I will be adding to this article over time, so for now, this page is just a few notes that I wanted to jot down.

If you have been around goats very long you have undoubtedly heard a few things, if not a lot of things about parasites. I am no vet, so what I am about to say is from my own experience will not necessarily work for you.

When we started raising goats we heard about parasites from many different sources, and although we knew they could be a problem, we did not necessarily "understand" how much of a problem they could be. Keep in mind, that my wife things that every goat on our place should look "show quality" all the time. In our understanding of how to control parasites, we were told that we needed to rotate our pastures at least every thirty days. So I went out and began building fences to break our areas up into four fields in order to rotate my pastures. The problem that we soon found out was that worms can live for up to 180 days or more during certain times of the year. So a four pasture rotation does not necessarily work all the time.

Another theory that we determined did not work was just utilizing one wormer every thirty days to control worms. If this is your plan, over time, worms WILL build up a resistance to your wormer and you will be wasting good money as well as good goats.

Here are some things that you need to do in order to reduce the amount of problems that you have with worms.

• Try to keep your pastures above 4 inches, typically the worms will be in the bottom 2 inches of growth
• Watch your goats carefully and catch or stop problems before they happen
• FAMACHA check your goats often to see if they are becoming anemic, if you goats begin to show signs of anemia, you probably have a worm problem (Even if you are using a wormer that you think is working). The only way to tell for sure is to do a fecal exam.
• Buy the equipment to check fecal samples or take fecal samples to your local vet to determine what type of worm you have and if your wormer is effective.
• Find a local vet that knows about goats. Not all vets are created equally.
• If possible create a rotational grazing method that works for you.
• Some plants help your goats build up a resistance to worms naturally, if you can investigate planting Sericea Lespedeza or forage chicory with your other grasses
• Keep your goats healthy, I can't stress this enough. healthy goats do have a natural resistance to a certain worm load. If your goats are weak because of other illnesses, pregnancy, etc. they will have a harder time fighting off worm loads
• Before you worm, remove your goats from feed for at least 12 hours and keep the off feed for an additional 12 hours. This will make the wormer more effective.