Purebred Oberhasli in SW Ohio

I've been remiss about blogging. Just never seem to get to it. However, I'll try harder to post and put pictures up.

Last August I shipped in 8 purebred Oberhasli kids from Texas. Many thanks to Laura Rivard. She wants pictures but I've been remiss there, also. I promise to try to get those up soon. I love pictures, too.

These does are yearlings now and each and every one of them is a good looking and healthy young doe. Of course, I have my favorites. Here are the names in case you want to look them up:

Rivard-Farm Zorro's Cashew
Rivard-Farm Lucious Lilly [polled]
Rivard-Farm Wonder Woman
Rivard-Farm Sapphire's Summer [twin to next]
Rivard-Farm Star Sapphire
Rivard-Farm Lime-x Artemis
Rivard-Farm Zorro's Victoria
Rivard-Farm Limex Sweet Dreams

Purebred [PB] Oberhasli are descendents of the Pence Importation of Oberhasli in the '30s.

I have made a big effort to get PB semen in the tank to use. Some of these are:

Destiny Farm Duncan
Y-Knot Time to Dance
Commancheland Rewind
Meadowsong Rewind Yuri
Meadowsong Levi Amos

I'll post it if I get any good AIs settled. If you have any information at all about these does or bucks, I'd love to chat.

Information about American Oberhasli in the herd will be in the next post.

Oberhasli Buck Roll Call 2010-2011

First up, the American Oberhasli buck: *B Heaven's HOllow Pistol Pete. This is Pete's third breeding season with us.

http://www.adgagenetics.org/GoatDetail.aspx?RegNumber=B001436090

Shotsi classified 92EEEE and was the Reserve National Champion in 2008 and National Grand Champion in 2009. She has made the top ten in the past and is slated to make it again in 2010. Shotsi's 2010 buck has been selected for the 2010 Spotlight Sale. This would be full brother to Pete.

We are all pleased with first kids out of Pete. Have no milker yet to show but soon.

2. Robin-Wood Bunda Big Cinsation.

http://www.adgagenetics.org/GoatDetail.aspx?RegNumber=B001532120

"Runaway" is a beautiful, growthy, balanced young American buck. He is the result of an AI breeding to the great *B White-Haven Bundaberg, who happens to be sire to Shotsi as well.

3: The Lindisfarme Red Apache, pending.

This young buck is a Purebred which we purchased to breed to our young Purebred Oberhasli does when they are big enough.

His sire is: Milk-n-More PG Red Apache, owned by Arden Ward.
His dam is: Milk-n-More Miss Bonetti.

We have some other American homebred bucks here:
Lindisfarme Life Insurance, Ludwigs Mohawk Vada's Hansel X Lindisfarm Zeus Annette.
Lindisfarme Oscar, Ludwigs Mohawk Vada's Hansel X Squaw*Mountain Raspberry
Lindisfarme Pete's ...., Heaven's Hollow Pistol Pete X Lindisfarme Hansel's Trouble

All these bucks will be collected and semen available.





S:

Cabbage Leaves! Get out of my way!!

Yes, my small herd of purebred and American Oberhasli goats are getting cabbage leaves and some cull cabbage heads again, just like every year. People are sometimes surprised how much they love them and how many they eat. My goats can hear the old farm truck putting up the road and run to the fence in anticipation. The horses are eating their share as well. All four of the horses are cabbage eaters. My granddaughter swears that the horses hooves are improved due to the cabbage leaves.

While the goats prefer the crunchy leaves, the horses eat the heads like big old apples. And speaking of apples, they are all getting apples as well this time of year. The pen of purebred kids has had their cabbage leaves thrown in but aren't really all that crazy about them. They nibble, but really haven't gotten enthusiastic yet.

So I have a routine that I have evolved. I fill up the feeders with hay. Then I thrown in cabbage leaves or let them go to the pile. Then I give them their grain a couple hours later.

Pumpkins will be coming soon, girls.

Catch up!

I have a new junior herd sire. He is a son of *B White Haven Bundaberg and out of a doe that is linebred on Willow Run Sir Wil Hassida, 3X national champion, 92EEEE and top ten. Her picture is here on the blog. Haven't bred him to any does yet but he's eager to get the chance. He's available for outside breedings. Just let me know.

Last weekend we shipped in 8 purebred Oberhasli doe kids from Rivards Farm in Texas. Along with them came a polled PB buck kid. So I'm in the PB Oberhasli ranks now. Still have the Americans but I'm sure excited about the purebreds. On the way back Bob stopped in Tenn and picked up another PB buck who is out of Milk-n-More lines. He's a big beautiful buck kid and if these little girls get busy and grow we'll hopefully get a few PB kids in the spring.

*B Heaven's Hollow Pistol Pete is scheduled for collection again in Oct. Then in December he will be collected again. Semen is for sale by contacting me any time. It will probably also be on Come to the Farm Auction for benefit of the OBA in late Oct.

*B Heaven's Hollow Stetson This is Pistol Pete's full brother, born in 2010. He's been selected to be in the Spotlight Sale at the ADGA national convention in October. Their dam Shotsi is milking very well and racking up a great lactation record for this year that will no doubt put her into the top 10 once again.

My friend Katie Morgan is out in California until December and is learning to collect and process semen for A.I. She'll be back in December and then we'll have a lot of practicing to do. I was chatting with Katie on Facebook and it came on the news that there was that huge explosion which leveled 50 houses and killed some people. Katie was not too far away from it. Terrible tragedy.

Well, let's see I think that's all the goat news.

