Raising Goats Naturally

by Deborah Niemann

  Myth #2: If you have a couple of goats with a high parasite load and you deworm the whole herd, no other goats wind up with a high parasite load. Why wouldn’t everyone want to do this? First of all, the rest of the herd probably would not have gotten sick, even if you had not given them a dewormer. I’ve heard vets say that it’s only common sense that if a couple of goats in a herd have high worm loads, the rest of them do too. Unfortunately, common sense fails this time. Research has shown that in most cases about 20 to 30 percent of goats in the herd will be carrying about 80 percent of the total parasite load of the herd. Eliminating nearly all worms works well in the short term, but if you want to have goats for the long term, you will eventually face the consequence of dewormer resistance.

  If you deworm the whole herd, you kill every worm that is susceptible to that particular dewormer. Sounds great at first. Unfortunately, no dewormer kills 100 percent of worms. This means that every worm left living in your goats is resistant to the dewormer that you just gave them. The only reason a dewormer is effective more than one time when you do a whole-herd deworming is that the goats are continuing to ingest worms in the pasture and those worms are not resistant. But they mate with the resistant worms inside the goats, and some of those offspring are resistant to the dewormer. So, the more you use a dewormer, the greater the number of resistant worms you are breeding.

  Myth #3: Deworm your goats ten days after the initial deworming to kill parasites that have just hatched because the first deworming will not have killed the eggs. You do kill a few more worms, but you also wind up with more resistant parasites that survived the second deworming, increasing the number of resistant parasites on your pasture. The more often you use a dewormer, the faster you are breeding the parasites to be resistant to the dewormer you are using. This advice for a follow-up deworming was originally given for fenbendazole, which had poor efficacy against arrested worms, which would then be killed by the second dose a couple of weeks later. Unfortunately, a lot of people concluded it would be a good idea with all dewormers, regardless of whether it was necessary. After using any dewormer, you should continue to monitor the body condition and anemia status of the goat. If the animal does not improve, follow up by doing a fecal exam. If the reduction in fecal egg count is minimal, you may need to give a second dose of dewormer or to use a different dewormer.

  The fewer the goats that you use a dewormer on, the better the chances are of the herd never developing dewormer resistance because the proportion of the resistant parasites will be small compared to the total population of nonresistant worms on the pasture and in the goats. For example, if you have a herd as small as ten goats and you deworm only one goat, killing 90 percent of its worms, and this goat had 25 percent of the worms in the herd, only 2.5 percent of the worms (10 percent of 25 percent) in the herd would be resistant to the dewormer you used. Therefore, only 2.5 percent of the worms will be producing dewormer-resistant babies, compared with 100 percent of the surviving worms in every goat if you had dewormed the whole herd. If we have refugia on the pasture and in animals not dewormed, this level of resistance may be diluted by 10-fold or even 100-fold.

  Myth #4: Deworm all animals before moving them to a clean pasture so they’ll be taking less worms with them. This sounds like a great idea, which is why it became a common practice. Unfortunately, no dewormer kills 100 percent of worms. If you deworm every goat before moving them to a new pasture, then 100 percent of the worms on the new pasture will be dewormer resistant because they are all the worms that survived the deworming. The only way you will ever avoid dewormer resistance is by incorporating the strategy of refugia, which means you will have worms that are susceptible to the dewormers. Refugia are the worms in animals that have not been given a dewormer, as well as worms, eggs, and larvae that were on the pasture before goats were dewormed. Those worms dilute the presence of the dewormer-resistant worms that are an inevitable result of using dewormers. One strategy that has been used to help a herd recover from dewormer resistance is to infect goats with worms that are sensitive to dewormers so that they can dilute the gene pool of resistant worms.

  If you have already experienced dewormer resistance within your herd, there is hope. Several years ago, researchers were saying that once a herd had a resistance problem, it would last forever. However, in my experience, it can be reversed. After having three goats die from parasites in four months, I began to use chemical dewormers faithfully, and I rotated them regularly, which was the standard advice 15 years ago. Within about four years, nothing worked well, and my goats were dying in spite of using chemical dewormers. At that point I got very serious about doing whatever I needed to do to avoid having a parasite overload in the goats, which included rotating pastures and kidding during the dead of winter when parasites are mostly dormant. My use of dewormers plummeted, and I instituted all of the strategies listed in the chapter for preventing parasites. After about three years, I had a goat with a heavy load of parasites, and when I used a chemical dewormer, it caused a significant reduction in the fecal egg count.

  What I Learned from Tennessee Williams

  During chore time in the middle of a freezing winter, I saw one of my bucks fall down when another goat walked past him and barely touched him. That was obviously not good. I separated him from the other bucks so they wouldn’t bother him and so that he wouldn’t give them whatever was making him sick. I checked his eyelids, and they were white, so I did a fecal analysis. The slide was covered with eggs. I gave him a double dose of the herbal dewormer I had recently purchased online in my quest to find something that would work, since the chemical dewormers had stopped working a couple of years earlier. After several days of giving him the herbal dewormer and seeing no outward improvement, I did another fecal, and the slide was again covered with eggs.

