I did my first fecal yesterday. This doe was dewormed about 10 days ago with Ivomec plus. We just started our rainy season so I would bet that my pastures are about as wormy as they will ever get.
I counted 8 HC eggs the first time and 15 the second time I studied the slide. But I do not have the slides with lines on them so I am not sure I didn't count some twice. It was hard to tell. I am concerned that she was just dewormed and according to the eggs per gram recommendations I have found online I should deworm her again.
What are your standards for number of eggs that constitutes deworming? She is not anemic. I would say that she has gone from a FAMACHA 1 to a 2 (acceptable) since her kidding which was about 9 weeks ago.
I know I screwed up because I incorrectly dosed with Valbazen when this batch of does kidded. I always deworm at kidding especially since these girls were kidding during the worm season. I did not read carefully enough and gave them the sheep dose. Can't tell you what I would give to go back and do that over! I used Ivomec last year and thought I should change drugs this year so was going to do Valbazen.
The vet did one fecal for me after I did one doe with Valbazen and they found no eggs so it does seem to work, that particular one was after I figured out my mistake and gave her the right dose.
Anyway after Reba got so sick with worms I decided I'd better redo those ones who got the wrong Valbazen dose because they were showing the earlier signs that Reba had before she got so sick. This doe was one of that group. So she had a sheep Valbazen dose on Apr 2, then Ivomec 10 days ago, and now there are clearly still HC eggs on the slide, possibly enough to warrant deworming again. I am kinda freaked out.
Time to go to Cydectin? I have never used it. Lots of people around here do, though. Can you double dose or overdose Ivomec? Finally, all the people around here swear that you have to deworm again 10 days after the first one because somehow there are dormant ones that survive the first round and then start laying? I have never down the 10 day thing because it seemed like over exposure to the drug and I couldn't find any literature on it.
Replies
Okay...I did deworm these does with ValbazenX2 and Ivermectin. I read my Ivomec bottle and saw it was about to expire and also had not been stored properly so I wondered if I had somehow caused the chemical not to be as potent. I stopped on the way home and picked up a new horse dewormer of Ivermectin & gave them triple their bodyweight of horse paste which is what I have read to do with horse paste. But it is new Ivermectin & hopefully more potent than the old bottle I have?
No idea where I will stand for fecals next week, hoping very much to see at least a 90% reduction from last time.
Just FYI, someone who bought kids from me awhile back was just told to do double dose Safeguard 3 days in a row for barberpole by my vet. I told her I wouldn't fool with safeguard for barberpole but she is monitoring their color & planning to re-fecal so we will see what happens. It kind of sounds like they have the tapeworm dose applied to the barberpole. But I have heard my vet say some pretty uneducated things. He said, always give the CDT shot behind the shoulder because that's how you can tell the bump is not CAE. I said. "You mean CL...?"
more later, gotta go milk
Here is the latest update on Charlotte. She is alive, but I can't say much more than that.
http://antiquityoaks.blogspot.com/2014/06/charlotte-update.html
BTW, if you want a buck, now is the time! I don't know if she'll ever be bred again. I'm keeping one for myself and one is already sold, so two are left.
Juliana Goodwin said:
I like the various approaches you are taking with different goats and planning to repeat the fecals. That is a great idea.
The info on repeating Safeguard in ten days is from the 1990s, and a lot of people got the idea that it was a good idea to do it with all dewormers, not just Safeguard, which is the one that does not do a good job of killing eggs. This does NOT apply to Valbazen or any other dewormers. I discuss this more in my book, which I think you have. Safeguard is used three days in a row for tapeworms but nothing else. My dewormer info comes from Steve Hart, PhD, who spends his life studying internal parasites in goats and sheep. He has lots of published studies, and he told me that last summer he did a few thousand fecals. He actually told me the number, but I've forgotten. He speaks at conference all over the US and the world about parasites, so I totally trust him. He has also been doing this for about 20 years so he knows the history behind all of the recommendations.
We are currently experimenting with wormwood tincture here and getting pretty excited about it. I bought it at Whole Foods. We have a doe that had a mediocre worm load, and after one dose her poop went from clumps to pebbles. Since I've had that result before and it reversed, we are doing three days and repeating the fecal to see if it's improved then. We did that a few years ago with three of the goat herb dewormers (Fir Meadow, Hoegger, and Molly's) and saw no reduction in fecal egg counts. Don't know why it took me so long to think about using a tincture.
PS Deborah I haven't seen anything new on Charlotte. Is she pulling through?
Juliana Goodwin said:
Okay...so I did fecals on EVERYONE today.
First, the doe with the 15 count, was not anemic. She has always been the best dark red color and recently has dropped to like the second best color on the FAMACHA chart. So, not scary pale at all but not as nice and dark red as she was while she was pregnant.
I did everyone else also today, and the sheet of paper I wrote it all down on is in the barn now. One doe has recently become quite pale so I wasn't surprised to find that she was loaded with barberpole. But one who did surprise me was one that had become pale and had some of the same symptoms Reba had before she got so sick. So I dewormed her about 10 days ago as well. Also Ivomec. Then her color improved immediately so I thought great, got it. Well, she was LOADED. I counted twenty eggs per view, no less than 10 on any view. All barber-pole. Amazingly she is not that pale.
I gave the wormy ones the correct goat dose of Valbazen. I have read that the Benzimidazoles work better if you repeat the dose 12 hours later. Was originally told this by my vet and have found some literature to back it up. Vet originally said to do this with Safeguard, but I did find something that said to do it with this entire class of dewormers. So my plan was to give them the Valbazen again in the morning. Maybe I will give them the Ivomec again too.
I had one other doe who had some eggs but not terribly anemic and her count was not too high. More than the 15 count, high enough I felt I should worm her but not loaded like those other two. So I gave her the morantel tartrate dewormer actually as an experiment. I am going to fecal her again next week and see how well it worked. It is the only one with no milk discard so I'd like to see how effective it is in my herd. Since she was not a critical case I figured she could stand it if it didn't work that well and I have to follow up with something else.
I can't do the morantel and the valbazen because the morantel is pellets and I know which ones of my does will eat it well enough to use it and which ones won't. One of the loaded girls is a picky eater and I wouldn't risk it with her. The one I used it on tonight is a great eater and she inhaled her pellets and I was sure to see they were all eaten.
So I am thinking I will to the 2nd dose of Valbazen tomorrow morning with ivomec again. There are two more milkers who I didn't get samples from. I am planning to fecal those last two plus all my other weanling babies next week. nobody else is badly anemic so they can wait till next week I think.
I wish I had some herbal dewormer on hand to experiment with these borderline does while I am doing fecals. Have you ever done a fecal egg reduction count after an herbal?
I would only be concerned about 8-15 eggs if the doe had pale eyelids and poor body condition. I'm wondering if you have the FAMACHA score flipped. A/1 is excellent so moving to a 2 would be bad. If she moved from a 5 (white) to 4 (pale pink), she should be dewormed again.
At this point, I personally would do the Valbazen and Ivermectin at the same time. If you do them at the same time, you should get a better worm kill because not that many worms will be resistant to both. The ones that are resistant to one should be killed by the other.