COWP - Age requirement

Can you give a goat kid (3 month old) a COWP?  We got a buckling a week ago and he was coughing.  We got him shipped and I am sure that the stress of the trip had something to do with it.  Talked to the vet and she said that it could be worms.  She said to give him 5 days of safeguard.  We also did a fecal and he had a very high worm count.  We have been taking his temperature, but it has remained normal.  His cough has gotten better, but it is not completely gone.  So I was wondering if should go ahead and give him a COWP bolus.  I do not want to keep on giving him chemical dewormers.  The breeder had already dewormed him previously with Ivormec before he came to us.

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  • thanks so much for all the info.  I will re-read your book's chapter on worming.  I had read once and had already started to make plans on how to rotate the goats and the horses thru the property.  We have almost 8 acres, with a combination of woods and open pasture.  The pasture is all fenced in, but most of the wooded area is not, so I am starting to work on it, so I can definitely have a plan in place before spring comes in.  Thanks so much!

  • There is not currently a recommendation about how much lespedeza to feed an animal to keep parasites under control. However, the research shows that the more lespedeza a goat eats, the fewer parasites they have up to the point that they have virtually no parasite problems when grazing on fields of lespedeza daily. Your main line of defense against parasites should be management practices, such as pasture rotation, but in situations like this, feeding lespedeza until you see an improvement would probably be a valid way to proceed. I'm thinking of doing that with my does that wind up kidding in spring. (Does that kid in winter here do not usually need dewormers.)

    Moving goats tends to upset most of them, whether it is across the street or across the continent, and stress does reduce the proper functioning of the immune system. That is why a lot of people will give a dewormer the day that a goat is sold. If this kid was given ivomec a couple of weeks before he was sold, the worms could have simply multiplied during that time, but if he was given the ivomec the day he was shipped, you should have seen a huge fecal reduction within a week. If he still had a high worm load within a week after given a dewormer, it means that dewormer is not working. Yes, worms continue to hatch after you have given a dewormer, but ivomec stays in the system at a high enough level that it will continue to kill worms that hatch for a week easily. They define dewormer resistance as when the dewormer is no longer killing more than 90% or so of the worms. If you are to the point where a dewormer is only killing 50% of the worms, it probably won't help a goat feel that much better, and it could still die (especially when talking about barber pole, which is the one that causes anemia).

    I could go on and on about parasites -- and I do go on for 24 pages in my book, Raising Goats Naturally. Research on worms in goats has only really gottten serious in the last ten years, so the majority of vets out there are still passing along outdated information that was simply based upon educated guesses, many of which turned out to be wrong. That's why there is so much contradictory info out there.
  • Thanks Deborah for your input.  I think that the stress of the move sent him over the edge.  We had him shipped and he spent the whole day in a crate.  The breeder had to drop him early at the airport to make sure he had a spot on the plane and because of flight delays we did arrive here until early evening.  So I figure that the stress and the lack of good quality air contributed to it.

    Yes, I do hear the goats to cough from time to time, but his cough definitely sounded different.  Like a person that has congestion on his lungs.  It has gotten better.  I heard him cough again this morning, but again it is not as deep as it was in the beginning and did not last as long.  We had been taking his temperature all along and it has remained in the normal range.  I will go ahead and give him the COWP and continue to observe him.  I think that he may have just caught a cold.

    I am in agreement with you about the wormer issue.  I am trying to be careful with how I use the wormers on the goats, since I do not want to develop a resistance on the property.  Is there a possibility that he may not necessary have worms that are resistant to Ivomec but that since he still had some (and I understand that they always have worms and it is impossible to completely eradicate them) the trip sent him over the edge?  I have also been reading about lesdepeza.  I might be able to get some.  Is that given to goat when we see a worm infestation or just give it to them a normal basis, like once a week, month?

    Once again thanks for the info.  Our vets are good, but they are horse vets and I think that the information they have may be a little dated.

  • Five days of Safeguard? There isn't any scientific research to back up that recommendation. Safeguard works for most worms at one single dose, although it takes three days for tapeworms. I have never heard of five days for anything. Also, if he is coughing, that would be lungworm, and Safeguard does NOT work for that. It only works on stomach worms and intestinal worms.

    If he was dewormed with Ivomec, and he still had a high worm count, that means that the worms are resistant to that dewormer, so it's pointless to use it again. Abusing Safeguard will simply create a second dewormer that doesn't work, and then you'll just be left with levamisole for stomach worms, which has a very small margin of safety. If it is indeed lungworms, however, Cydectin might work.

    However ... I often wonder if a goat is sick at all when a new goat owner mentions a cough. Goats do cough for a variety of reasons, such as dusty hay or something went down the wrong way or came back up the wrong way (cud). I have noticed with our interns here that they often notice a goat coughing in a situation that is entirely normal. On the other hand, the stress of a move can lower the immunity of a goat, so maybe he got a little virus, which can't be helped by anything other than taking good care of him while his immune system fights it off.

    As Rachel said, though, COWP won't hurt him. I generally dose at 1 gram per 20 pounds. Copper is also important for immune function, but it would do nothing for lungworm. It only affects stomach worms, such as barber pole.

  • thanks so much

  • You can give him a bolus. I have done it with no issues in kids.

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