I was interrupted about half a dozen times writing my post last night and by the time I hit publish it was far from being ready to publish. Basically the whole thing sucked, I didn't edit it for sh%t, left out a lot like I knew I would, etc. I thought about editing it today but ahh let it go. It was just not a good night so move on.
I do want to add a bit more about this Barber Pole Worm issue for anyone who maybe thinking about getting Sheep or Goats. Here is a simple Wikipedia article on them.
First important fact and probably the only reason everyone hasn't heard about this problem is that the worms usually only prove fatal to nursing ewes or young lambs which were recently weaned. Wethers, rams, non-bred ewes and older lambs seem to be mostly safe and able to survive a high invasion load of these worms. Some will show worm signs, like bottle jaw and other less pleasant to type signs but almost 100% of the time survive more than long enough to be treated. It's the poor nursing Moms that these evil parasites are hardest on.
You can see from the pic up top I have plenty of room to graze even 100 times the sheep I have now. So trying to run too many head and over loading my fields was not the issue. I even treated my fields and would think I had the worms beat only for it to suddenly kill a ewe with no warning before hand.
At the time I was dealing with this my mother was still alive. I have explained many times My Mother and I got along the best when we did not see each other, at all. All told I believe her and I agreed on maybe two topics, Politics and well Politics LOL. I do admit we aligned 100% on that topic. However my Mother was probably the best animal midwife that ever lived. The only reason I ever made it through lambing season before these evil worms was because of her. I would get the maternity ward set up, doc the tails, Tag em, give em their first shots, etc. but my mother was the one who watched the flock of pregnant ewes and put the girls up when they were ready or even picked up their lambs and put em up when one had a birth outside by mistake. We always left our ewes and their new lambs in a birthing stall for a few days to bond before letting them out with the whole flock. If they had trouble giving birth she took care of them like a regular pediatric nurse (which she was lol) , most of the time because I was at work when the girls decided it was time but mom would go out and sit with em in the barn at night during thunderstorms too. We get a lot of storms around Lambing time around here, believe me.
We did have a few ewes that proved resistant to the worms but we also had a few we thought were resistant only to find out that resistance went only as far as weather conditions.
Most articles will mention these worms thrive in warm, wet conditions. What they don't tell you is they really thrive in warm humid conditions with a high dew point, not just wet, and go into hyper thrive if you add a heavy dew into the mix. Dew seemed to explode the worm load much more than rain ever could. A Summer like we had this year would have probably been a year with no worm issues at all as I never saw a morning with heavy dew until August this year. I would have been convinced our rotation, medicating the fields etc. would have worked. Only to have a couple days of heavy dew and watch a ewe we thought had a resistance drop dead.
Honestly I think it just broke my mother's heart and added 10 years to her age. It was like deciding which ewe we were going to gamble with and both of us just decided it was not worth it. So we basically stopped breeding em.
I do know there have been strides made in combating this plague. They had just started testing the copper oxide treatments when I threw in the towel. So breeding small ruminants may be an option again even if you happen to have weather conditions such as we do.
One last observation and then I will leave this topic forever. When we first started seeing deaths due to these parasites they would happen usually in mid May. After I started combating it all our deaths started coming later and later in the year moving into late June to July but sometimes skipping July and hitting again to the last nursing ewes in September. Even one's who had weaned their lambs almost completely were still susceptible. My theory was that the dosing and field treatments were actually working but wore off much sooner than was thought they would. Just something you might want to keep in mind if you ever have this issue.
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!
I've only lost one goat (a really nice buck) to parasite overload, with a second one almost lost. It was really difficult, so I can't imagine what you went through. The chemical approaches only work until the nasty little worms become resistant. Then the next generation of chemicals are more expensive and more toxic. Yuck. I finally switched to Joel Salatin's method of control, and that seems to help. My FEMACHAs are all good and everybody looks healthy (knock on wood).
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