# Worming Milking Goats (drinking milk)



## ahahahni1 (Sep 4, 2006)

I just can't get a straight answer on this. I hope you are able to give me some advice. We just adopted 4 Lamachas and they need to be wormed. The one that needs it the most we are milking and drinking the milk. What wormer can we use that will be safe for us to milk her. If there is a withdrawl period that is fine we could always just dump out her milk during that time. Someone told me I could use safeguard (bottle says not to) but they couldn't give me a withdrawl period on when it would be safe to drink again. I asked my Ag agent and he had no idea either.

Mama MacDonald


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## JR05 (Jan 1, 2005)

Ok, safeguard is just that safe, no withholding period unless you want to. Really depends on what kind of worms you have and how severe. With mine we withhold on the safeguard for 2-3 days and just give the milk to the kids (4 legged kind) or the chickens until it is ok for us to drink. There was a website on here about a month or two ago that listed all the wormers and holding times. It was from the Maryland Cooperative Extention, maybe this will help you out. Good luck.

jr05


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## manygoatsnmore (Feb 12, 2005)

You also need to know what wormers are working in your area. Safeguard isn't effective everywhere. You also need to know what kind of worms you are looking at. Take a sample of the droppings to the vet and have fecals run (or learn to do them yourself). Ask the vet what wormers are working for others locally. If the vet doesn't know, this is also a good way to find out that the vet probably doesn't know much about goats! Look for a vet that does know. After you worm, repeat in 10 days to catch the freshly hatched worms. After that, run a repeat fecal to see if you got the worms. If you didn't, you'll need to try another wormer.

I use Ivermectin for my herd, because it works for me. I don't worry too much about using the milk, because I usually manage to spill some of the med on my skin at some point during the worming process and I figure I'm already exposed to it.  I also figure I probably don't have worms!  :shrug: I'm not advocating this, BTW!!!

The Jeffers catalog lists the milk withdrawal times for the various wormers, and it is available on-line at www.jeffers.com. You can also search the archives here to find lots of good threads on the subject.


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## manygoatsnmore (Feb 12, 2005)

double post, sorry!


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