Home Remedies

Those of you who raise or have raised goats can relate to the challenges faced when attempting to determine the best method to medically treat a goat. When exploring your options for advice there is a veterinarian, an animal scientist (seek out your local university with a School of Agriculture), other producers, and the Internet. You’ll find a different opinion from almost every source. Then there becomes the issue of what medicine may be appropriate for your goat/s ailment. Again, you will find a different opinion from almost every source.

Then there is the issue of label versus non-label medication. Very few medicines (antibiotics, wormers, coccidiastats, and etc.) are labeled for use on goats. From the perspective of food safety when treating a potential meat animal with a medication that may or may not affect the ability of safe consumption of meat from that animal; and, without proper research it is unknown how long the withdrawal time might be once the goat has been treated with an off-label medicine.

There are also herbal medicines but the controversy continues on how effective they may or may not be. Like one parasitologist responded when asked about a particular herbal wormer “I’m sure it worked out well for the company that manufactures it, despite it effectiveness or lack of”.

Eventually goat producers learn to use treatments that seem most logical and what works for them on their farm. That is my reason for discussing home remedies in this article. Home remedies include treatments other producers have tried, or information from the Internet, neither of which may have been scientifically tested nor recommended by a veterinarian. Even they will warn you if a medicine is “off-label”. From a legal standpoint I cannot encourage producers to use home remedies, but I can say on my farm I have used a few myself and they have worked for my situation.

The web site for Fiasco Farm tells us the following about the parasite. Coccidia are a protozoan parasite that is almost always present in a goat's environment. When the goat is infected with these parasites in small numbers, the coccidia causes very little damage and no disease. When a goat is infected in large numbers, this disease is called Coccidiosis.

Please be aware that all goats usually carry a few coccidia. Adult goats have them, but are usually strong enough to resist them. People think of Coccidiosis as a kid "disease" because kids have not built up a strong enough immune system to resist the coccidia yet, this is why kids show more problems with coccidia. If you take a stool sample from your adult goats to the vet and they show a coccidia or two, it is nothing to worry about, it is virtually impossible to eliminate ALL coccidia and worms for a goat (it is normal to have a few). It's an overload of coccidia or worms that you need to be concerned about and act upon.

Some times when goats have coccidiosis they have scours, or diarrhea, some times that is not a symptom but they still have problems with the parasite. Up until the past two years whenever my goats had diarrhea I would immediately begin treating them for coccidiosis, but the treatment would not always stop the scours. Then I realized, they were not dying from the coccidia, they were dying from dehydration as a result of lack of interest in water and the diarrhea. Some friends of mine (Ken & Pat Motes of Fall River, TN) shared their experience and treatment for goats with diarrhea. They suggested using one part Bismuth Subsalicylate (the pink stomach relief medicine) and one part Spectinomycin (labeled for pigs with scours) as an effective treatment. Since using that combination the only time that I have followed up with treatment for coccidiosis is when the problem with scours continued.