2009 Update

In 2007, we started a new focus program (High Maintenance?) with our animals to reduce the high maintenance of raising boer goats and reduce the number of deaths of animals each year. Now we are in the first month of 2010 nearly three years later and we can clearly state that we have been more successful in moving our herd to a more worm resistant state than we ever imagined. The number of animals requiring little or no worming during the year has increased dramatically. Their natural overall health has improved even though we have just gone through one of the wetter fall/winter seasons in a long time. That is normally the criteria for having tons of worm problems and yet we have wormed less this last 12 months than any other time. We have also learned some new things and adjusted our maintenance program related to management for worms.

Initially we were focusing on minimizing all worming of our animals unless absolutely necessary. However, after reviewing some of the research on Refugia, we learned that it was not necessary to minimize worming all the animals in order to get the benefits of Refugia. Basically the meaning of "refugia" is the more worms you have in a pasture or other animals that have not been associated with the worming medications, the weaker they are. As animals that have been treated with the strong worming medications produce eggs in the pastures, those larvae resistant to the wormers will be mixed with larvae that have never seen the wormers and the result will potentially produce worms that don't have as much of a resistance to the current wormer medication.

Thus we have slightly adjusted our criteria of when we will worm an animal. Our rating scale for stating the anemic status of an animal includes the following numbers (1, 2+, 2, 2-, 3). A "1" rating states the eye membrane is strong pink showing there are strong signs the animal has little to no worms. A "3" rating states the eye membrane is white and the animal is in or near an anemic state and needs immediate treatment. When we see a "2-", we look to see how the coat and body are looking. If they are in decent shape, we did not worm but if the coat was very rough and the body looked like it was losing weight, we started treating for worms. Now, if we see a doe with a"2-" but will be kidding in the next 30 days, we worm no matter how good the coat and body look. That is to give the doe a better chance of being healthier at the time of kidding when her immunity against worms will be at its lowest. Other than that, no other pregnant does are wormed prior to kidding. If they are a "2-" during the first few months after kidding, they will also be treated. Even with this change, we have had to worm very few animals in 2009.

It is becoming clear which animals have more resistance against worms and which ones are also passing that quality along to their kids. We have continued to cull our animals according to how well they resist worm problems. There are a few exceptions to that. We have a few older does that have been with us for a long time and consistently have worm problems. There are also some does that have worm problems but have produced worm resistant kids. With the strong refugia we have on our farm now, we believe that can minimize the worms coming from those animals with little to no worm resistance.

Here are some highlights of the animals we have identified with strong worm resistance and our thoughts about them.

Animal	Sire	Dam	Comments
Royal Beauty	DER War Cloud	ABR Beauty	We have three years of stats collected on our breeding herd and this she has never been wormed in those three years. We only show her feet needing trimmed one time during the three years. ABR Beauty consistently has worm problems and Red Beauty, a half sister to Royal Beauty, constantly has worm problems. So the worm resistance may be coming from the sire side. Royal's first kidding resulted in the offspring dying shortly after being weaned. The last year, Royal had a disease that resulted in her aborting. So we have yet to get any kids from her to see if she will pass the worm resistance along to them. She is pregnant now and we are hoping to get some kids this year.
Ramblin Rose	DER Big Boy	Loxie	Ramblin Rose has only been wormed twice in three years. She has only required hoof trimming once. All of Ramblin Rose's kids have been sold at a young age so we don't have any record of their worm status.
Mascot & Susie Q (sisters)	DER Big Boy	Sue Lea	Mascot has been wormed one time in three years and Susie Q been wormed one time in each of the last three years. Choctaw Chick is a daughter of Susie Q and she has only been wormed once in two years. Scarlett Lady is a daughter of Mascot born in the spring of 2009 and never needed worming. We have no records from Sue Lea but you can see that DER Big Boy was the sire of these sisters and Ramblin Rose shown above.
Miss Mandy	DER Big Boy	Munchkin	We have no record of Miss Mandy ever requiring to be wormed. On her first kidding, she lost her kids to coccidiosis. You can see that DER Big Boy has been the sire of several over animals above. Also Munchkin has a record of high worm resistance requiring worming only once in the last 12 months.
Painted Diva	Painted Warrior	Trueheart	Painted Diva has not been wormed in the last 3 years. All of her kids have sold at an early age so we have no records of their resistance. No reference to worm resistance can be tracked back to Painted Warrior. Trueheart has required around three wormings a year recently.
White Socks	Painted Warrior	ABR Beauty	White Socks has not been wormed in the last 3 years. All of her kids have sold early and no stats are available of their resistance. You can see the sire and dam have not had any clear signs of their being worm resistant sources.
Little Red & Side kick (sisters)	MAUL Red Barron	Heartbreaker	Both sisters have required worming only once in three years. We have another Heartbreaker daughter, Sweetheart, born Feb, 2009 and has required no worming and has constantly shown very strong ratings on her eye membrane checks. Both sisters have offspring that have shown strong worm resistance.
DCW She Devil	DCW Bo Jangle	RRD T573	This is a doe we purchased at the 2008 Elite Coalition sale and she has never required worming and very strong ratings regularly. One kid has been sold and we are keeping the other doe and will determine if She Devil is passing the worm resistance to her kids. This is a pure accident to purchase an animal and get one that shows strong worm resistance
2DOX Barracuda	SWE Main Event	2DOX Perfect Design	Barracuda came from a recip we purchased at the 2008 Elite Coalition Sale. She has not required worming since she was born on Aug, 2008. She has strong eye membrane ratings every month. This is a pure accident to purchase an animal and get one that shows strong worm resistance
War Dancer	Painted Warrior	Shady Lady	War Dancer is now two years old and we don't have any record of him requiring to be wormed. We can't relate his worm resistance to his Painted Warrior and Shady Lady does not have a strong worm resistance. However, we have two Shady Lady does born Dec. 2008 and neither of them have required worming in 2009. So this is three kids from Shady lady that have shown strong worm resistance and we have two buck kids from her that are now 3 months old that we will be watching. We also had several War Dancer young kids sold in 2009 that were showing good signs. However, they were also out of some of these strong worm resistant does we have.
Looking Good	Sukie Man	Lucita	Looking Good is a doe that does not have show quality teats but her eye ratings were so strong indicating worm resistance that we decided to keep her for our breeding program. We have done that with a few other does and their kids had show quality teats plus worm resistant genetics. Looking Good will be kidding the end of February and we will see if her kids have clean teats. We are strong believers that the buck has a big impact on the teat structure so we always have breeding bucks with clean teats and we continue to see improvement in our animals teat structure.
The above animals are just some of the examples of the genetics we are collecting in our breeding herd that are giving us outstanding results in minimizing the impact that blood sucking worms are having on the herd. We are very excited about the results we have had but we have no idea if these genetics would have the same results on another farm with different maintenance programs.