Deworming Livestock in Ghana: A Practical Guide

Why worms hit goats harder than most farmers expect

Ask a goat keeper what went wrong in a bad year and the answer is often the same. The animals looked fine in March. By July one doe was standing apart from the group, her coat had lost its shine and her eyes had gone pale. Nothing about her looked like a fever or an injury. She was simply thinner than the rest, and by the time anyone noticed, the worms had been feeding on her for weeks.

Most of the time the cause is a burden that built up on the grass during the wet months. Goats browse low, they nibble fresh regrowth down to the root, and they tend to return to the same patches of ground. Every time they graze close to a dung pile, they pick up a few more larvae. Sheep do the same thing with a little less enthusiasm, but in a mixed flock the goats usually show the damage first.

This guide is mainly about goats and sheep, with a short note on cattle. It is written by a poultry hatchery that knows farming, not by a vet, and nothing here replaces the advice of a qualified vet or your district veterinary officer. Plenty of farmers keep chickens and a few goats on the same plot, so the question of worms in small ruminants lands on the same desk as the poultry questions.

The worms that matter in Ghana's goats and sheep

Not every worm needs the same response. The ones that do the most damage in our climate are the stomach and intestinal roundworms, and the barber's pole worm in particular. The table below sets out the main groups in plain terms so you know what you are looking for when you handle an animal or read a vet's report.

The barber's pole worm deserves the most attention because it works fastest. It is a blood feeder, so a heavy burden can take a healthy-looking animal to anaemia in a short time. Tapeworms are often less dramatic, and many flocks carry a few without visible harm. Liver fluke needs a snail host and so is tied to wet ground, which is why it shows up after a run of heavy rain in low fields.

Reading the animal before you reach for the calendar

The quickest test on the farm is the eye. Pull down the lower eyelid gently and look at the colour of the inside. A pink or red lining suggests the animal is holding its blood count well. Pale pink, white or almost colourless points to anaemia, and in a worm-infested goat the barber's pole worm is a common cause. The FAMACHA chart, which was developed in South Africa and is used across much of Africa, turns this into a five-point scale. Ask your vet or extension officer to show you how to score it against the chart, and then score the whole flock the same way every time.

Second, look at body condition. Run your hand along the spine and over the ribs. A well-covered animal has a little padding over the bones. A thin one has a sharp backbone and ribs you can count without pressing. Third, look for a bottle jaw, the soft swelling under the lower jaw that appears when the blood protein falls. It is a late sign, so if you see it, the animal needs attention that day.

Put the three checks together and write them down. An animal with a pale eye, a poor body score and a soft jaw is a clear case for treatment after a vet's advice. An animal with a pink eye and a good body score usually does not need treatment that week, even if its pen-mate looks worse.

Faecal egg counts decide who actually needs treatment

A faecal egg count, usually shortened to FEC, is a laboratory test that counts worm eggs in a measured sample of dung. It is the best single tool for deciding which animals carry a worm load worth treating. The sample goes to a vet clinic or a lab that can run the McMaster technique, and the result comes back as eggs per gram. You do not need the number to be perfect. You need it to tell you the difference between an animal that is carrying a little and one that is shedding eggs onto the grass for the rest of the flock.

In practice, sample a handful of animals from different parts of the flock rather than one or two. Choose animals that look different from each other, such as a thin doe, a fat wether and a young kid. Keep the sample cool and get it to the lab promptly, because eggs can hatch in a warm sample left overnight. Ask the lab to tell you what each result means for your flock, not only the number.

A count taken before treatment and again a couple of weeks after it tells you whether the product worked on your farm. If the count barely moved, that is the signal to speak to your vet about resistance, which is the next section's subject.

Why resistance is the real risk on a small holding

Worms that survive a dose pass on their genes. Over several seasons, a flock that is treated the same way with the same class of product every time can end up with worms that the product no longer kills. This is called anthelmintic resistance, and it is one of the most common reasons a keeper says a dewormer has stopped working. The fix is rarely a stronger product. It is usually a smaller number of treatments, better targeting and a change of class when the test shows the old one has failed.

Your vet will talk about classes of dewormer, such as benzimidazoles, levamisole and the macrocyclic lactones. Each class works on a different part of the worm, and the choice depends on what is still effective on your farm. Ask which classes have been tested locally, and whether a count after treatment is worth paying for in your area. Do not swap products between classes on your own, and do not buy from a shelf without knowing the class printed on the label.

One practical habit helps a lot. Leave a share of the worm population untreated. Worms that have never been exposed to a product carry genes that still respond to it, and they dilute the resistant ones in the next generation. In a flock, that is usually the healthy animals that were not treated because their counts were low.

