Posative pellet goat de-wormer

[Earthbound]

have a friend who just got some feral goats that were running rampant on a property on a small island, basically the person who lived there, abandoned them and the locals "banned" together and caught the goats and took them in before winter hit. That being said, they are very scetchy but hungry so my friend was wondering if the posative pellets would help with worms, obviously they need to be wormed but catching them for a needle or oral is pretty much impossible at this point. They will work with them over the next while and tame them the best they can.
Just looking for some input on this product. Obviously it would have been ideal to worm them upon catching but it was a spur of the moment thing and also would have had to be done again in 10 or so days......
corry

[susanne]

if i remember right the positive goat dewormer contains fenbendazole as anthelmintic. make sure this is still working in your area. take a fecalsample before trearment and two weeks later again.

[Loda Farm]

I would say for this situation, anything is better than nothing. They probably do not have a resistance to anything since they probably have not been wormer in quite sometime, if at all.

Laura

[DQ]

Originally Posted by susanne

if i remember right the positive goat dewormer contains fenbendazole as anthelmintic. make sure this is still working in your area. take a fecalsample before trearment and two weeks later again.

I just used it recently. it contains morental tartrate as the active ingredient. it was effective for me and my suspicion would be that if these goats haven't been wormed much if at all that it would be effective.

[susanne]

wishful thinking laura
if i import a goat from another herd, i bring the resistant parasite that she might carry, on my property. my goats might have never seen a certain class of wormer and if i miss to put the new goat in quarantine and de-worm her, and my other goats getting infected with this new parasite, i would need to use the wormer that had still worked in the other herd where this goat came from.
if those feral goats are living on an island where they never had contact with other ruminants,it might work.
to make sure the wormer is effective, a fecal check comes in handy and is cheap

[Earthbound]

Thanks to all! I'll tell her to go for it, something is better then nothing. Is there anything one could put in water? Like an ivomec or something??
corry

[Jim S.]

Originally Posted by susanne

wishful thinking laura
if i import a goat from another herd, i bring the resistant parasite that she might carry, on my property. my goats might have never seen a certain class of wormer and if i miss to put the new goat in quarantine and de-worm her, and my other goats getting infected with this new parasite, i would need to use the wormer that had still worked in the other herd where this goat came from.
if those feral goats are living on an island where they never had contact with other ruminants,it might work.
to make sure the wormer is effective, a fecal check comes in handy and is cheap

Susanne, the only way parasites generationally develop resistance to a class of antihelmitics is if they are challenged by a wormer class repeatedly in a dose that is lower than required to kill them all, and then the same wormer is frequently applied at less than optimal strength, which kills most weaker worms. Mating then is more and more likely among the strong ones that have survived, and thus resistance is established in subsequent generations. Rotating such goats to "clean" pastures right after worming them hastens the establishment of resistant populations.

In a pasture in which the goats have not been wormed for a long, long time, the chances for resistance to any class of wormer are indeed lower, because generation after generation has hatched and mated without a challenge of any kind. Resistance is diluted.

On your other point, were you to bring a single goat harboring a class-resistant worm onto your property, and your property and herd were not already populated with worms resistant to that class, then interbreeding would diminish the resistance of that goat's shed worm progeny over time.

This is the crux of what some call "the new way of worming," using management to raise and tolerate to a degree a worm "crop" that repeatedly has any resistant individual traits diluted over time by intermating with non-resistant populations. That is how wise stewards are going to save our bacon as far as effective wormers are concerned. There are a lot of Web sites about it nowadays.

As a side note, the use of pasture chickens has been demonstrated to be a "natural" way to control and reduce worm populations, as is running adult dry cows on pasture. Worms do NOT infest adult cows (only calves); they are destroyed in cows by chewing and in the rumen. (This is a huge change from when I started in 1990, when wormer companies were promoting treating all cattle.)

Providing a patch of lespedeza sericea is a natural goat wormer because of its tannins. So are fall leaves and acorns.

[crazygoatgirl]

Originally Posted by Jim S.

Susanne, the only way parasites generationally develop resistance to a class of antihelmitics is if they are challenged by a wormer class repeatedly in a dose that is lower than required to kill them all, and then the same wormer is frequently applied at less than optimal strength, which kills most weaker worms. Mating then is more and more likely among the strong ones that have survived, and thus resistance is established in subsequent generations. Rotating such goats to "clean" pastures right after worming them hastens the establishment of resistant populations.

This is the most true statement in this post, however you want to move the goats after they have had suffcient time to shed the worms, as in hours not days.

In a pasture in which the goats have not been wormed for a long, long time, the chances for resistance to any class of wormer are indeed lower, because generation after generation has hatched and mated without a challenge of any kind. Resistance is diluted.

BUT if they have ever been dewormed then there are resistant issues and most goats have been dewormed once in their lives....and probably at a half hearted effort for lack of knowledge by the owner. Therefore there will be worms that have resistance and they will breed the resistance to the new worms and you will still end up with "super worms" that are resistant to at least one class of dewormer.