Breeding Season or The Joy of Hormones

I have a pen of 9 sweet little 50# PB does. Right along side is a pen of 3 kid bucks. they're fighting and butting heads and mounting each other, blubbering at the girls. Then my big buck gets out and he's been blubbering around the little girls for 2 days. By that I mean, he was running around the pen on the outside, fighting with the little bucks in their pen throught the fencing and trying desperately to get to the girls. Knowing I was going to drag him back to his own barn, he wasn't about to let me catch him.

I go down yesterday to feed. Horror! Here's the 3 buck kids running amuck! the old buck was so upset and running around the outside, pushing the gate and sticking his head in. He just couldn't get over it. Just couldn't figure a way to get in.

The little girls are running around and around in the doe pen trying to get away from them. But there's no way to get away from 3 horny little bucks. One of the larger ones seems to be in heat but wasn't standing. And a couple of the other little girls had managed to get into the buck side. They were too spooked to let me catch them.

One person can only do so much.

I managed to get the three buck kids back on their side but the does wouldn't cooperate so I had to leave them in on the buck side, too. Poor things. They were jumped and mobbed and molested continuously until someone could go down and help me separate them.

Yeah, it's crazy all right. I don't really think anything got bred, but you know goats! It'll be over in a month or two. TG.

Glycerol to Replace some corn in rations

Some one asked about this very topic today on one of my lists. I can't find the post to reply personally. This research is on dairy cows, but since both dairy cows and goats are ruminants, I feel it is valuable information

************************
Feeding value of glycerol as a replacement for corn grain in rations fed to lactating dairy cows
S. S. Donkin*,1, S. L. Koser*, H. M. White*, P. H. Doane{dagger} and M. J. Cecava{dagger}

* Department of Animal Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907
{dagger} Archer Daniels Midland Company, Decatur, IL 62521

1 Corresponding author: sdonkin@purdue.edu

Growth of the corn ethanol industry has created a need for alternatives to corn for lactating dairy cows. Concurrent expansion in soydiesel production is expected to increase availability and promote favorable pricing for glycerol, a primary co-product material. The objective of this study was to determine the feeding value of glycerol as a replacement for corn in diets fed to lactating dairy cattle. Sixty lactating Holstein cows housed in individual tie stalls were fed a base diet consisting of corn silage, legume forages, corn grain, soyhulls, roasted soybeans, and protein supplements. After a 2-wk acclimation period, cows were fed diets containing 0, 5, 10, or 15% refined glycerol for 56 d. Cows were milked twice daily and weekly milk samples were collected. Milk production was 36.3, 37.2, 37.9, and 36.2 ± 1.6 kg/d and feed intake was 23.8, 24.6, 24.8, and 24.0 ± 0.7 kg/d for 0, 5, 10, and 15% glycerol treatments, respectively, and did not differ except for a modest reduction in feed intake during the first 7 d of the trial for 15% glycerol (treatment x time effect). Milk composition was not altered by glycerol feeding except that milk urea nitrogen was decreased from 12.5 ± 0.4 to 10.2 ± 0.4 mg/dL with glycerol addition. Cows fed diets containing 10 and 15% glycerol gained more weight than those fed rations containing 0 or 5% glycerol but body condition scores did not differ with glycerol feeding. The data indicate that glycerol is a suitable replacement for corn grain in diets for lactating dairy cattle and that it may be included in rations to a level of at least 15% of dry matter without adverse effects on milk production or milk composition.

http://jds.fass.org/cgi/content/abstract/92/10/5111?etoc

Key Words: glycerol • energy • biofuel

Great Info on Goat Forage - Turnips, rye and alfalfa

This is another great article that Noah Goddard found and put on his lists. I got really excited when I read about sewing turnips for winter forage. I'm going to try it if I can find some turnip seeds. If you do this, please, please, please publish the results somewhere and let us know in a comment about your experience.

----- Original Message -----
From: Bruce E Anderson
To: HAYFORAGE@listserv.unl.edu
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 1:36 PM
Subject: Hay & Forage Minutes for July 20 through 24 -- turnips, alfalfa pasture, fly into corn

69. PLANT TURNIPS FOR WINTER GRAZING
Interested in a high quality pasture for late fall and winter grazing? Then plant turnips into wheat or oat stubble this year. Stay tuned for more.

You need all the grazing you can get this year. One way to get more grazing is to extend your grazing season into fall and winter using turnips. Turnips provide good grazing beginning in October and often lasts into the new year. Also, turnips are cheap to plant since seed can cost less than ten dollars per acre. And late July to early August is the time to plant turnips for fall grazing.
Seedbed preparation and planting can be done several ways. Some turnip growers work soil like a fully prepared alfalfa seedbed. Others heavily disk their ground, but leave it fairly rough before broadcasting seed. And a few growers spray glyphosate or Gramoxone on wheat or oat stubble to kill weeds and then plant no-till.
Whatever method you choose, good early weed control is essential. Turnips do poorly if weeds get ahead of them, but once started, turnips compete very well. Since no herbicides are labeled for turnips, weeds must be controlled either by tillage or by using contact herbicides like glyphosate or Gramoxone before planting. Then plant quickly to get the turnips off and running.
Plant only 2 to 4 pounds of turnip seed per acre. Turnip seed is very small, so barely cover it. If you drill your seed, just scratch the surface with your openers. Simply broadcasting seed onto tilled soils works well for many growers, especially on rough seedbeds where rainfall or irrigation washes soil onto the seeds for soil coverage.
Then wait. With a few timely rains you will have excellent green feed for late October, November, and December.

70. ALFALFA FOR SUMMER PASTURE
When pastures are short and low quality during summer, what can you graze to maintain animal performance? Maybe alfalfa is your answer. Stick around.

