Posted by Jackie K on July 11, 2011 at 11:12am in Health
So I checked eyelids this AM...have not even had the goats a week yet...and of the three I could get hold of, two were white pale and one was faintly pink. The buck that I couldn't catch at the time has clumpy poo, so I'm sure he's wormy too. Valley Vet is fed ex'ing me valbazen and copasure which should be here tomorrow. Today, though I am going to give some red cell. Breeder says 1 cc for buckling, 2 cc's for bigger goats. How many times can I repeat this? Will search here later for dosages on the wormer. Notes I took from somewhere on the copasure was 1-4g every 4-6 weeks, not to exceed 8g per season. I know someone mentioned using a marshmallow (yuck!) to get it into them...will they eat the marshmallow or am I shoving it down their throat like giving a dog a pill? I wonder how badly I will get bitten...
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The eggs hatch in about a week, so if they are in a very small area, they should not be there for more than a week. This is why, if you only have a couple acres, it's better to use moveable pens, rather than fencing off a permanent area.
I have had to do it at different times of the month but usually it happens to the girls and then a few weeks later the boys...this has really been a challenge this year. Catcher seems to be the most hardy from my records. I'll ask around about the concentrated version of morantol tartrate and try that the next time around if I can get it. perhaps I should move them to the back pasture sooner than I planned, and back up front in the spring? This is when I really wish I had a good goat person closer by...
Forgot to mention that if you bought the morantel tartrate that uses 1 pound of medicated grain per 100 pounds of goat, you might try the more concentrated one that you feed at 1/10 pound of medicated grain per 100 pounds of goat. You can mix that one into the goat's regular grain, so it's easier to sneak it by them.
The reason that you use three different dewormers from three different classes is because the same worms are not necessarily resistant to the same dewormers. In other words, worms # 1-1,000 may be resistant to Valbazen, but Cydectin will kill them; worms #1,001-2,000 may be resistant to Cydectin but the morantel tartrate will kill them; and worms #2,001-3,000 may be resistant to morantel tartrate, but the Valbazen will kill them. So, by using them all at once, you are able to kill enough worms so that the goat's health improves. Once you do this, however, it will eventually not work either. This is why you ONLY deworm goats that are anemic. If you are deworming all of the goats every month, something is not right. You should not be seeing a problem with more than about 1 in 5 of your goats max unless they are living in a pasture that is just so filled with worms that they are constantly re-ingesting larvae. If that is the case, you're living with a ticking time bomb, because goats can't survive very long in that kind of environment, regardless of what you do for deworming.
from the looks of things we have resistance to Safe guard and valbazin, some of the goats won't eat morentol tartrate, I can't get lavamesol anywhere though I have been checking for it since Pecial died, and I suspect that we are getting resistance to Cydectin as I have had to worm all but one once a month with it. I don't even know which de-wormers I could combine that would work, so i am considering trying the herbal rout, but I don' t know anyone who has switched to herbals after such a heavy resistance to chemical wormers. I'm sure it has a lot to do with our worm friendly weather and the use of these wormers on previous generations of those in my herd.
You don't necessarily need to do a second deworming in ten days. That used to be the recommendation when I got started, but it isn't any longer. Last year, I even had a yearling that I seriously thought was going to die because her lids were paper white, and she wasn't eating and was totally lethargic, and she came through with the single worming and is now bossy and annoying. :)
I wonder if she didn't give enough Cydectin? You should double the sheep or cattle dosage, and if she didn't do that, it wouldn't work so well. Did she use the sheep drench and give it orally? Most people say pour-ons don't work in goats. (There is a Cydectin pour-on for cattle.)
Have you already given the COWP? If so, check eyelids in a few days, and if they're still white, you can give the Valbazen and morantel at the same time, which you can usually find in most farm supply stores. TSC carries it around here.
The most important thing is that if the goat are shedding a lot of eggs, they should be moved to clean ground after deworming, and keep them off of their current pasture for as long as possible. It's hard to give a definitive time because the wetter it is in your area, the longer the larvae will survive.