  In my head, the voices of vets from the past were telling me to give all the bucks a dewormer because it just makes sense that if this one is so badly infected, the other ones are too. But I had been reading a lot of research, and instead of deworming, I went into the pen and checked eyelids for symptoms of anemia, and then I waited for them to poop. I collected a fresh sample and did a fecal on a buck, as well as two does. I found very few parasite eggs on any of the slides. I was moving the slide from side to side and finding a solitary egg here and there for a total of two or three eggs on each slide. Thinking that this was an unlikely result, I repeated the exams on fresh poop and got the same results. Seeing that none of the other bucks were anemic and finding a negligible number of eggs in the fecals, I hesitantly decided not to give the other bucks any type of dewormer.

  Unfortunately, Tennessee continued to decline over the next week. He could no longer stand at all, and I needed to move him to clean straw regularly because he was peeing and pooping where he was lying. I gave him a chemical dewormer, but it didn’t reduce the worm load either. I was amazed by his ability to hang on, because most goats are either on the mend or dead within a day or two of going down. Maybe the herbs had boosted his immune system, even though they didn’t actually kill the worms. Maybe he was just stronger than most because his dam is the most parasite-resistant goat in the herd. In the end, the worms prevailed, and Tennessee died. As the weeks passed, the physical condition of the other bucks remained robust, and none of them required a dewormer.

  Alternative Dewormers

  Because of the increased interest in organic agriculture, as well as the problems being experienced with dewormer resistance, quite a bit of research is being done on a variety of alternative dewormers.

  COWP

  One of the most promising natural dewormers is copper oxide wire particles (COWP), which are sometimes referred to as copper boluses. They are sold as capsules filled with extremely tiny bits of smooth copper. Once the copper wires are in a goat’s stomach, they slowly dissolve over a few weeks. More than a dozen studies have been done over the past few years, and the results are fairly consistent, showing that using COWP significantly reduces barber
pole.15 It has not been shown to be effective against intestinal worms.

  Copper oxide wire particles sound scary to some people, but you can see in this photo that the particles are extremely tiny. They are not sharp, and they dissolve in the goat’s stomach over the course of a month.

  I use COWP in adult goats that are borderline anemic, which is a symptom of barber pole worm. If a goat is severely anemic, however, I also use a chemical dewormer. Studies have shown that using copper oxide in conjunction with albendazole increases the efficacy of both the COWP and the chemical dewormer, even when parasites were showing a resistance to that dewormer. The other exciting thing about that study is that it showed that the COWP increased the efficacy of the albendazole against parasites other than just the barber pole worm, which is the only worm that COWP has been shown to kill in previous studies.16

  I give COWP to all kids that are weaned, and although a few kids wind up needing a chemical dewormer, most of them don’t. Because doelings are never weaned if we are keeping them, I give them a dose of COWP at around six months unless I see signs of anemia or copper deficiency earlier than that. The stress of moving can often cause an overload of parasites in kids, so I discuss this with buyers and ask if they want me to give the kid a chemical dewormer prior to or at the time they pick up the kid.

  There tends to be a lot of arguing online about whether you can give COWP hidden in food or if it must be given in a bolus. The myth that it cannot be chewed is from an outdated website and was not based on research. When this was studied in 2010, they found no difference in the effect of COWP on parasites whether it was chewed or not.17 As soon as I read that study, I began to give it to my adult goats with their grain because it’s much easier than bolusing. (I primarily give COWP as a copper supplement, but the anti-parasitic effect is a nice bonus.) We have sent in liver samples to check copper levels every year or two when a goat died or we butchered one, and our copper liver levels have all been mid-range normal even after letting the goats chew the copper.

  Some older guides to natural care of livestock recommend copper sulfate for animals that have a high parasite load, but at least one study showed that copper sulfate did not control gastrointestinal worms.18 Some people have also had animals die from copper toxicity when using copper sulfate, which is extremely well absorbed, whereas copper oxide is not. COWP sits in the stomach and gradually dissolves over the course of a month. The case studies I’ve seen in the literature about copper toxicity have all been in goats that were receiving copper sulfate supplements. I’ve read more than a dozen studies done with COWP being used for worm control, and none of the goats ever died from toxicity. In fact, in some of the studies, researchers checked liver levels of copper in the goats and sheep after treatment, and none had dangerously high levels of copper.

  Herbal Dewormers

  The most definitive thing we can say about herbal dewormers is that we don’t know exactly what works yet. Although they appear to work for some breeders, they don’t work on every farm, and sometimes they don’t work on different goats on the same farm. To say that something “works,” it needs to work predictably. I use many herbs myself, and I know they work based on personal use and scientific research. In humans, ginger reduces nausea, and senna is a laxative. Willow bark is a pain reducer, and is, in fact, the original source of the active ingredient in aspirin. Scientific study has focused far more on the effects of herbs on humans than on livestock. Although you can often use the same herbs for the same purpose in animals as in humans, there is not much research on using herbs for internal parasites in people, and there is no research on the parasites that are specific to goats. I’ve read as many studies as I can find on herbs, and I’ve tried a variety of different herbal treatments for parasites without finding anything that works predictably.