Most pastures have difficulty providing abundant, high quality grazing throughout the summer, regardless of whether they are drought stressed or not. Yearlings and calves can really use better pasture at this time. Both drought-stunted alfalfa and well-growing alfalfa might fill that role of a better quality temporary pasture.
But, how do you get started and how do you avoid problems with bloat? Begin by dividing fields so animals graze no longer than 5 days at a time on any one area. One rule of thumb is that one ton of standing alfalfa hay will provide about 45 cow days of grazing. If you estimate your alfalfa would yield one ton of hay if you cut it right now, then one acre should feed 45 cows for one day. And if possible, limit the size of paddocks to 10 acres or less to get more uniform grazing. After grazing a paddock, plan grazing and haying so at least 35 days of regrowth will occur before harvesting the same area again.
To reduce bloat, begin grazing alfalfa after it begins to bloom. Short, drought-stunted, yet blooming alfalfa should be pretty safe. Also, be sure animals are full before first turning onto alfalfa and never let animals get hungry. In addition, begin grazing mid-afternoon and do not turn them onto fresh alfalfa that is moist with dew, rain, or irrigation. Yearlings tend to bloat less than cows, but feeding supplements like poloxalene, rumensin, and oxytetracycline can help reduce bloat for all classes of cattle.
These precautions and management practices can help you use alfalfa for pasture and overcome the late summer pasture slump.

71. FLYING TURNIPS OR RYE INTO CORN
Crop residues like corn stalks provide good winter feed. Adding turnips or cereal rye to them can sometimes make them even better. Stay tuned for tips and risks.

Corn stalks are one of the better and least expensive winter feeds we have. But once cattle finish eating the grain and husks, what remains isn’t all that good.
Some growers have improved both the amount and quality of corn stalk grazing by flying turnip or rye seed onto standing corn in early August. When successful, turnip or rye plants provide more grazing days and extra protein when corn stalks become poor quality.
Let me emphasize the words ‘when successful’. It’s not all that easy to get a good stand of either turnips or rye to become productive in a growing corn field.
Several factors limit success rates. Moisture easily can be limiting in dryland corn, but also can be difficult to manage in surface irrigated fields. Even under pivots, providing water for rye or turnips without slowing corn harvest takes planning.
Another problem is the density of the corn canopy. Irrigated fields can be especially thick, acting like weeds to prevent adequate light from reaching new seedlings. Chopping corn for silage or combining high moisture grain early helps.
And speaking of weeds, herbicide carryover also causes problems. Turnips are very sensitive, but rye also is affected.
Lastly is wheel traffic at harvest. Turnips are damaged more than rye, but both lose stand if fields get muddy.
I do like improving corn stalks with rye or turnips. But be aware there are challenges, and try to find ways to overcome them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Bruce Anderson
Extension Forage Specialist
Department of Agronomy and Horticulture
University of Nebraska
Lincoln, NE 68583-0951

voice: 402/472-6237
fax: 402/472-7904

Prison's Cheesemakers in Colo.

An interesting article going around Yahoo lists.

Prison's goats fuel industry
By Douglas Brown
DENVER POST
Sunday, Jul. 19 2009
CANON CITY, Colo. - The men wearing green uniforms and tall rubber boots spread
out across the compound, herding goats into pens, pouring grain into feeding
troughs and serving as nursemaids to those giving birth.

Many of them, all inmates at Skyline Correctional Center in Canon City, had
never touched a goat or heard one bleat before becoming involved with Colorado
Correctional Industries, a division of the state Department of Corrections.
It's likely, too, that few of the prisoners had ever tasted goat cheese.

But that's what happens to nearly every drop of milk the prisoners draw from
the animals, most of which goes to Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy in Longmont in
northern Colorado. Cheesemakers there transform thousands of gallons of milk
from the Canon City goats into chevre logs, cubes of feta, pungent rounds of
raw milk cheese and more.

And then a shopper at a Costco or a cheese connoisseur at a gourmet boutique in
Philadelphia, or a diner at a fancy restaurant in San Diego will buy the
cheese. The diner will chew the slice of Red Cloud and marvel over its
evocative flavor.

How does milk from a prison complex in remote central Colorado end up in a
high-end restaurant?

It begins in the pen.

Tall, muscular, tattooed and in prison for cocaine distribution, Thomas R.
Major III seems an unlikely nurturer of goats.

But a year into his seven-days-a-week apprenticeship, he's a leader of the
goat-milk operation.

"It's human nature. You get attached to something the more you hang out with
it," said Major, 31, as 56 goats standing on a pair of concrete platforms on
either side of him ate grain as they were milked. Between the goats' staccato
cries and the rhythmic shushing sound of the milking machines, he had to nearly
shout to make himself heard.

It takes about two minutes to milk a goat, and when they all are finished,
prisoners herd them out through one door and usher in the next group of goats
for milking.

Major and the other 29 men who tend the animals give them vaccinations, trim
their hooves, move around hay, build barns, clean the milking machines and do
everything else it takes to run a goat farm.

By the end of the summer, the prisoners will manage about 2,000 goats,
including Alpines, Nubians and Toggenburgs, said Mary Provost, who oversees the
operation.

Most of the minimum-security prisoners shrug when asked whether they will
pursue careers in livestock when they emerge from prison.

Not Vincent Gonzalez, 26, who is in for kidnapping.

"I like milking," said Gonzalez as he cleaned equipment in a small, humid room
full of stainless steel tanks. "When I get out, hopefully, my parents have land
near Calhan. They want me to learn as much as possible so I can open a goat
business."

