Quote: I keep Ivermectin on hand because i can treat all my animals if I want to.... But since my horse and goats arent exposed to others I dont worry about it.... When i boarded my mare I did a twice a year rotational worming but I felt she really didnt need it. It was required at the boarding facility.
I spoke to a friend in Michigan who has a grand champion Western Pleasure show horse.... and she has now gone the rout of doing a fecal before worming so she knows what to worm for. So far its been two years since she last wormed her horse.
I like Ivermectin for other reasons.... Its good for ticks and mites... When I moved my mare home she was about two hundred pounds underweight.... Same boarding facility that required twice yearly wormings. It was one of those things that snuck up on me till I realized she was a bit hollow in places she shouldnt be and it wasnt from lack of water. I packed her up and took her back home and started free feeding Bermuda..... But when she was thinner her immune system was down and she started showing something that looked like MANGE... on her face.... I double dosed her with Ivermectin then double dosed her ten days later.... By then she was picking weight back up and her face was beginning to look normal.
If you observe horses in the wild though they are browsers though they live off grasses they also eat various herbs. A study was done on Mustangs to determine their parasite load..... Surprisingly very low. They would come across one that had a hight load of womrs. Follow him and check him in a month and the worm count would be very low. HERBAGE...
I think that is true for Chickens and goats that are allowed to forage for part of their diet. YEp some of those bugs chickens eat might carry a parasite or two but those same chickens may be tasing some sort of herbage that kills off or stops the development.... This is my opinion I have no research for it.... Just a gut feel..... LOL No pun intended
Also Worms dont always infect the gut.... the go into the muscle tissues.... the eggs though are layed in the gut so they can be transferred to the next vector....
deb
My chickens won't eat pumpkin! Cooked or otherwise. I even baked one of the leftover halloween pumpkins, ground the seeds and added yogurt to the ground seeds, put it in the pumpkin as a dish and they wouldn't touch it. They love yogurt! If they had the right shaped tongues they would lick the bowl when it's just yogurt.
Could it be because I'm using a hybrid halloween pumpkin instead of "real" pumpkins? I bought a "real" cooking pumpkin at the Amish store - it smelled like heaven - if I didn't know how it would taste raw, I'd have eaten it right there. Smelled like the most ripe cantaloupe you've ever eaten. Back in the day when you could get ripe cantaloupe at the store.
Can you put beer in the feed? Does that qualify as a fermenter? Sometimes my husband makes beer and the process is similar to fermented feed.
Wondered if you could do a quick fix substitute. As I type this I realize "quick fix" doesn't fit with what I want the end result to be, but if it's already fermented??
Sorry I got behind on the post here, had some health issues. Thanks for the encouragement but oh Bee, you have opened a BIG can of worms now. I love my chickens and I love to take pictures so just remember you asked for this.
My baby Speckled Sussexs and Partridge Rocks came today. The colder weather wasn't so kind....one dead upon arrival.....one died a few hours later..... and two more iffy ones. I quickly took a group picture before leaving for work I'll post it. I am so anxious to start them out on FF and note the difference in their growth and compare it to the other chicks I have raise in the past.
These are two new breeds for me. I have Wyandottes and Mille Fleur Bantam Cochins, so this is a whole new adventure for me.
One more thought and then I will hush....... My husband and I had sat down to breakfast a couple mornings ago and he looked at his eggs and said "something is different about these eggs" the yolks were firmer and larger and he said they had a better taste. It has to be the FF because that is the only thing I'm doing different. So one more time, Thank you for sharing.....
Sorry I got behind on the post here, had some health issues. Thanks for the encouragement but oh Bee, you have opened a BIG can of worms now. I love my chickens and I love to take pictures so just remember you asked for this.
My baby Speckled Sussexs and Partridge Rocks came today. The colder weather wasn't so kind....one dead upon arrival.....one died a few hours later..... and two more iffy ones. I quickly took a group picture before leaving for work I'll post it. I am so anxious to start them out on FF and note the difference in their growth and compare it to the other chicks I have raise in the past.
These are two new breeds for me. I have Wyandottes and Mille Fleur Bantam Cochins, so this is a whole new adventure for me.
One more thought and then I will hush....... My husband and I had sat down to breakfast a couple mornings ago and he looked at his eggs and said "something is different about these eggs" the yolks were firmer and larger and he said they had a better taste. It has to be the FF because that is the only thing I'm doing different. So one more time, Thank you for sharing.....
