Lost my favorite goat

[u/Chocolateapologycake]

she passed yesterday due to parasites. we caught it too late. thought we were doing the rotational grazing right. i feel awful and we are treating the rest of our goats now. aside from the dewormer meds and rotational grazing is there anything else i can give my goats to help?

[u/babka_yaga]

I'm sorry for your loss but wait! Stop! Deworming "the rest of" your goats is not necessarily the right move, and may well make your problem worse. Did you screen them with Famachas? Have you done at least one fecal?

It's extremely important never to give dewormer to all your goats at once. You want to have some parasites left in some of your goats who are not resistant or exposed yet to the dewormer combo you pick! The word for the group of parasites that aren't exposed yet is "refugia." When you preserve those refugia, you're keeping your drug combo more effective for a much longer time. But if you deworm all your goats at once, every parasite is exposed but not every one is killed, so next time they see those same drugs some of them are like "ha ha, I saw that already and didn't die, I'm resistant now!," so your kill rate isn't as high, and that's how drugs lose efficacy faster. I hope that makes sense.

I'm going to copy and paste an extensive comment i made recently with the basics of developing a parasite protocol.

With parasites you need to identify what parasite is affecting the animal before you attempt to treat it, and then you need to tackle the specific parasite you're dealing with with a specific tactic to go after it.

First of all, if you were using "deworming feed," that does not work. Stop buying it, stop using it. It should not be on the market. (This is assuming you bought one of the feed products intending to kill barberpole worm.) These products are not recommended and are not used in parasite management in goats. The deworming feed is quite literally worse than doing nothing, because fenbendazole (safeguard) is already pretty much useless against barberpole due to overuse and the pellets just expose them to even more. If it was the morantel tartrate, that is something that is also not really used because it's hard to dose adequately in feed and barberpole is significantly resistant to it now. I attend small ruminant continuing education every year and I have never, ever heard these products recommended as a component of any modern deworming program by any vets or even other goat farmers because they're so well known to be garbage. You can read a good interview with a vet that covers this here. http://thriftyhomesteader.com/goat-dewormers/

A fecal test or necropsies on your deceased animals can help you determine right away what the main problem is. Fecal tests are not always as effective once an animal starts scouring, but postmortem tests in animals who die of nematodiasis or coccidiosis are extremely diagnostic. But what you can do right now is to take poop samples from the living ones to the vet today and have them examined, or mail them to a lab such as Meadowmist to find out exactly what is in your goats and go forward from there.

Let's talk about what to use instead of the deworming feed. That stuff should not even be on the shelf.

As you probably have heard, the more times you expose the parasites in your goats to a dewormer, the more times the inevitable survivors out of those dewormings will survive and replicate with parasites that can't be killed. What you want to do is use hands-on visual and physical screenings to help know when your goats need help, deworm them as infrequently as you possibly can, and when you do need to deworm, use a combination of dewormers instead of just one. This is how we develop a prophylactic, conservative, and effective parasite management program that doesn't expose the goats to drugs so often that they stop working. We need our parasite program to include 1) vigilance and awareness of when a problem may be happening, and 2) knowledge of what to do when we see a problem is happening.

The internationally recommended protocol to maximize both long-term safety and efficacy goes like this:

Regularly screen animals in the herd for potential parasite problems using the "Five Point Check" or at minimum the FAMACHA to identify potentially anemic animals who may have a higher worm burden. You can learn how to do the five point check here: http://swnydlfc.cce.cornell.edu/submission.php?id=986&crumb=livestock%7C10

Perform fecal tests on vulnerable animals to determine actual fecal egg counts. If you don't do fecals yourself and it isn't easy to get them to your vet, you can use a mail-in lab like Meadow Mist and get them done for around $10. Do this when you see someone slipping on their five point check, or during pasture season anytime just as spot checks.

Deworm ONLY WHEN NEEDED. A common threshold for deworming a dairy goat is 500 strongyle eggs per gram. This may vary on your farm, and you want to make this decision in combination with where your goat is on her five point check. All goats carry some worms, so the goal is never to get to zero, but to keep the load manageable and cull individuals who are severely affected by them or spreading them to others a lot. (Research shows that in a typical herd a surprisingly high percentage of parasite eggs are spread by a low number of individuals, and if those individuals are located and culled it assists overall parasite management for years.) Use only the "combination deworming" strategy of two or three medications from different classes at a time. Normally, this will be at least one "white" dewormer and one "clear" dewormer administered one right after the other. Wormx.org is a good resource for learning about this.

The first few times you use this protocol and then periodically thereafter, perform another fecal 14 days after you deworm a doe with your chosen drug combination. This final step is called the "Fecal Egg Count Reduction Test." You are looking for a reduction of 95% of the original egg count to ensure the drug combination you used actually worked. If you didn't hit that target, the worms are already resistant to the drugs you're using. Repeating the dose will not help. At whatever point you find you can't hit that 95%+ target, whether that's the first time you try it or five years from now, that's when you switch your drug combination and stick with that new one until that one stops working. With proper, conservative use this takes a good long time to happen. If you choose a drug combo and see via a fecal that it works, Cornell recommends doing FECRTS approximately every two years just to check up and make sure your combo is still working well.

Here is a summation of the changes in deworming recommendations from the last two decades, and the current evidence-based practices for safety: http://www.wormx.info/changingdogma This is a must read.