Gonzalez has studied every aspect of the trade. He even learned how to ferment
cheese, which would make him one of the few prisoners who can imagine what
happens to all of that white liquid after Haystack employee Bill Napier pulls
up in his truck, pumps 9,000 pounds of milk into a refrigerated steel tank, and
drives back to the dairy.

Haystack buys milk from the prison because it is the only nearby farm large
enough to accommodate the dairy's needs, said Haystack's Chuck Hellmer.

In June, Haystack took about 110,000 pounds of Canon City milk.

A day after Napier delivers the milk to Haystack, Wendy Freund puts rennet, a
substance used to coagulate milk, into a vat holding 1,800 pounds of raw goat
milk.

Five minutes later, Freund presses her finger on the milk; it has developed a
skin.

She dips a steel device called a harp into the vat and begins pulling the milk
toward her, breaking the curds into smaller pieces. She raises the temperature
slowly, and switches tools, from the harp, which was sort of like the frame of
a paddle strung with wires, to a rake.

Freund got the gig three years ago, after moving to Longmont from Houston. She
knew nothing about cheese, but was intrigued by the ad for a cheesemaker in the
Longmont newspaper. Now she's passionate about the subject.

"Cheese is a living creature," she said. "It's like a big science project every
day."

After raking the curds, Freund hauls scoops of them from the tank and packs
them into cheesecloth-lined wheels. The rounds of wet curds drain for a day,
and by the time they are placed in a walk-in refrigerator they have gelled and
hardened.

Haystack turns the goat milk harvested by prisoners into a variety of cheeses,
from their best-selling chevre logs, which feature the kind of simple,
pasteurized goat cheese that you can spread like thick hummus, to Sunlight, a
raw-milk cheese that you slice.

Soon, they may be adding a camembert to the list, a project the head
cheesemaker, Jackie Chang, has been working on since January.

"I wanted a mushroomy, lemony taste," said Chang, in red rubber boots and red
shorts one afternoon as a fresh load of milk from the prison arrived. "That's
the part about my job I love, experimenting every day. It's like raising kids.
Lots of caring, lots of love."

The product of at least some of Chang's - and the prisoners' - toil ends up
every week at the Denver restaurant Rioja, where Haystack cheese makes
appearances in a variety of dishes.

Chef and owner Jennifer Jasinski buys so much goat cheese from Haystack that
the company ships it to the restaurant, instead of going through a distributor.

"There are much cheaper ones out there," Jasinski said during a recent lunch
rush. "But the quality is the first answer. I think it's an excellent product.
And I like that it's 40 minutes away."

Elsewhere in the kitchen a cook placed dollops of a Haystack goat-cheese and
artichoke mousse onto squares of fresh pasta, which he then folded into
tortelloni, which are large versions of tortellini.

The dish - the pasta served in an artichoke broth and draped with shavings of
Haystack's Queso de Mano - is the restaurant's signature, said Jasinski.

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Dam of New Junior Herdsire arriving in 2days!!

SGCH California Kalvin's Special K, 90EEEE, #1 top ten milker




According to information available from the American Dairy Goat Association, our little buck’s story started with a doe named White Haven Nasake, an Oberhasli donated to the university by Jean White, Molalla, Oregon. The breeding of this doe to Clovertop's Ecktorsketch Kalvin, a buck donated by Lorrie Echols, Sebastopol, California, herd name SquawMountain, produced the dam of our buck, California Kalvin Special K.

The Clovertop buck behind this breeding was masterminded by a well-known dairy production breeder and ADGA judge, Raymond Vieira, Artois, California. Our buck was the result of an potentially great AI breeding to White-Haven Remus, from semen contributed by Jeannie White. Picture of Remus' dam coming soon, she is a national show champion.

My bucks half sister, the 2009 Spotlight Sale doeling, Kia, was the result of artificial insemination, via donation of semen from the Udderly Crazy herd, Carolyn Hoeker and family, Monroe, Washington.



More about the sire, White-Haven Remus soon.

New 2009 Junior Herdsire

This little guy is getting on a plane and flying from UC Davis in California to Dayton Inernational Airport sometime within this next week, probably Sunday. We can't wait to get him.

His dam is the lovely SGCH California Kalvin Special K and AI sire is White-Haven Remus, son of National GCH White Haven Misty. Special K is multiple top ten doe. She has classified 90EEEE and was #2 in her class in the 2005 National show. The ETA of this buck and his two brothers is 99/44 which should put him on the Elite Young Sire list.

Confusion Clears: Vaccines and how they work

Vaccines and how they work, generally but particularly as related to CL

This is a guest post from Bob Glass,Pan American Vet Labs
Hutto, TX
www.pavlab.com

I have posted on this before but this is a clear and easy to understand explanations. It is hard for me to achieve this, being trained in biology. I want to go into biochemistry and cell biology. This is called this and that is called that.

So I hope you understand this. If not, please comment here and I'll try to help. Or I'm sure Dr. Glass wouldn't mind you emailing him directly. This is his stock and trade.

************************

For the sake of simplicity I will use the term "vaccine" as a generic term
here. Actually the term vaccine is correctly used to described a
preparation which stimulates a protective immune response against a virus.
The term for the same type of product against bacteria is "bacterin" and
against toxins is "toxoid"

Vaccines are intended to "simulate" an actually infection in order to induce
the animal's immune system to react as if infected. In many (not all) cases
this will provide protection against future infections. This is the same
logic and mechanism which is employed with human vaccines.

If the same strain of a disease which causes disease were used, the vaccine
caused disease would be just as harmful as any "wild/natural" infection.
There are two strategies to overcome this problem. In some cases the
"vaccine" consists of a live but attenuated (greatly weakened) organism
which is not able to set up a persistent or disease causing infection.
Although weaker and less harmful than a natural infection this "vaccine"
infection will induce a protective immune response. A good example of this
is type of vaccine is sore mouth.