  The main anthelmintic (anti-parasitic) herbs are in the genus Artemisia, and most researchers have not been willing to study them as a dewormer because wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) has a bad reputation. It can be addictive and hallucinogenic in humans, and long-term use can cause liver damage. Historically it may have been used to induce abortions, so most herbalists say it is not safe to use during pregnancy. Wormwood is usually one of the ingredients in herbal dewormer preparations that you can buy online, but the level of wormwood in herbal products may be too small to make a significant difference in a goat that has a dangerous level of internal parasites. The little research done with wormwood has shown that a goat needs to ingest a fairly large amount of the herb to reduce the parasite load. Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) is closely related to wormwood, and some people say it has the same anthelmintic properties without the negative side effects, but research is needed to verify these anecdotal reports.

  Although there are several herbal combinations sold by individuals online, none of them have scientific studies to prove their effectiveness. When researchers did conduct a scientific study where they treated half of the goats with a herbal dewormer and half with nothing, they found no difference between the two groups.19 The lead researcher said that the amount of herbs used was probably too small to be effective, which is possible because the directions called for only a tablespoon of the herbs to be fed to a goat. Most studies that do show some effect on worm load have much higher levels of herbs, including one study that used one pound of wormwood per goat. Using that amount of wormwood, however, worried most researchers because of wormwood’s reputation for damaging the liver. And unless you are growing the wormwood yourself, that would be very expensive even if only a few goats needed it.

  One challenge in working with herbs is that the strength of herbs may vary from one batch to the next, which may explain why I have had different results using wormwood at different times. Growing conditions, storage, drying method, and the age of a herb can affect its potency. Some herbal companies sell “standardized” herbs, but there is some disagreement about whether that solves the problem or creates a new one. A standardized herb has been tested and manipulated so that “active” constituents are at a guaranteed level. However, in many cases, we don’t know what the active constituent is, and even if we think we do, it is possible that other constituents are also important. By altering one component, we may be inadvertently causing an imbalance in the way that the herb works.

  Diatomaceous Earth

  Diatomaceous earth, often called DE, is a natural insecticide that has proven to work well in the garden, and people have argued for years about whether it is effective as a dewormer for internal parasites in livestock. DE is the fossilized remains of marine diatoms, and it works in the garden by dehydrating insects because it is very absorbent. It also appears to be very abrasive because when looking at it under a microscope, you can see that it has very sharp edges, even though it feels like talcum powder or cornstarch. The assumption that the sharp edges cut parasites and kill them is incomplete. Although that is one mode of action, DE also works by absorbing several times its weight in liquid, so when it comes in contact with garden insects or even your skin, it draws out moisture. This is why DE kills bugs in the garden that would appear to be immune due to their protective exoskeleton. Although DE’s abrasive properties don’t damage the exoskeleton, its absorptive properties will absorb the waxy coating on the exoskeleton, which can kill the bug.

  Because the inside of an animal is a wet environment, DE will absorb as much liquid as it is capable of holding from the goat’s digestive system before it ever comes in contact with a parasite. So DE cannot kill internal parasites by dehydration. Can DE damage internal parasites by essentially stabbing them to death with its sharp edges? We don’t know for sure. Some people are under the mistaken impression that DE gets soft when it gets wet. This is not the case, however, as DE has been used in toothpastes and in facial scrubs because of its abrasive characteristics even when mixed with liquids.

  If DE is going to work, it has to be given in large quantities because it is a physical insecticide, meaning that it has to come in contact with a pa
rasite to kill it, so putting a teaspoon of DE on a goat’s grain would not be nearly enough. Those who swear by DE’s effectiveness say they add a quarter cup or more to their goat’s grain, twice a day for several days.

  Studies on the effectiveness of DE have had mixed results. One study concluded that DE in the diet dried out goat pellets faster, effectively killing the larvae, which decreased risk of reinfestation. However, when the same researcher repeated that study two summers in a row, the results were not consistent.

  There is a lot of anecdotal evidence on both sides of the DE argument, and the recommended dosage varies from one source to another. The first time I used DE, I simply added a little to my goats’ minerals, which is a fairly common recommendation on the internet. However, that means individual goats are getting an amount of DE that is so small as to be almost immeasurable and completely ineffective. In fact, two goats died from parasites while I was doing that.

  I am not completely convinced that DE works, but one thing I have noticed in my own use of DE is that when animals have a high parasite load, they love to eat it. Its chemical composition is mostly silica, so perhaps those goats have a high need for that substance. Or perhaps because anemic goats are essentially starving, they want to eat everything. If you are going to try DE, be sure to buy food grade and not the variety that is used in swimming pool filters.

  There is still a lot of research that needs to be done in this area. In the meantime, all of us should be taking detailed notes when we try alternative dewormers so we can figure out what works with our herds and what doesn’t.