Goats, Cattle, and Worms

There is another article in the Stockman Grass Farmer this mouth touting the benefits of grazing goats and cattle in combination. The article by Dave Sparks (a DVM) is titled, "Goats and Cattle Together Complement Each Other and Reduce the Need for Worming". As usual in this publication the title really spells out the entire article, but the research from a field test in Oklahoma gives graziers one more reason to look at diversified grazing.

The field study in Oklahoma is using a 200 acre plot of land divided into three tracts that have similar forage quantity and quality. All three of these areas were stocked by live weight according to the estimated amount of forage in them. One plot was stocked with just goats, another with just cattle, and the final one with cattle and goats together. The article doesn't say how the livestock was managed, but I would assume a rotation with goats following might be the best management method.

Results from the study were very much in favor of combining the two animals. The goats alone group had several deaths because of parasite infection (goats have a problem with worms because most breeds come from desert areas much different from the Midwest). The cattle alone group were fine, but here pasture had a much taller growth of the browse type plants the goats ate in the other plots. In the combination group there was no death in the goat herd and they goats required 23% less individual worming.

Information like this does make goats look pretty appealing. I believe the biggest barrier to farmers getting into the growing goat market is the fact that as Americans we don't know much about goats. We don't know much about cooking them, eating them, or marketing them to the various ethnic groups. But, if the benefits for the cattle, the goats, and the pastures are this great it might be time ot figure this thing out.

Worms...

Okay, not just any worms but rather internal parasite worms. Pretty fun subject huh? Well, yesterday I received my December issue of "The Stockman Grassfarmer" in the mail and somehow after flipping through the pages the first article I read was about worms a.k.a. internal parasites. The article is by Allan Nation and talks about pasture-rotation system that was started on research farms in New Zealand back in the early 1940's. It is part informational article about the benefits of pasture rotation for controlling parasites in young calves and part, "this is how management intensive grazing really got started," article.

Research at the Ruarkura Animal Research Station in Hamilton, New Zealand led to a rotational leader/follower system in order to help control the parasites that were killing many of the countries dairy calves. Despite the use of wormers the calves were having problems both in the short term, and in the long term because they were not building resistance to the worms. One of the researchers, Dr. C.P. McMeekan, says that internal parasites are a normal part of a pastured animal's life and that they can develop resistance to them if they are constantly challenged by them. The problem was that either the calves were dying because of overload or the were having problems in the future as the parasites became resistant to the wormers and the cattle hadn't built up the strength to combat them.

Their dairy calves were allowed access to pasture early and could even be weaned on to grass as early as eight weeks according to Mr. Nation's article. Once on the grass the rotational system began. The researchers found that parasites live on the bottom two inches of the plants in the pasture so the obvious solution to them was to not let the calves graze at that level. In order to accomplish this they divided the pasture in to paddocks (here is the history part) so that the baby calves could graze ahead of the cows. Once they had that separation accomplished the next step was the rotation. To keep the calves from hitting that bottom two inches they would rotate them daily ... and daily or at most every other day ... is the key.

They found out that their research and system worked. The calves still had a parasite load, but they could deal with it partly because they system fought them and partly because they were eating such high quality forages. Thus, rotational grazing was born ... or something like that.

The pasture rotations will also combat parasites if you are running different types of livestock through the pastures because that helps break the cycle also. It is a pretty fascinating topic because really what it all goes back to is how the animals were created to function. Now we are just trying to capture what they did on their own and do it in a controlled environment.