In other cases a killed vaccine is used. In this case the organism which
causes the disease is killed during the vaccine manufacturing process so
that no actual infection occurs. However the vaccine contains a large
number of these killed organisms which are able to stimulate the patient's
immune system. Often when a killed vaccine is used multiple doses are
required to sufficiently stimulate the patient's immune system. In both
these cases the goal of the vaccine is to stimulate an immune response that
kills the organism causing the infection.

In other cases a purified or semi purified vaccines is produced. A good
example of this is vaccines against toxins. Toxins are protein/carbohydrate
molecules produced by various organisms which have a pathologic effect on
the patient. Botulism is an organism which produces toxin. In these cases
it is not enough to kill the organism because the toxin will still be
present and cause life threatening illness. To combat this the toxins are
purified from the organism and "denatured" by various means
(heat/ph/chemicals) to make the toxin non harmful. This denatured toxin is
then injected into the patient who develops an immune response which
neutralizes the toxin. The antibody produced in the scenario is a
"anti-toxin". This is the same as the anti toxin you can buy and give to
animals that have not been vaccinated and become ill due to a toxin
producing bacteria. Anti Toxins are purified and concentrated antibodies
made by vaccinating animals with toxoids.

I have not read the article by Dr. Sparks, but I expect he referred to
introducing the disease organism into the goat (not the disease). In the
case of CL the organism is killed so the actual disease will not occur. In
some cases the patient may have a local immune response at the injection
site. In fact this is the body responding to the dead CL organism as if they
were "alive, thus the abscess, but in this case the CL is dead and the
abscess is "sterile".

I hope this helps;

Bob Glass
Pan American Vet Labs
Hutto, TX

Liver Fluke in Goats

LIVER FLUKE
(an often-misidentified worm that's lethal if not treated for properly)
Update 2/08 by Sue Reith.


SYMPTOMS:

Liver fluke damage is generally rather slow in appearing in mature goats... In a reasonably healthy goat, it can take years of gradual decline before the owner is even aware that Liver fluke is present. Symptoms are some, if not always all, of the following: Gradual increase in unthriftiness (dry coat, guard hairs sticking up, ribbiness, pale eye membranes (indicating anemia caused by the worm's activity), a swelling under the jaw (that has erroneously been considered among the veterinary community to be symptomatic of resistance to treatment for haemonchus contortus), and, eventually, a possibly sub-normal temp (less than 102 degrees), a distended belly (symptomatic of last-stage liver disease), and fecal pellets that are almost black in color and shriveled up with pointy ends on them.

Often the victim goat is one that has been wormed routinely, and yet still continues its gradual decline. The problem is that there's only one wormer on the market that will wipe out Liver fluke properly, Ivomec PLUS, (the PLUS part being clorsulon, specifically for eradication of Liver fluke) and many owners don't even know this wormer exists! Sadly, even when the owner finally learns about it and starts treatment, by that time there has often already been too much damage to the goat's liver for it to be saved even after proper worming.

BTW: While Liver fluke damage is often found in otherwise well-managed mature goats that despite good care continue to decline in appearance, in my experience this sudden appearance of anemia and weakness with either normal, or subnormal, temp (and sometimes swelling under the jaw as well) is not at all unusual to discover in young ruminants within the first few months of life as well. At that age it commonly shows up when they're heavily exposed to it in pastures containing wet areas, before their immune systems can get up and going to protect them. In fact, it's not uncommon for these young victims to die so fast they hardly have time to be sick.¹ This is especially true if there are any clostridial (Entero) organisms present in them, since they multiply and secrete their toxins fast in the already damaged, poorly oxygenated liver tissue .¹

TREATMENT:

I'm not one to quit without at least doing my best to save the goat...So if a goat of mine were affected with Liver Fluke I'd start it immediately on Ivomec Plus, using the appropriate worming approach as follows: All wormer packages note on the packaging that the product kills off ONLY the adult stages. So in order to get the worm load in the host down to a low enough level so that the immune system can take over and keep the problem under control, you need to worm 3X, with 10 days between wormings. The first dose will wipe out the adults already in there, the second dose will wipe out the larvae as they become adults (but before they can start laying eggs of their own), and the third dose kills off those eggs that were already in there when you started the worming, after they've passed thru the larval stage, when they, too, have become adults.. That leaves just a very low level of the parasites still in the host, the ones that from sheer timing
(good luck?) missed being wiped out by the worming onslaught... And that's just enough for the immune system to keep under control from then on. Having begun the repair process by giving the first dose of Ivomec Plus, the next step would be to immediatelystart it on subcutaneous injections of Ferrodex 200 (each 1 ml dose of which delivers 200 mg of elemental iron), to restorethe liver's red cells, the loss of which was the cause ofthe anemia and the blackened, shriveled, pointy-ended fecal pellets.And at this very critical time, as adjunct (supportive) therapy, I'd give it subcutaneous doses daily of 'Fortified' B-complex' (a combination of B vitamins needed for proper body function that has everything but B-12), essential because every time the patient urinates, it's losing all of those vitamins that are needed to maintenance of its body functions, and BoSe (to support his stressed immune system so that the goat can help itself to get well from
inside, while I work on it from the outside), and Banamine (to reduce the goat's pain and cut the inflammation caused by the worm damage) which, once given, will encourage the goat to want to eat once again! And last but not least, I'd give the goat a preventative doe of C&D antitoxin (to prevent entero from taking this opportunity to sneak in and finish the poor victim off because while it's down its stomach is not digesting food and moving it out of its body as it should.)


