Hello! I have some questions about deworming goats. I checked all of my adult goats eyelids today and 5 out of 6 had pale\light pink eyelids.
One of my goats was losing weight and having poop that looked like dog poop. So I picked up some Valbazen from my vet and wormed him on 1\31\22. He has now been pooping normally, but his eye lid color is still pale.
Another one of my goats, Alice, who just had twin bucklings, is in pretty bad shape. After the twins birth, she got super skinny, sometimes having irregular poop, and her eye lid color is pale.
The rest of my goats don't show any visible signs of worms, but their eyelids are still pale\light pink.
I'm not sure what to do with my whole herd.
For Alice, should I go ahead and give her Valbazen and a copper bolus (because her coat is reddish and a bit rough)?
And another one of my does, Madeline, who just had twin girls, has light pink\ pale eyelids. Her coat has also gotten a little red. Should I give her a copper bolus? I was really hoping to milk her, but I'm not sure if I can because of her eye lid color. Would her milk be safe to consume?
Also, if I was to do a fecal would it be best to do all the goats or can I just do a couple?
I hope this all makes sense! Sorry for all the questions, I've been doing research into parasites\dewormers and I just don't know what exactly to do with my goats. Thank you so much in advance!
Replies
I was actually already planning on getting the McMaster slide! I may even ask the vet for advice on doing fecals when he comes
Oh-okay- so basically that just tells you if there are any worms at all present. It does not give you any measurable or quantitative information that can be used for tracking or dewormer effectiveness.
Since you have already invested the money in the supplies, I will highly recommend that you purchase some McMaster slides. You can find them on Amazon or from eggzamin.com. This way you will have valuable information when you do the fecals =)
Tammy
I did strain the sample before viewing. I know goats will always have worms, my goat's body condition is showing she is struggling with worms. I used a 28mL flotation to 2Gms feces ratio, I then floated it onto a cover slip. I went up and down the slide and counted how many eggs I saw. Thank you for your reply:)
I did use a 28mL to 2 Gm ratio. I then floated it onto a cover slip and went up and down the slide to count the number of eggs. I just wanted to get a rough number of worm eggs. I know she won't be completely worm free, but her body condition is showing that she is struggling. I'll contact the vet and get all my goats looked at. Thanks again:)
Hi Emma
I do see strongyle eggs but that does not mean they are specifically Barber Pole eggs. There are actually several different goat worm eggs that look the same under the microscope. The only way to tell them apart is to send a fecal sample into a lab who would hatch them out and then identify the larva. Not all strongyles cause problems for all goats.
Are you using a Modified McMaster slide with a ratio of 2 Gms feces to 28 ml float solution? If so, that would be a 2000 epg FEC. Without knowing what her FEC was before you dewormed her, it is really impossible to know how effective the Valbazen was. (If her FEC was 2100 before dewormer, then it was a 5% reduction, but if it was 15,000- then it was an 87% reduction.
It is important to remember that your goats will never be 100% worm free. Trying to achieve that through the decades has created dewormer resistance for us. But we do want to achieve and maintain a clinically stable goat, so if she is still pale in the eyelids, you may want to consider moving forward with a combination dewormer of 2 or even 3 classes at this point. Minimal cocci are a completely normal find for adult goats, so I would not worry about those at this time.
Valbazen + Cydectin or Valbazen + Cydectin + Levamisole are common combinations. They should be given one behind the other, but NOT mixed together. You could also try holding feed overnight and dosing early the next morning which I do and recommend to others for a more efficacious impact from the dewormers. Combination deworming is the latest recommendation to help decrease dewormer resistance and boost effectiveness of the treatment.
I would definately have your vet out to examine her and get his professional advice before moving forward with a new deworming protocol. Levamisole is still quite effective for most and should really be used as little as possible because it becomes resistant on your property very quickly!
These are also some other reasons that your dewormer may not be effective- aside from resistance:
Expired
Stored in area that is too hot or too cold
Given in mouth, instead of down esophagus
Part of dosage spit out during dosing
Estimated weight = the goat was under dosed
Immediate reinfection with immature larva from any grass/weeds/moist fallen leaves in the dry lot, or sticking head through fence to reach these
Tammy
There is so much debris and so many bubbles in these photos that they're not really helpful. You need to filter the sample before doing the flotation.