On your other point, were you to bring a single goat harboring a class-resistant worm onto your property, and your property and herd were not already populated with worms resistant to that class, then interbreeding would diminish the resistance of that goat's shed worm progeny over time.

No because the new goat is going to shed the worms that they have and they will be spread by other creatures to the other goats through shoes, hooves, and anything else that walks through the pen/pasture to the animals that were already there. Then all animals on the property will be infected with resistant worms.

This is the crux of what some call "the new way of worming," using management to raise and tolerate to a degree a worm "crop" that repeatedly has any resistant individual traits diluted over time by intermating with non-resistant populations. That is how wise stewards are going to save our bacon as far as effective wormers are concerned. There are a lot of Web sites about it nowadays.

Pasture rotation is great but is not something that everyone can do and it will not be "effective" unless everyone does it or if the person has a closed herd....which few people do.

As a side note, the use of pasture chickens has been demonstrated to be a "natural" way to control and reduce worm populations, as is running adult dry cows on pasture. Worms do NOT infest adult cows (only calves); they are destroyed in cows by chewing and in the rumen. (This is a huge change from when I started in 1990, when wormer companies were promoting treating all cattle.)

Chickens are great, they do not eat all worms, they will scatter manure out so it can dry and the worms have no place to go but into the ground...so they can come back up blades of grass to find a new host. Adult cattle do have worms just like adult goat have worms and adult horses have worms. The only difference is that calves, kids,and any other young livestock run the risk of being also infested with cocci (adults can even be overrun). Chewing of cud is just that it has no effect on creatures that you have to use a microscope to see. The rumen has no effect either...if it did no adult ruminant would have worms thus rendering deworming usless.

Providing a patch of lespedeza sericea is a natural goat wormer because of its tannins. So are fall leaves and acorns.

Yes maybe but also remember that there are leaves that are very toxic when dry like Cherry and Acorns can be very toxic.

I would love to think that your way of thinking is possible but in the way of livestock today with people buying and selling animals and people not asking questions to knowledgable folks this is just not going to happen.

[Jim S.]

Sharon, I'd respectfully suggest you spend some time with Google and get with your university extension guy on the latest research over the past 5 years regarding worms. Much of what you are saying contradicts that research and also contradicts the basic laws of Darwinian evolution and genetics.

[susanne]

i herd a couple of times from different people that chickens will eat parasites that are shed from goats(or other livestock) most people belive that but it would be too good to be true. parasites ,adults,larvae or eggs are microscopic small and even chicken will not see it.
that was a very nice explanation sharon, how the chicken really helps in prevent the adults from climbing up because of change the environment (humidity) for them.
most people do not have enough land to provide big enough rotation pasture.

[susanne]

Originally Posted by Jim S.

contradicts the basic laws of Darwinian evolution and genetics.

yeah jim. if i follow your posts, we should all keep our animals after the motto "survival of the fittest"
how far would you go? i bet we would not have the overpopulation problem on earth if we would live like that

[Jim S.]

Survival of the fittest is indeed how one properly and responsibly runs a herd of animals, and it is the fundamental principal of animal husbandry and herd improvement. Culling and selection are how a herd is improved over time, by either Nature or the will of humans. This is established practice.

Things run the opposite way in the case of the well-managed worm population. The more susceptable worms are encouraged to thrive and interbreed with the "fitter" resistant worms, knocking back their genetic advantage over generations. We do not want to cull the weaker worms and instead select by our practices the resistant "fit" worms.

Any keeper of animals grows two herds...the livestock and the worms. They are symbiotic. There has been a total revolution in thinking about worm management since I started out in 1990; most of it has happened in just the past 4-5 years, as patents have run out on wormer products and so university research has become less dependent on funding from those companies. That has opened whole new lines of unfettered inquiry, no strings attached.

Unfortunately, it often takes a long time for newer practices to enter general management as accepted, and the companies making wormers still have a huge financial interest in propagating the old ways through advertising and sales training, as they require more use of product. Those very methods are what has brought us to this juncture, though, where it is a very real possibility that nothing will work well against worms within the next 10 years unless we change our ways.

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

that nothing will work well against worms within the next 10 years unless we change our ways.
................................

Accept by us who fecal and famancha test. Just like when the old folks around here lost TBZ and combiotic, and our generation of goat owners lost Pennicillin and Safeguard. Ivermectin will be next.

"I would say for this situation, anything is better than nothing."

This answer, respectfully to what the poster actually meant, pretty much sums it up. This is the problem. When actually nothing is better than nothing in this case. Why guess, fecal for $10 and then make a sound reason. Answering yes this worked for you isn't an answer either, because what worms did it work on? How much did the goats eat? What was the kill afterward of which worms? Because if it worked on your goats for strongides and she has HC, you have just help kill her goats now with the huge stress of the move with this group of wild feral goats! Imagine what the round up really was! Vicki