BACKGROUND:

Liver fluke is found in most of the US, but it's especially common in the Southern states due to the lack of good frosts to wipe out eggs and larvae in winter. We see it often up here in the Northern states as well, but because we have colder winters, the numbers, fortunately, are somewhat lower. However during the rainy season, no matter what part of the country the goat lives in, the Liver Fluke problem becomes particularly pervasive each year!

Today, by far the most difficult problem that we as owners face with Liver fluke treatment/control is that the veterinary community in general isn't even aware that it's there. As a result, they're unable to recommend proper treatment for it. This is because the egg of the Liver fluke (Fasciola hepatica)² looks so similar to that of the Barberpole worm (Haemonchus contortus)² that when it shows up on the slide in the Vet's office it's routinely misidentified to BE that of the Haemonchus contortus (or perhaps by some general term like strongyles, stomach worms, et al).

Until just a few years ago the veterinarian, seeing what was thought to be Haemonchus contortus eggs on the slide, would recommend Ivomec to the owner as the wormer of choice to eradicate it. And rightly so, because the moment Ivomec appeared on the scene back in the early 1980's, it was recognized as the most effective general wormer to show up ever! And frankly it remains, in my view, still the best and most efficacious general wormer on the market today.

And largely because the real Haemonchus contortus has always responded very well to Ivomec, veterinarians, misidentifying Liver fluke eggs as those of Haemonchus contortus, quite logically continued recommending Ivomec for treatment. When the Liver fluke failed to respond to the Ivomec treatment, unfortunately the loss of the animal in question was assumed to be a sign of the Haemonchus contortus having developed 'resistance' to the Ivomec! This notion has now become so pervasive that the veterinary community in general believes these days that the worms affecting livestock have developed a resistance to Ivomec, the result being a recommendation to their clients that they (1) increase the doses, and (2) turn to other wormers. Neither approach has even slowed down the deaths being caused, in fact, by Liver fluke. Since neither of those suggestions are working, the most recent approach has been to set up Famacha classes to
instruct owners and veterinarians alike in how to check the eyelids of the downed animals to see if they're anemic. If the animals have pale eyelids, indicating they're anemic, owners are sometimes advised to destroy the victim, fearing that if it lives, the 'resistance to wormers' will spread even further.

Sadly, neither plain Ivomec, nor Panacur, nor any of the other general wormers on the market today, are effective against Liver fluke. The fact is, this parasite can ONLY be eradicated efficiently by using a product called Ivomec Plus . It's not the Ivomec itself, but the PLUS part of the combined wormer, which is actually 'clorsulon' , that effectively wipes out Liver fluke. And (very critically) since it only kills the ADULT of the species, clorsulon (just as all wormers) has to be used at regular doses, 3 X in a row, 10 days apart, to kill it off completely. ¹

And it will no doubt be of particular interest for those owners who are worried about using milk from does being treated with Ivomec Plus that the Pharmaceutical companies have now run the required tests on those two products that officially clears them for use in lactating ruminants!

So in my view, these days (particularly if the reader is having a hard time controlling internal parasites in his/her animals) Ivomec Plus (instead of plain Ivomec) should ALWAYS be used for general worming, 'just in case'! Just like regular Ivomec, it can be given orally although it's actually an injectable. But since right now Ivomec itself is less readily being used by people (most of whom have never even heard of Liver fluke, and many of whom have their vets ID their goats' fecal samples as well) Ivomec Plus, while its importance is gradually growing among goat owners, may not yet be available in your local feed store... However it is readily available in livestock catalogs, and online as well, at about the same price as Ivomec.


END

¹ Georgi's Parasitology for Veterinarians, Dwight Bowman, 7th Ed. P116.

² Veterinary Clinical Parasitology, Sloss & Kemp, 5th Ed. P.41, Fasciola hepatica eggs; P.46, Haemonchus contortus eggs

Sue Reith
C Carmelita Toggs
Bainbridge Island WA


(While I urge you to share this information with other individual goat owners, please do not reproduce the article for publication without my specific permission. Thank you. Sue Reith.)

Genetically Modified (GM) Plants and Grain

Plants have DNA in their cells just like we do. Using recombinant techniques, a gene is isolated from one organism and spliced into the genome of a receptor cell, which is now genetically modified. Insulin is produced this way.

An example would be if you took a gene for cold tolerance out of an alpine plant and put it into a domestic strawberry chromosome or genome, to impart cold tolerance. This is done at a cellular level. Each cell divides and replicates, the daughter cells now carry the new splice as if it is part of it's own genome, a hitchhiker if you like. Cells replicate and eventually form an organism, each cell of which will carry the "foreign" splice of DNA.

There are dangers and unintended consequences of this gene splicing. for example, pollen from a GM plant may be allergenic. While this doesn't sound particularly important, just think how dangerous allergies like nut allergies can be. Also, people are concerned about weird things happening like for example, herbicide resistant genes may cross with noxious weeds producing a really monster weed that would be herbicide resistant. Things like this.

I did run across the study referred to where the rats were shown to have reduced reproductive fitness. however, it was quickly noted that the gene spliced in was already known to be detrimental to reproduction and not to be the end product of this research.

The development of GM strains is difficult and costly and the manufacturers, best known is Monsanto, have been allowed to patent these things. Lawsuits about patents have gotten into the realm of the ridiculous. For example, some farmers' crops have been shown to have Monsanto GM patented genes and they have been sued for patent infringement. As Alice said, it keeps getting curiouser and curiouser.