I don't recall if this has been discussed, but you are not going to get a sample with 0 eggs unless there are mistakes made or it's a bad sample or the eggs have hatched, etc, so the eggs I can see on here does not look like a lot ... but there is so much debris and so many bubbles that I wouldn't confident in making any type of decision based on what we are seeing.
McMaster's counts and a simple fecal flotation don't have the same kind of numbers, but normally coccidia numbers are in the thousands and roundworm numbers are in the hundreds. Barber pole is a roundworm, and it doesn't look any different on a fecal than other roundworms.
Good afternoon! I recently acquired everything to perform my own fecals. I did one today on Alice. I spotted 7 cocci and roughly 40 eggs that I think are Barberpole. Alice has been in a dry lot for a month and was wormed with Valbazen. I will get a vet out, I just wanted to clarify what I am seeing.
Thank you so much for all your help! I'll definitely switch up their diet and hopefully get some fecals done. Thanks again for your time and advice, it's really appreciated!❤
It's great that your vet is familiar with ACSRPC and the correct dosages. Most are not. :( When I said to double the dosage, I meant the dosage on the bottle. That is exactly what the ACSRPC chart says. If you compare their dosage to the dosages on the bottle, they are all 2x the dosage on the bottle, except for levamisole, which is 1.5x. So you can use the ACSRPC chart and read the label for the strength of the specific medication you have purchased and do that math -- OR you can just double the dosage on the bottle. The Valbazen bottle says 1 ml per 25 pounds for goats, which is 3 ml for 75# X 2, which would be 6 ml for a 75# goat, which is what you came up with from the chart. (And you should NOT use levamisole until nothing else works.)
Looks like you misunderstood Tammy. She suggested removing them from grazing entirely, which is a great suggestion because they will get reinfected from eating larvae on the grass. This is why so many people think that a second dose is helpful -- because they have their goats on pasture continuing to get reinfected with fresh larvae. But if you just keep them in the barn or on a dry lot, that will help them recover much more quickly. THEN, once their eyelids are dark pink, you can put them on a clean pasture. I realize this time of year it may be too hot in some areas to keep them in the barn 24/7, but we are talking "ideal" here.
The other thing is that "moving after deworming" and moving when their eyelids are bright pink are two different things. The old myth was that you dewormed everyone this morning and then immediately put them into a clean pasture. That's a bad idea. But if their eyelids are bright pink, then they don't have a high worm load -- and that will probably be a week or two AFTER you dewormed them.
The other thing is that if you are only deworming one goat and moving the whole herd to a new pasture, that's not a big deal because all of those other untreated goats will be pooping out worm eggs from worms that were not exposed to that dewormer (called refugia), so their worms will dilute the gene pool of the resistant worms being pooped out by the goat that received the dewormer.
I also just realized that you may have thought that Tammy was just a sweet person offering help, but she is a paid member of the Thrifty Homesteader team. She's taken all of my classes and is a certified FAMACHA instructor and also has some of the same vet textbooks that I refer to when I need more information, and if there is anything out of the ordinary, she lets me know. So you can absolutely trust what she says on here. She covers this group, as well as our Facebook groups so that I can focus my time on our paid students and Goats 365 members.
Thank you Deborah. Your book and responses have been great help to me in sorting out these issues. I think I'll get the kids a dewormer for Coccidia and then treat the sick adults with Valbazen. My vet gave me a chart for dewormers from the ACSRPC and said for me to follow the dosages. So if my goat weighs 75lbs I would give 6.0mL. But you said to do 2x the dosage, which would be 12mL. Would that hurt the goat?
Also, should I move them to a different pen before or after I worm them? I know Tammy said to move them when their eyelids were dark pink, but Myth #4 in your book says that "deworming all animals before moving them to a clean pasture so they'll be taking less worms with them" is a bad idea. I just don't want to move them to a nice pasture and then regret my decision
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