Does anyone use herbs or food (like pumpkin seeds) as regular part of their feeding regimen as a preventative maintenance for things like coccidiosis or worms? Other things?
I'd like to learn how to do this for all of my animals, including my goats. At this point, I'm compiling a list of safe foods (grains), herbs, additives, etc. that my chickens, rabbits, goats, dogs and cats can all have for preventing common issues. I'd love to hear any of your ideas and what you do/have done on your farms successfully.
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My goats will only eat pupkin/squash seeds if I just break one open and let them eat the guts, meat and seeds out of it. They won't eat the dried ones. That's awesome about the papaya seeds!! I live in FL so Papaya grows well here (it's much too expensive to purchase the fruit in quantities for livestock lol). Looks like I need to go get a couple papaya trees!
If you are lucky enough to have lespedeza sericea growing in your area -- or able to grow in your area -- that is one of the best things for prevention of worm problems. There have been quite a few studies on it, and when goats graze lespedeza, they don't have problems with parasites. As their consumption of lespedeza goes down, problems with parasites goes up.
I've tried offering my goats pumpkins, other winter squashes, and pumpkin seeds -- from our homegrown pumpkins, as well as pumpkin seeds from the store. They totally turn up their noses at it. However, I do know that some people's goats love it. I'm sure if I just had one who would eat it, the rest would follow.
There was a study out of Florida last year that showed that 10 grams of papaya seeds for 10 days reduced parasites loads. I bought a papaya and quickly realized that one only has about 40-50 grams of seeds in it. I fed that to a doe that had a parasite problem, and by the time we ran out of seeds, she hadn't shown any improvement, and I wasn't too crazy about the papaya, so I didn't buy another one.