Now, remember that GM foods and grains are going through digestion and the nucleic acids which are the building blocks of the DNA are broken down to A,C,G and Ts and salvaged in the cells to make other cell products. (There's nothing to "leach.") I think that the model folks have in mind is toxic chemical pollution. Toxic chemicals might interfere at the cellular level or even be toxic to the liver or kidneys which is trying to clear the body of these substances.

Baby goats in the House

I don't know about everyone else but sometimes it's much too cold outside for baby goats and I grab them and head for the house. They spend a few minutes under the hair dryer and then the rest of the night by the wood stove. I use dog cages mostly to contain them. I also have a 100 gal rubber stock tank that I use as a "play pen." But it only takes a couple weeks until they are popping out and making a mess. Then I'm scrounging around for a screen or baby gate, something to lay on top.

When I read about this lady, Mary, and how she puts diapers on her kids I thought how much better this would be. Here it is cut and pasted from one of my goat lists:
********************************************************************************

Posted by: "combmaker@aol.com" combmaker@aol.com hemizonia

Sun Feb 1, 2009 3:06 am (PST)

(first part edited out)

I used regular human infant diapers, starting with newborn, and sizing
up as the kids grew. I'd cut a tiny hole for the tail, and pull it thru. I
would have the kids wear a cat or small dog halter ... would secure the diaper
by connecting the halter and diaper with a shoelace. With bucklings, you
have to keep the bottom of the diaper placed about to their chest. With
doe-lings, you didn't need to be as fussy. A shoelace on the bottom of the diaper
to the halter helped keep the pooplets in the diaper.

Mary, No. California
*******************************************************************************

Well my Swiffer mop is going to get a lot less use this year thanks to Mary's idea of the diapers and dog halter. hehe. And they might be out of the dog cages more.

I have one more tip. After you give them their bottle, stick them out the door and within a few minutes they probably will pee and maybe number two. Then you can bring them back in. Watch so that they don't wander off.

Another Dose of Cute--Baby Nubian

http://queenacresonline.blogspot.com/ for more baby goat pictures

I thought you might to see this little guy getting his dinner. This breed is called Nubian and is the most numerous breed of goats in the U.S. It's got to be the ears!! They don't stay this little for long. He or she probably weighed about 5# at birth and will gain about 8# a month until she/he's full grown.

The Queenacres blog is chatty and fun, a glimpse into a farm family with goats and chickens, homeschooling and other lifestyle information.

Top Ten Reasons Anyone Over 40 With Goats and/or Horses Should Own a Bobcat

I'm not sure not we would live without a Bobcat. We bought it with every penny we could scrape up about 2003. At the time I was reluctant to spend the money, but now...

1: Clean out pens. We take down the goats and panels that make up the pens and hubby goes in and scrapes up the manure and bedding. Doing this once a month is ideal, but we usually end up doing it more like every 3 months.

2: Along with #1, we bucket the manure/bedding to the area of the garden by the fenceline and let it compost for a year or two.

3: Hubby transports bales of hay, both large round and small, two or more at a time, from one barn to another.

4. While we're on the subject of hay, Bob made hay one year and the bales were all over the field. Neither him nor I had the backs to handle that much hay. He used the Bobcat and precisely stacked those bales on the trailer with great precision. And it didn't take that much longer. It would take a lot of practice to do a job like that but it is possible.

5. He has used the Bobcat as a jack. Yes, a car, tractor jack.

6. We had to bury a horse. that was a sad job, but it worked well.

7. He cleans off snow. You can either scoop it with the bucket or turn the bucket upside down, and driving backwards, scrape it.

8. You can put gravel in a truck or you can put gravel in a driveway or something. You can move heavy rocks or boulders.

9. You can pull out fence posts. You use a log chain, wrap it around the post, and lift the bucket.

10. You can use it as a mini-bulldozer to tear down an old shed, to scrape off heavy weeds, to dig a hole, to smooth out a low or wet area... actually about anything you need to do that would require heavy lifting.

Memories of a 50% Boer doe, Jar-Jar

Before I started establishing my Oberhasli herd a 50% boer doe came into my life. We named her Jar-Jar and she was really beautiful. She was red and white with white legs from the knees down. She reminded me of a majorette with white boots on, I loved that.

The reason she came to me was funny. She got into her previous owner's pocket and ate his cash, over $50! So she was worth more than $50 right off the bat! Can't you just visualize that! Jar-jar running off with his cash, eating it as she ran and him running after her trying to get it back, yelling and screaming and cussing. I assume he didn't have a gun handy.

When she kidded with two big old vigorous buck kids there was plenty of milk and after the bucks were sold, what the heck. I went down and dug my old milk stand out of dad's barn and set it up in the corner of the pen. About that same time I got my wonderful Cherokee aka Grandma, the heaviest unofficial milker in Ohio, and I started milking both of them.

Jar-jar drove me crazy. She had her head in Grandma's feed when I was milking and no amount of hitting, kicking or yelling would deter her. Then when she got her turn she would eat another scoop of feed, finish that and then look at me from the side of her eye and stomp her feet demanding more feed. That goat could both eat and milk! She stopped her pick pocketing but made up for it with her voracious appetite.

Milking Jar-jar was an experience. She had very small teats, four of them. The extra two were small, about an inch long, at the base of her normal teats and didn't seem to function so they weren't any problem at all. Her udder was so soft and supple, it was heaven and milked down to nothing, what you wish would happen with your dairy goats. The teats were so small that I had to milk her udder. That is, I would grab above the teats and work down to the teats. It was a different technique but worked just fine. Now I have automatic milkers and it wouldn't even be worth mentioning.

If you find yourself with a Jar-jar, just appreciate her for what she is. Like men, goats don't change.