I got an email from the breeder today and this is what she told me: in March, after Storm and Sissy kidded, they got Valbazen. Then all three girls got Cydectin on 23 July. The little buck was dewormed on 2 July, presumably with Cydectin. Will have to email her again, because she did not mention when the big buck was last wormed and with what. No 10 day f/u on any of the wormings. She stated that she has used Ivomec and Safeguard in the past, but not this year. She also stated that she has never used Morantel. So where does this leave me? I will happily rely primarily on my fields of lespedeza, COWP, and individual wormings but right now I feel like I need to get this little herd on track. So should I worm them with the Valbazen and repeat in 10 days? Or Cydectin and repeat, since she didn't do a f/u? Help.....
And because I am apparently an idiot, I am buying two LaMancha doelings next week. Their breeder asked me if I wanted her to give CD&T vaccine, as she had not been vaccinating because the goats got lumps at the injection site. I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry.
When I top dress, each goat gets their own dish in a private area. Since it's such a tiny amount of grain, it only takes about 15 seconds per goat, which is way less than a bolus-gone-bad situation. If we're planning hoof trimming or anything that requires they be in the stantion, I'll do it then. And for milkers, I do it at milking time.
That was my thought too. I've only ever used the marshmallow for the one copper dose, and it didn't stay together very well. I like knowing exactly how much each goat is eating (of the copper) so I haven't tried just top dressing. That's why I mentioned that my plan for the next dose was raisins. I'm going to mash some raisin and mix my doses with that, because my goats LOVE raisin. I prefer that to be their treat over empty (and potentially bad for them) marshmallow. Maybe once everyone is close in weight I'll be ready to top dress. Certainly would be easier. Especially with a herd the size of Debs!!
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
As for marshmallows, I know a lot of people give them to goats as treats, but that freaks me out since marshmallows are made from bones and hooves of ruminants, and goats are vegetarians. You can buy vegetarian marshmallows at some health food stores, but top dressing grain works perfectly well, and it's easier than stuffing a marshmallow with little copper pieces.
The first website to popularize the idea of copper boluses was Saanendoah, and they claimed that you had to bolus rather than top dress because it would change the specific gravity of the copper rods if they were chewed; however, it is impossible to change specific gravity like that, so whoever wrote that didn't know what they were talking about, but it got repeated a LOT. Some people have said on one forum or another that they were worried the copper wouldn't be timed release if the goats chewed it. However, they were assuming goats could actually bite those rods into smaller pieces. No one questioned this until a couple years ago. I posted a study a couple months ago that studied the efficacy of using COWP in boluses vs top dressing, and there was no difference in efficacy of the COWP as a dewormer whether it was top dressed or bolused. Someone else posted on here at least a year ago about a goat owner who had their vet xray their goat a week after consuming COWP in a marshmallow, and the COWP was still in the rumen. So, bottom line is that a lot of people still insist that you need to bolus, but they're basing that on supposition and old assumptions. Hard research shows that it doesn't matter. If you want anecdotal evidence though -- I've been top dressing for more than a year now, and my goats are healthier than ever. And if you really pay attention to how goats eat, they barely chew their food anyway.
As for marshmallows, I know a lot of people give them to goats as treats, but that freaks me out since marshmallows are made from bones and hooves of ruminants, and goats are vegetarians. You can buy vegetarian marshmallows at some health food stores, but top dressing grain works perfectly well, and it's easier than stuffing a marshmallow with little copper pieces.
As for the little goaties, I'm really concerned if they anemic after being given Cydectin. That is the "big guns" of the dewormer world. It should not be used until nothing else works. Ask the breeder what other dewormers she has used and when. Also ask her why she used Cydectin -- because nothing else works, or because someone told her it was the best, or ____? This is really important information to have, because if nothing else was working, then you need to give three dewormers from three different classes at once to have any hope of getting the worms down to a level that the goats can handle. Hopefully the copper will help as there are no documented cases of worms being resistant to it.
