I have 4 does that are in milk and 7 kids. The kids all have lice, but only one mama has lice (and we are not milking her). First I tried DE as a lice treatment, but it did not help. So now I used Adam's Flea and tick which I have had success with in the past. My question is, we are milking 2 of the mamas. I did not spray them, they have no lice. But they are out mingling with the kids and the one doe that did get the treatment, and they share the barn. I tried to do it as light as possible but hey, chemicals are chemicals:-( Anyway, is it safe for us to drink the milk from those mamas? If not, ho long should we wait before we drink it?
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In the future, you could use a cattle worming/delousing pour on called Eprinex. It has zero withdrawl time for meat and milk in cattle. You use double the dose for cattle on goats.
Great advice for the future, thanks! Our local feed store out here has very few goats products so I went on the advice of the clerk - so now I have learned my lesson.
If you didn't spray the does in milk, they're probably okay. At first I was thinking it was a powder, which could have easily fallen on the other goats or into the water bucket or on the hay, and therefor been consumed. But I re-read your original post, and it said "spray," so it has probably only affected the goats you actually sprayed.
I know it's tough since so few things are labeled for goats, but in the future don't use anything that isn't at least labeled for cows or sheep. Ruminants are very different than single-stomach animals, such as dogs and cats. I recently heard of someone killing their goat with Frontline.
Oh gosh Deborah, I wish I'd posted my question before I had sprayed! I have clippers and I could have clipped them but didn't think of it. Bummer. Well, now I have done it, so what do I do? What is a typical withdrawal time? I know there is no way to know for sure since Adams Flea and Tick is not made for dairy goats so noone has measured it. But any wild guesses? 2 weeks, a month, or give up on milking them and dry them up? I have no idea what is realistic! It would be an awful shame to dry them up.
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
No one can give you a definitive answer to that question because it's not made for dairy animals, so it hasn't been studied.
The best and most organic treatment for lice is to simply clip the goats using a #10 blade on dog clippers, such as Oster. If there is no hair for the lice to hide, they fall off and die.
A chemical solution that requires zero milk withdrawal is to use Eprinex cattle pour-on.