Episode 181
For the Love of Goats
If you’ve ever been told that a high fecal egg count means you should automatically deworm a goat, this episode is for you.
A fecal egg count is one of the most valuable tools we have for monitoring internal parasites—but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. It tells you how many parasite eggs a goat is shedding, not whether that goat is actually sick or needs treatment.
In this Goat Note, Deborah explains why two goats with the same fecal egg count can have very different parasite burdens and very different treatment needs. You’ll also learn why a goat with a relatively low egg count may still require immediate attention.
This episode builds on the previous Goat Note about the difference between parasite resistance, parasite resilience, and dewormer resistance. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, it’s a great place to start because it lays the foundation for understanding why fecal egg counts don’t tell the whole story.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- What a fecal egg count actually measures—and what it doesn’t
- Why parasite egg counts don’t always reflect how sick a goat is
- How parasite resilience affects treatment decisions
- Why a low fecal egg count doesn’t always mean a goat is healthy
- What other factors should be considered before deciding to deworm a goat
- Why “It depends” is often the most accurate answer when someone asks whether a goat needs treatment
Goat Note Takeaway
Treat the goat—not the fecal egg count.
A fecal egg count is an important management tool, but it should never be used by itself to decide whether a goat needs to be dewormed. Always consider the whole animal, including FAMACHA score, body condition, age, production stage, appetite, and other clinical signs before making treatment decisions.
Mentioned in this episode
Learn More
If you’d like to dive deeper into evidence-based parasite management, check out these additional resources:
- The Parasites in Goats course at Goats365.com
- Pasture Management for Parasite Control
- 5-Point Check for Parasites
- Internal Parasites in Goats: Preventing Infection
- Deworming Goats
- Dewormer Failure: Why did the goat NOT improve after deworming?
- Goat Worms: A Complete Guide to Winning the War in Your Pasture
- Goat Worms: Myths and Misunderstandings
- Using Dewormers Correctly
- Goat Dewormer Guidelines
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Transcript
Deborah Niemann 00:01
Welcome to another Goat Note from For the Love of Goats. These are short episodes where it’s just you and me exploring one goat question, one important idea, or one common misconception in about 10 to 15 minutes. Around here, we don’t just ask what worked; we ask why it worked.
00:17
Last time, we talked about the difference between parasite resistance, parasite resilience, and dewormer resistance. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, I’d encourage you to start there because today’s topic builds directly on it.
00:30
Today’s question is: Can you tell whether a goat needs to be dewormed just by looking at a fecal egg count? The short answer is no. Let’s talk about why. People misunderstand fecal egg counts. There is a common assumption that a high egg count means you deworm immediately, and that a low egg count means a goat is fine.
00:51
However, some people think that goats should have zero eggs, which is completely impossible. Usually, those are vets who are used to working with dogs and cats, and since dogs and cats live in our house, we really would like them to have a zero egg count because that’s just gross. So it’s just not that simple with goats.
01:10
As a vet professor said to me 20 years ago, you will never get to zero eggs in an animal that eats off the ground. So it’s very important that you’re not forcing your goats to eat from their toilet. That means you need to be practicing rotational grazing or have your goats on a dry lot. But those are topics for another day.
01:27
So today we’re talking about fecal egg counts, and all that tells us is how many parasite eggs are being shed. That does not tell us if we have a sick goat. The fecal egg count counts eggs, not worms. You’re not measuring blood loss. You’re not measuring damage to the goat. You’re not measuring body condition or immune function. You’re not counting larvae. It just answers one question: How many parasite eggs is the goat shedding today? That’s it. It’s useful, but it’s very incomplete information.
01:59
Two goats can have the same fecal egg count and be very different. Let’s think back to Goat Note #1 when I talked about, you know, imagine two different goats. You could have two goats that have a fecal egg count of 2000 eggs per gram. One goat is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, running all around the place, eating, has got great body condition, pink or red eyelids. It’s milking great. The other one has exactly the same number of worms and has pale eyelids. It’s very weak. It’s losing weight. It may not even be eating well, it has bottle jaw. It’s got the same egg count, but it is a very sick goat.
