Drench resistance means that some or all of the worms in the goats are not being removed by the drench used. Once you have drench resistant worms in pasture and in livestock on your farm, it is very difficult or impossible to get rid of them, and you must change to an effective drench.
To maintain good worm control it is wise to test for drench effectiveness from time to time. About 80% of milking goat herds may already have drench-resistant worms on their pasture and in their goats. On some goat farms, resistance to all three drench families has been recorded. Delay the onset of drench resistance by avoiding excessive or unnecessary drenching. Try to make the interval between drenches as long as possible, using faecal egg counts to give you confidence. The longer the gap, the lower the risk of selecting for resistant worms. Drenching at less than 28-day intervals increases the risk of developing resistance.
Don’t under-dose. If you can’t weigh individual goats, base the dose volume on the heaviest animal in the mob. If there is a wide amount of variation in body weight, split onto smaller groups and dose to the heaviest in each group.
You will never be able to get rid of all the parasitic worms in your goats and pasture, so you should try to keep burdens light to minimise the effect on productivity and health. A degree of worm control can be achieved by pasture management, as well as by giving effective worm treatments (anthelmintic drenches) at strategic times.
You can put goats only on “safe” pasture to help keep worm intake down. “Safe pasture” means hay aftermath or any pasture grazed only by horses or cattle in the previous 3 months. Grazing goats after horses is particularly good because these species don’t share any types of worm. Long pasture can help control worms because larvae tend to be concentrated at the base of the sward.
Feeding browse is good, because shrub and tree foliage is generally not contaminated by faeces that might contain worm eggs and larvae. The plants should of course be non-toxic
Cutting grass from faeces-free areas and carrying it to goats’ areas might be laborious but it can help keep worm burdens down (as long as you don’t give too much at once and cause digestive problems).
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