Question about worms

[Michael W. Smith]

I have had goats for 9 years and have never wormed mine yet. I use DE in their feed, and all have good weight on them, and I just don't believe in worming them and possibly contaminating their milk or meat.

I can understand if you start out with goats from someplace and worm them once. But once all the worms are dead, why do you have to keep worming them? Where do these "new" worms come from and how are they spread?

I can see where the wild goats do not need wormed as they move from place to place. But if you have a large enough area for the goats to run in, it just doesn't make sense to have to worm them again & again.

[M&G-Nubians]

As I understand it. ALL goats have worms. "Period" You can never achieve a zero worm count. The trick is keeping everything in balance. When an animal is stressed (i.e. moved, mistreated, scared) the worm population can increase to a point that the animals system can no longer function as intended. Causing a multitude of heath problems for the animal. Hence, owners running around chasing their own tails trying to figure out what to do first, next, and then repeat. This is one good reason why fecal tests are almost always recommended. Treating for something that is not there can be expensive and a waste of time. Would you change your shampoo to treat dry hands? Prevention, balance, and paddock rotation.

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

Hi Michael.

For you this works because of the freeze you have. For me I would have dead goats.

Most folks don't get that worms are not killed by wormers, it isn't poison to the goats or to the worms. It makes their lives so inhospitapal that the worms evacuate ship, they are pooped out in mass on the ground and can live under a microscopic amount of sand....the pastures flood with rain, or dew up with the humidity, they slither or float up to the top of the grass and are reinfested by the goats. The worst thing is when you don't pasture rotate, or the horrors you worm and then let the girls poop all these mama into your barn, they overwinter in the bedding to infest the goats in the spring. Worm eggs and larve can also live on the ground unless it's very dry and hot or the ground is frozen, they are stepped on by the goats then the goats step in the hay or in the grain and reinfest their herdmates.

The worse are the mom worms who have become immune to the particular kind of wormer you are using, they put their babies tosleep inside the goats and are called arrested larve. These buggers will then come awake during very inopportune times, they are also a worm type that does not show up on fecal. When a doe kids, when she is sold, when she is scarred out of her mind, or has any kind of adrenilane shock, the worms come to life in the thousands, they immediatly start hosting on the blood, and are the number one killer of newly purchased or newly freshened goats.

So yes, freshely wormed goats can be put into a sterile environment, but they had to have pooped all the live eggs and larve into the old enviornment first, then any arrested larve or eggs that mature, are all that's left. So if hygene is good, pasture rotation continues or you have frozen ground, or like in Arizona heat with no humidity, you have worms licked! For the rest of us it's WAR! Vicki