April 2013 Articles

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Parasites and pastures

Parasites and pastures Source: LSU AgCenter
One of the best ingredients of a parasite control program is reducing the number of parasites that the goats are exposed to. One way to accomplish this is to manage your pastures in a way that will reduce its parasite load. There are several ways to do this:
Take a hay crop. This type of pasture can be incorporated into a dose-and-move program in which goats are grazed on one pasture in the early grazing season and then moved to another goat pasture that was used for a first-cutting of hay. Another move before the end of the grazing season will probably provide the best parasite control.
Incorporate annual pastures into the grazing system and drag some implement in the stubble before planting.
Incorporate into the grazing system plants containing high concentrations of tannins. Alternatively, incorporate fodder shrubs that contain high concentrations of tannins, such as black locust.
Graze a contaminated pasture with another livestock species. The goat parasite larvae cannot survive in the gastrointestinal tract of another herbivore species. However, sheep are an exception because they share worms with goats. Another approach is to use a first-grazer, second-grazer system with two livestock species.
Use control grazing practices to optimize pasture production. This is a better practice than continuous grazing on the same pasture because goats will return to the same areas where their favorite plants are growing. Those areas will become heavily infected by gastrointestinal parasite larvae.
In extensive situations with an over-abundance of pasture land, allow the goats to have plenty of forage, thus giving them the opportunity to select the most nutritious parts of plants. In such situations, goats will not graze close to the ground and will not ingest many gastrointestinal parasites.
Put goats in a browse area, or woodlot, when hot, humid environmental conditions favor the rapid life cycle of gastrointestinal parasites. By browsing, goats will not consume forage close to the ground where the parasite larvae are located -- 5-inches or less from the ground level. In addition, many browse plants have the additional benefit of harboring high tannin concentrations. Tannins have been shown to reduce fecal egg counts and possible gastrointestinal parasite larvae numbers.
Always put goats with the highest nutritional requirements on the best quality pastures. Good nutrition allows a more effective immune response to fight gastrointestinal parasites.
Rest a pasture. Unfortunately, it takes a year or an entire grazing season for the worm eggs and larvae to die off if the pasture is just left empty. This is usually impractical.