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NOW,
in the middle of winter, is a good time to treat your goats against
astrointestinal parasites! The beneficial effect of this January cold
spell and snow is that it is killing all kinds of vermin, including
goat gastrointestinal parasite eggs that have been excreted on your
pastures in the fecal pellets. Which
means that in the spring pasture contamination will be reduced. However,
you still need to treat your animals during the dead of winter if you
want to stay ahead of the curve and get better control of worm burdens
during the warm weather growing season.
During the winter months, the chance of gastrointestinal parasite eggs
to hatch and survive on pastures are not very good due to the colder
weather. Somehow sensing these conditions, the adult gastrointestinal
larvae present in the goat gastrointestinal tract will not produce eggs,
instead they become dormant. With time, they actually will be getting
ready for the outside conditions to become more favorable. When this
happens and the weather becomes warmer, and grass starts to grow again,
they will shed lots of eggs. So now is the time to get your animals
rid of dormant gastrointestinal larvae so as to reduce worm burdens
during the grazing season.
Not all anthelmintics are effective to destroy and kill dormant larvae.
Either fenbendazole (Panacur or Safeguard), albendazole
(Valbazen), oxfendazole (Synanthic)or ivermectin (ivomec)
have proven effective to treat all animals against dormant larvae during
the winter months. However, oxfendazole should not be used in pregnant
animals.
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