Tip for supplementing with copper ...

[Cygnet]

I am starting to supplement with copasure in my herd.

I also have a pack goat who's trained to drink out of a plain old bottle of water. Makes giving water on the trail dead easy -- just uncap and glug glug.

I filled a water bottle with something sweet -- gatorade, in this case, because I had it on hand -- and his dose of copasure. Probably anything sweet would work.

I will note that the average goat can drink a bottle of water in about ten seconds flat. I think it's reduced to five seconds when there's something sweet in it.

I pretty much just poured the copasure rods right down his throat. I don't think he realized his gatorade was even adulterated ... he was delighted to get a treat and I had one less fight on my hands.

Worked on two other goats, too, that weren't even "water bottle trained." Soon as they tasted the sweet stuff they were more than happy to glug it down.

I'll have to get the little does trained to do this. It's much easier than trying to wrestle a capsule down their throat, that's for sure. And the goats think they're getting a special treat.

-- Leva

[Minelson]

Great tip! Thank you I'm going to try to bottle train my little family

[MisFitFarm]

That's a great idea. Our does have always been terrible about trying to steal the bottles away from the bottle babies, but I never thought about trying it for anything useful!

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

The stomach you want to put the bolus in, is not the same one a goat drink waters into When drinking...from bottle babies to adults, notice they cock their heads, this opens a valve to another stomach, not the rumen. Yes rods will then lodge in other stomachs, but it's not really the same. Using a pill gun is not very hard, plastic ones are less than $5, I know we all want something easy peasy, but like pulling blood, fecal sampling, or bolusing if you do it one time it really isn't that hard. Now some individual goats can be a witch about it, but the technique itself isn't difficult. Vicki

[Cygnet]

Ack, I didn't realize that.

What would you suggest that I do now? I don't want to dose again if it'll overdose 'em -- but if they're not getting a sufficient benefit from the dose, that's not a good thing.

-- Leva