02:41
So this is why it’s important to understand what parasite resilience is, which is what we talked about last time. That resilient goat doesn’t need to be treated. It’s not sick. The sick goat, however, does need to be treated. In fact, you could have a sick goat that only has a fecal egg count of 300 or 400.
03:00
So another opposite example: a goat can have a low egg count but very severe anemia and be very sick. Why? Because immature worms are not laying eggs yet. Larvae don’t lay eggs, but they are sucking blood. You could have recent changes in the parasite population. Some worms don’t actually produce a lot of eggs. The barber pole is really the only worm that’s going to give you fecal egg counts of like 2000, 3000, and more.
03:28
A lot of the other worms only have fecal egg counts of a few hundred. The barber pole worm is the absolute queen of egg laying. I heard several times that a barber pole female can lay 10,000 eggs a day, and I didn’t really believe it until I saw it in that goat textbook behind my desk here — Goat Medicine, which is basically the Bible of goat veterinary medicine. And yeah, 10,000 eggs a day, isn’t that crazy? Whereas the other worms that can cause problems only lay a few hundred eggs a day, so those worms could make your goat sick too, even though they’re not sucking blood like the barber pole is.
04:02
So basically, a low egg count doesn’t automatically mean that a goat is not sick or that a goat doesn’t have a worm problem. So what should you be evaluating instead? A fecal egg count is just one tiny piece of the puzzle. You really need to look at the FAMACHA score. And unlike a fecal egg count, a fecal egg count cannot be done very often. Even if you’re doing them yourselves, you’re going to get sick of doing them after a while.
04:31
So the things that you can be checking regularly is your goat’s FAMACHA score, your goat’s body condition score. Is your goat losing weight? Does your goat still have a good appetite? What’s milk production like? How old is the goat? If a goat is older or younger, like a kid, it may not have as great of an immune system as a goat in its prime, so it’s going to have a problem with a smaller number of worms than a goat that is in the healthy prime of its life. So there’s a lot of different things to look at.
05:03
So that’s why when somebody asks me, you know, should I deworm my goat that has a fecal egg count of 800 or 1000 or 2500? My answer is going to be, “It depends.” I want to know the answers to all of those other questions that I just asked. Because dewormers are for sick animals, and we need to know, is your animal sick before we actually decide to give it a dewormer.
05:25
So a fecal egg count just answers one question: How many eggs is this goat shedding? It doesn’t tell us if the goat needs to be dewormed. Now some of you may be thinking, “Yeah, but if my goat is shedding 2,000 eggs every time it poops, then it’s seriously contaminating the pasture and making it unsafe for my other goats. So shouldn’t I deworm it just to reduce the number of eggs that it is leaving on the pasture?” And the answer is,”It depends.” I really don’t worry about that. That’s why I don’t do regular fecals on my goats because I am rotationally grazing my goats.
06:01
So if your goats are not eating from their toilet, it really doesn’t matter how many eggs a goat is leaving behind. And the sad reality is, the more often you use a dewormer, the closer you’re getting to dewormer resistance. And take it from me, somebody who has lived through dewormer resistance, it’s not fun. Like you sit there and you literally watch your goats die because dewormer resistance, as I said last time, that is not in an individual goat.
06:29
Dewormer resistance is in the worms on your farm. That means that the worms that are being pooped out are resistant to the dewormer. So it doesn’t matter whether a goat has never been treated with a dewormer in its life. If it’s been out there consuming larvae of worms that are dewormer resistant, then the dewormer is not going to kill them.
06:51
That’s why it’s really important to understand that dewormer resistance happens in the worms on your farm, not in individual goats, and why you want to avoid using dewormers on any of your goats unless they’re sick and they really need it.
07:06
So remember, treat the goat, not the fecal egg count. A fecal egg count is just one tool in your parasite management toolbox, but it should never be the only factor you use when deciding whether to deworm your goats.
07:19
And that’s it for today’s show. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to hit the subscribe button so that you don’t miss any episodes. To see show notes, you can always visit fortheloveofgoats.com, and you can follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/LoveGoatsPodcast. See you again next time. Bye for now.