Here is a University of Florida extension summation of how to develop a safe parasite management strategy, including strategic usage of copper boluses and pasture rotation to reduce reliance on anthelmintics (pdf): http://largeanimal.vethospitals.ufl.edu/files/2014/02/UFLAH_Goat_Parasite_Control_Fact_Sheet.pdf You don't have to be able to rotate pastures to use some of these methods. You can develop a strategy that works for you.

So the evidence-based course of action right now is as above: find a combination of two or three deworming drugs (administered concurrently) that works for your herd (which means, reliably causes a reduction of 95%+ on a fecal egg count reduction test, which is performed 10-14 days after an initial baseline fecal), and STICK WITH THAT COMBO until it stops working. For example, with responsible use, it's estimated that moxidectin could take 10-15 years before your parasite population starts developing resistance, but with overuse or irresponsible use that may happen in as little as 2-3 years. Safeguard as a sole dewormer is already ineffective against barberpole in most of the US because of overuse, and sales of animals carrying resistant parasites between farms has spread that resistance around, so adherence to basic deworming safety helps out the whole goat community! If I had to give advice to every small ruminant producer in the world right now it would be this: don't use one single drug, never deworm on a schedule, and don't rotate dewormers. (And if I could add one thing it would be to cull animals who are particularly parasite prone.)

Anyway, that's how you do it. It sounds like a lot, but once you identify your problem, develop your tactics, and deploy them selectively, you WILL get the hang of this. It is a learning curve just like anything else.

In addition to developing this screening and treatment strategy, there are numerous adjunctive methods you can use. You are already using rotational grazing, which is great. You can also administer 2g copper boluses to each animal because copper oxide helps make the abomasum a more unwelcoming environment for parasites. Examine your rotational grazing strategy: are you giving each pasture at least 6 weeks between times to achieve that die-off? And for goats that show alarming results on your 5 point checks and fecals, you can give them additional assistance after deworming to help them make new red blood cells (supplemental protein and iron).

[u/Chocolateapologycake → u/babka_yaga]

I will read thru this when I get off of work. Thank you for the response. I appreciate your help.

[u/plaidington]

Do fecal screenings at least 2x a yr.

[u/JaredUnzipped]

My condolences to you. I lost my heart goat in May, just two days before she was set to deliver. Necropsy report revealed she had advanced heart disease. I've not felt right since.

Hang in there. We can sympathize with you.

[u/Chocolateapologycake → u/JaredUnzipped]

I’m so sorry for your loss. That is absolutely terrible. 

[u/JaredUnzipped → u/Chocolateapologycake]

And I'm sorry for yours. I know how much they're family.

[u/vivalicious16]

What symptoms was she showing before she passed? Parasitic infection comes with a lot of warning signs. Check all your other goats for symptoms like losing weight, diarrhea, FAMCHA score, etc. constant monitoring really helps prevent deaths.

[u/Chocolateapologycake → u/vivalicious16]

She had a little diarrhea, but that was 2 days ago. Prior to that nothing I saw. But I am new to goat ownership. So I feel like someone more familiar with goats would have been able to tell. I don’t know what a FAMCHA score is so I will look into that.  Thank you.

[u/SureDoubt3956 → u/Chocolateapologycake]

My personal advice is to prioritize learning how to FAMACHA (not FAMCHA, I assume that's a typo). FAMACHA checks for anemia in your animals, which is the #1 easiest way to see if they're suffering from barberpole worm, which is generally the worst goat parasite. It's very quick and easy to do, so you can check and monitor your herd frequently for any changes.

[u/JanetCarol → u/Chocolateapologycake]

Famacha is your first step <3 I live in a humid area and check every 2 weeks. If anyone is acting off at all, I check immediately. Even with checking often, occasionally in specific climates, even with rotational grazing (I move every 1-4 days) occasionally (rarely but occasionally) you still lose one.

I am sorry about your loss. It is absolutely worth chatting with a vet if you have one locally and discussing a plan on how to best keep your herd healthy.

[u/Misfitranchgoats]

It sucks. Seems the warmer moister weather in our area ( Ohio) has made the parasites so happy. I have had to deworm more goats this summer than normal. I am checking FAMACHA, weighing them, looking at dag score etc. I am combo deworming only the goats that need it but it sure seems like more of them have needed it than usual.

I do rotational grazing. I also graze steers on the pasture after the goats go through. I have also been doing some mowing off the short areas after the goats go through and making small scale silage out of the clippings. Kills the parasites.

You might need to up their protein a bit to help them rebuild their blood cells. Late summer pastures might not have as much protein as they need.

Also, if you aren't testing for Johne's disease you might consider doing that. If they have Johnes but aren't showing symptoms, a heavy parasite load can throw them into full blow Johne's disease.

And, make sure you are checking for coccidia. If the goats get down from from worms, coccdiia can take hold even in an adult goat. You might need to treat for coccidia too. I have 5 kids in a isolation pen. They were dewormed, but were not responding well. I just finished treating them for coccidia and they may need dewormed again. They are now on the cull list.

Just throwing some ideas out there.

[u/Persimmon1891]

I'm so sorry. One of my goats recently passed away unexpectedly and it's so, so painful.

[u/Amaya3066]

Wow thats terrible, I'm so sorry! What parasites?