats for shows like we did horses.

So I made an appointment with my vet, to learn where to give shots (I only knew cows and horses) how to tube, how to IV, how to pull blood. When using CIDR's for the first time 3 years ago, I took them and the goats and we hysterically tried with a friend of mines instructions read over the phone, how to even put it into the applicator! We are great friends now 21 years later. Every spring I call in for a visit, which I pay for, but I just sit there and ask her whats up...like with export, or the closing and opening of the Canadian border you all love our Ridgeback pups up there or anything new she has been hearing about illness or sickness in our area. Having a good vet for your mentor is the best!

I also went to Texas A&M anytime this teaching univeristy or Prairie View had any classes laymen could attend, fecal sampling, AI, judges training clinics, forage management etc, parasite clinics and scrapie...you just have to look beyond what normal folks do with their goats...so what if they are talking sheep or cattle sometimes? Vicki

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Vicki McGaugh
Nubian Soaps
North of Houston TX
www.etsy.com/shop/nubiansoaps

A 3 decade dairy goat farm homestead that is now a retail/wholesale soap company and construction business.

That is a really really good point. There is an awful lot of info that is out there that is geared to cattle, for example, that is directly applicable to goat management.

I mean, just look at our drugs. If we had to have them all goat approved, rather than using what works for cows and sheep, we'd be up a creek!

Some of the most cutting-edge worming stuff is tailored to cattle, especially the very newest information on life cycle and natural preventatives that can be used in management. I recently read a piece studying the latest on worms in cattle that partially used what goat herders have been doing for the past 15 years as the pattern cattle people want to avoid at all costs! It laid out, step by step, what goat folks had done that has led to serious resistance problems in herds, and told how cow folks could avoid those mis-steps. It was all about cattle, but I learned goat stuff in it!

Perhaps the coolest thing in the article was the latest info that, contrary to what Ivomec-funded university studies in the past had shown, mature cows actually destroy worms. Dry cows kill them by chewing their cuds, and also in the rumen. The focus in cattle now is on the calves. The old-school teaching, through studies funded by Ivomec, was that all cattle had to be treated (sells more product).

Well now...that means a savvy goat producer can run a dry cow in the pasture as a worm vacuum. Even older stocker steers could do that job.

The info is geared to cattle because that's where the money is nationally. But it doesn't mean there's nothing there for us.

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Jim Steele
Sweetpea Farms
"To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing." -- Robert Gates

Well now...that means a savvy goat producer can run a dry cow in the pasture as a worm vacuum. Even older stocker steers could do that job.
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I know that Texas A&M has this information on one of their studies also. Just wish there wasn't that poop factor is all with cows! Vicki

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Vicki McGaugh
Nubian Soaps
North of Houston TX
www.etsy.com/shop/nubiansoaps

A 3 decade dairy goat farm homestead that is now a retail/wholesale soap company and construction business.

The more I read up on this worming problem the stronger my gut feeling becomes "Never buy anything from Texas!" Sorry about that, but it's true that most folks import their worm problems from different farms. We had some Boer folks go to texas to pick up a herd of boers and guess what they brought back with them? HC and all the headaches that come with it.

The information about alternative's is going to become more important as time goes by. Even up here here we have goat keepers who baby their animals way too much. Antibiotics, sulfa treatments, wormers after wormers, bleach in their drinking water and it goes on and on. Most of these troubles are caused over managing the herds and keeping weak animals alive. Most of this can be helped by increasing the immune system, and enabling the animal to help itself. And that's half the battle of having healthy animals.

Ruminants live in a symbiotic relationship with parasites and many different kinds of bacteria, protozoa and fungi. Any time an animal comes down with signs of an extreme parasite infection is a sign that that there is some stress on the immune system that needs to be addressed.

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