Replies
You don't necessarily need to do a second deworming in ten days. That used to be the recommendation when I got started, but it isn't any longer. Last year, I even had a yearling that I seriously thought was going to die because her lids were paper white, and she wasn't eating and was totally lethargic, and she came through with the single worming and is now bossy and annoying. :)
I wonder if she didn't give enough Cydectin? You should double the sheep or cattle dosage, and if she didn't do that, it wouldn't work so well. Did she use the sheep drench and give it orally? Most people say pour-ons don't work in goats. (There is a Cydectin pour-on for cattle.)
Have you already given the COWP? If so, check eyelids in a few days, and if they're still white, you can give the Valbazen and morantel at the same time, which you can usually find in most farm supply stores. TSC carries it around here.
The most important thing is that if the goat are shedding a lot of eggs, they should be moved to clean ground after deworming, and keep them off of their current pasture for as long as possible. It's hard to give a definitive time because the wetter it is in your area, the longer the larvae will survive.
I got an email from the breeder today and this is what she told me: in March, after Storm and Sissy kidded, they got Valbazen. Then all three girls got Cydectin on 23 July. The little buck was dewormed on 2 July, presumably with Cydectin. Will have to email her again, because she did not mention when the big buck was last wormed and with what. No 10 day f/u on any of the wormings. She stated that she has used Ivomec and Safeguard in the past, but not this year. She also stated that she has never used Morantel. So where does this leave me? I will happily rely primarily on my fields of lespedeza, COWP, and individual wormings but right now I feel like I need to get this little herd on track. So should I worm them with the Valbazen and repeat in 10 days? Or Cydectin and repeat, since she didn't do a f/u? Help.....
And because I am apparently an idiot, I am buying two LaMancha doelings next week. Their breeder asked me if I wanted her to give CD&T vaccine, as she had not been vaccinating because the goats got lumps at the injection site. I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
The first website to popularize the idea of copper boluses was Saanendoah, and they claimed that you had to bolus rather than top dress because it would change the specific gravity of the copper rods if they were chewed; however, it is impossible to change specific gravity like that, so whoever wrote that didn't know what they were talking about, but it got repeated a LOT. Some people have said on one forum or another that they were worried the copper wouldn't be timed release if the goats chewed it. However, they were assuming goats could actually bite those rods into smaller pieces. No one questioned this until a couple years ago. I posted a study a couple months ago that studied the efficacy of using COWP in boluses vs top dressing, and there was no difference in efficacy of the COWP as a dewormer whether it was top dressed or bolused. Someone else posted on here at least a year ago about a goat owner who had their vet xray their goat a week after consuming COWP in a marshmallow, and the COWP was still in the rumen. So, bottom line is that a lot of people still insist that you need to bolus, but they're basing that on supposition and old assumptions. Hard research shows that it doesn't matter. If you want anecdotal evidence though -- I've been top dressing for more than a year now, and my goats are healthier than ever. And if you really pay attention to how goats eat, they barely chew their food anyway.
As for marshmallows, I know a lot of people give them to goats as treats, but that freaks me out since marshmallows are made from bones and hooves of ruminants, and goats are vegetarians. You can buy vegetarian marshmallows at some health food stores, but top dressing grain works perfectly well, and it's easier than stuffing a marshmallow with little copper pieces.
As for the little goaties, I'm really concerned if they anemic after being given Cydectin. That is the "big guns" of the dewormer world. It should not be used until nothing else works. Ask the breeder what other dewormers she has used and when. Also ask her why she used Cydectin -- because nothing else works, or because someone told her it was the best, or ____? This is really important information to have, because if nothing else was working, then you need to give three dewormers from three different classes at once to have any hope of getting the worms down to a level that the goats can handle. Hopefully the copper will help as there are no documented cases of worms being resistant to it.
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