*B Heaven's Hollow Pistol Pete Collection

The son of SGCH Heaven's Hollow Shotsi *M, 92EEEE and Res. National GCH 2008 and #5 Top Ten milker, is generating a lot of interest because of his impeccable pedigree. Pete is now a working buck. He has been in the pen with most of the does and they are starting to show heavy bellies so no doubt we'll have a lot of babies in a few months.

Pete was collected for AI in November by Biogenics. He was dwarfed by the other bucks, these big old nubian behemoths. The only other young buck there was also an Oberhasli. He was Kirt Schnipke's buck Utterly Crazy Richochet. When it came to "jumping the does" you had to get out of the way for the other bucks, they reminded me of a fancy quarter horse running up and sliding to a stop. But not Petey. He acted like he didn't know what to do.

The collector suggested we take him and the doe outside and try it without the other bucks and people. He got a slow start but after a while he caught on and we collected 27 straws. Kirts buck collected about as well. So it was a successful collection even though the little guy got off to a slow start.

I donated 5 straws to a fund-raising auction on cometothefarm.com for the benefit of OBA. There were two eager bidders and they went for $201! So we'll be shipping it out to Dan who has the Butte Creek herd in Oregon or Northern California. I'm not quite sure which.

I hadn't planned on selling any more but there seems to be enough interest that I'm going to see if I can have him collected a second time after the first of the year. If you are interested in a purchase let me know. I'm not certain I will be selling any more this winter and spring but it is a possibility, and I can start a waiting list.

Every spring is an exciting time. I am so fortunate to have owned and used such fine bucks. My foundation bucks were so precious and choosing and buying them all those years ago was such a matter of beginner's luck. Last year I used the son of GCH Vassajara Vada, 91EEEE, Top Ten, and an Elite doe. These are some of the prettiest kids ever born here.

Using fine bucks, generation after generation, the quality of the herd progresses every year. Pete is bred to about 15 does, many of them daughters and granddaughters of our dear late FDF-Pleasant Fields Solaris, son of GCH Destiny Farm Souvenir 91EEEE, 2X Res. National GCH.

Best Oberhasli

For a while I couldn't quite make the seasonal adjustment from summer to autumn. It was so hot so long. This week we have finally got our 50 degree good sleeping weather nights and a few dry leaves are starting to hit the lawn. Pumpkins, gourds, mums decorate the yard.

And the bucks smell to high heaven.

Our new buck Pete is doing his buck job. He's in with the girls and I seeing him chasing one, then another. He's a busy guy. I haven't seen him actually breed any of them but I don't have to. I know he's doing his job.

On OberhasliTalk@yahoogroups.com recent we had a discussion about memorable Oberhasli goats we have known. I told the story of my first modern Oberhasli. I wanted to copy and paste it here but can't seem to find it. Airhead me must have deleted it. So I'll just tell it again.

In 2001 a really beautiful Oberhasli looking doe fell into my lap. She was half wild. Wouldn't come to me but would milk or lead nicely if I cornered her. At the time we had the goat pen (3 goats) under an apple tree on the east side of the house. We moved it because in the winter the wood stove smoke blows that way. Knowing that smoke isn't good for people I figured it couldn't be good for goats either.

Anyway, we called her "Grandma" and she freshened in the spring with twin bucks, a habit of Grandma her whole life, bucks, bucks, bucks, bucks, doe, bucks. Yes, one daughter in all those years we had her. The goats lived in a shed which was basically a large dog house. I drug my old milk stand out of my dad's barn and put it in the corner and started milking her.

She ate as much as she wanted basically. I milked outside. I milked by hand. If it was raining I didn't milk at all. Here's the neat part. The old girl started filling up the gallon ice cream pail that I was milking into. Then she filled one and part of another. Then at her peak she almost filled up two gallon ice cream pails, two times a day. Yes, that's almost four gallons of milk a day.

And I thought, man, these Oberhasli can really milk!!! That would be about 30# more or less milk and definitely in contention for breed leader, had we been on test. Well, she was a once in a life milker and that was her one glory year. She was a good milker, a persistent milker, but never milked her brains out like that again.

We tracked down her tattoo and the people were kind enough to give me her papers and transfer. Yes, she really was an American Oberhasli with a pedigree going back to some really great Seneca Valley lines and others as well. She was linebred on Seneca Valley Hedrick 20+ times that I counted. Her grandsire on maternal side was Barabbas, a well known buck in this area.

We lost her at 10 years old and even though she was always a free spirit, miss her terribly. Hubby especially liked to treat her. Her took her out apples, starlight mints, crackers, and other treats. In that way she was thoroughly spoiled. I should have called her "Beginners Luck."

Breeding Dairy Goats

Many people probably don't realize that dairy goats are seasonal breeders. They start coming into heat towards the end of August and on through the fall up through about January. Going into breeding season, the bucks are starting to go into rut, which means they get stinky and disgusting.

Although our bucks are sweet as they can be, there are times when you can smell them before you get to the driveway. A couple years ago we wouldn't have company or let anyone come over it was so bad. We sold a litter of pups and I drove them down to the truckstop and met people there in order for them not to come over.

Many people will hand breed their does. That means they have to recognize a doe in heat and then take them to the buck. This has never been a successful technique for me. When I have tried to do this I have missed a couple. So I pen breed. I put the buck in with the does I want him to breed and let them do their thing.

Choosing which bucks to use on what does is just your best hunch. In the past I have had older proven bucks and I pretty much knew what to expect out of their milking daughters. This year and last I have used young bucks with no milking daughters, just relying on their impeccable breeding and the quality of their dams.