Coccidiosis - one of those big 'sciencey' words that I usually like to avoid - "is a potentially fatal intestinal disease of goats." Now you may be thinking that "I better make sure that none of my goats have the little critter that causes this disease." But I'm sorry, that's not how this thing works!
According to an article by Sweetlix nutritionist, Jackie Nix, "All adult goats contain coccidia in their gut, even healthy goats." Now that's just great! What am I supposed to do to prevent my goats from getting sick?
Here's the good news and the bad news. Most adult goats have built immunity to the parasites that cause coccidiosis; however, "Kids less than 5 months of age are particularly susceptible since their immune system is often still developing and they are prone to stress. Stresses that can induce a coccidiosis outbreak include: weaning, drastic weather changes, rapid feed changes, transport and rough handling." That can mean that those kids you've been waiting all year to sell just drop dead for no apparent reason! But fortunately there's a solution.
We talk all the time about how we don't provide our goats with much more than weeds, water, one or two yearly wormings, and minerals. Well here's where those minerals can really pay off. Every year, near the start kidding, we start putting out minerals that have one extra ingredient: Rumensin. Rumensin minerals, like the 16:8 Meat Maker with Rumensin, are "a medicated mineral supplement for goats designed to prevent coccidiosis." You can also use water supplements that are designed for cattle, but on our place, the goats usually prefer the creeks and ponds to the chlorinated tap water, so it doesn't do us any good. The babies don't eat many of the minerals, but their mother transfers the Rumensin to their systems through her milk.
While we don't buy into a lot of these types of treatments, this one really works. After having lost a good portion of our kid crop during a couple exceptionally worm-heavy kidding seasons, I can assure you that those couple extra dollars we spend on minerals are well worth it!
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