Ivermectin and fecal tests

[homebirtha]

The suggested protocol for Ivermectin is to give it 3 times, 10 days apart. Will a fecal test after the first application show a reduction in worms? or do you have to wait until 3 doses to see an effect?

We are thinking of giving Ivermectin to a seriously wormy goat. But I don't want to wait three weeks to find out if it's working or not, so I'm thinking we may recheck the fecal a few days after the first dose to make sure it's having an effect. Also, how many days after should we check?

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

The above protocoal is when you are bringing in new stock, using Ivermectin like this breaks the lifecycle of the adult worm in the goats body.

Fecal sampling at 7 to 10 days after worming will tell you if you have had a significant reduction in eggs or not, but it does not tell you how many adult worms you have killed.

Using the above protocoal for routine worming at your farm when you have had goats awhile would be overkill, unless you were talking that you had used a white wormer for years, and now was moving to Ivermectin.

There is such wide spread resistance to Ivermectin (it works for the intial kill of worm eggs, but is not touching the adult worms, how we know this is that at 21 days you are having another spike of eggs in fecal, and need to worm again.....this is what happened to us. Good kills at 7 to 10 days but the next months fecal was way over 1000 eggs per gram), I simply think it's smarter to move to Cydectin now. Keep your Ivermectin as a drug to go back with, also to use in tandem with a white wormer for a cocktail...in 5 or more years when we start seeing resistance to the low dose of Cydectin. Because I quit using white wormers (TBZ, Safeguard, Panacur) when the literature came out about it simply not working, Valbazen and Levamisole still work well here. Vicki

[homebirtha]

That makes sense. I confirmed with the previous owner that they had been using Ivermectin, so I think we will switch to Cydectin. Whew, glad that decision is made.