Pasture is where the larvae wait for the next goat

Worm eggs leave the animal in dung. In warm, damp conditions they hatch into larvae within days, and those larvae crawl up onto blades of grass. Goats and sheep pick them up while they graze. The cycle repeats every few weeks, so the grass itself is part of the problem. The main lesson is that a clean animal grazing a dirty paddock will catch worms again within a short time.

Rain drives the cycle. The major rains in the south, roughly April to July, and the minor rains, roughly September to November, give the larvae the warm moisture they need to thrive. The dry season is less friendly to them. Direct sun and dry air kill many larvae, and the harmattan months from December to February slow the cycle down in most of the country. That is why a flock often looks worst at the end of the wet season and begins to recover once the ground dries out.

Rotation helps. Move the flock off a paddock before the grass is grazed to the root, and give the paddock a rest of several weeks where you can. Young stock are best kept on the cleanest, driest ground you have, not sent to the old grazing where last season's adults left their eggs. Cutting and carrying fresh fodder to the pen, rather than letting the animals roam, is another way to keep them away from the dung.

The grass you leave standing matters too. Grazing a paddock down to bare soil in the rains leaves the dung piles right beside the regrowth, and the flock then eats the regrowth first. Leave some cover standing and move the animals before they strip the new shoots, and the next round of grazing will be cleaner.

Flukes and tapeworms on wet ground and low fields

Liver fluke is the worm that people most often miss, because its signs look like general poor health. Its lifecycle needs a snail that lives in slow water and wet mud. If your goats or sheep graze low fields that flood, or drink from a dam with snails along the edge, fluke is a real possibility. Weight loss, a dull coat and anaemia are common, and the vet may take a fluke test from the dung or look at the liver at slaughter. The control is about the ground as much as the animal. Keep stock off the wettest parts of the land in the rains, and fence off the worst of the marsh if you can.

Tapeworm segments often show up as small pale pieces in the dung, or stuck to the hair around the tail. Young animals are the ones most affected, and the parasite needs a grazing mite as an intermediate host. Many flocks carry a light tapeworm load without obvious harm, so do not treat every animal for tapeworm simply because you saw a segment. Ask your vet whether the segments are worth treating in your flock, and whether the pasture is the main source.

Neither of these worms is solved by a single product. Both need the grazing managed alongside the animal's treatment, and both reward a farmer who keeps a note of where the animals were when they went downhill.

Kids, lambs and does that are kidding or lambing

The young animals and the mothers are the most vulnerable in any flock. Kids and lambs have not built up immunity to the local worms yet, so they pick up large numbers of larvae quickly. Does and ewes that have just kidded or lambed go through a period of lower resistance, and at that time they tend to shed far more eggs onto the pasture. Vets call this the peri-parturient rise, and it is the reason a mother's worm count can jump in the weeks around birth.

Plan around it. Move pregnant animals onto cleaner ground a few weeks before kidding or lambing if you can, and keep kids and lambs off the paddock where the older animals grazed the season before. Weigh the young stock every few weeks and track their growth on a card in the pen. A kid that is not gaining has a problem to solve before it becomes a dead animal.

Mother and young should be checked together. A doe that looks rough after birth may be carrying a heavy worm load, and the kid is then exposed to the same pen, bedding and grass. Ask your vet to advise on a treatment plan for the period around birth, because the best timing depends on the product and the local worm picture.

Weigh before you treat, and respect the withdrawal period

The most common error with a dewormer is guessing the animal's weight. A goat that is twenty kilos and a goat that is thirty kilos do not get the same amount of product, and a guess that is too low leaves the worms alive and helps them build resistance. Use a proper scale, or a weigh tape your vet recommends, and weigh the animal on the day you treat. Write the weight down next to the animal's number.

Read the label and the vet's instructions for the withdrawal period. This is the time after treatment during which the animal's milk or meat must not be sold or eaten. It differs between products, and in some cases it is long enough to matter for a market day or a festive sale. Mark the date on the pen and tell whoever sells the animals. Selling a goat for Eid or Christmas while it is still inside a withdrawal period is a problem you do not want to discover at the market.

Keep the treatment itself in its original packing, store it out of the sun and away from children, and keep the used syringes and empty containers out of the pen. These are small habits, but a flock that is well handled tends to be better in every other way too.

A season-by-season plan for a small flock

A year on a small holding has four rough phases, and each one carries a different worm risk. The timings below are typical for the middle of the country and shift a little in the north and the coastal belt. Use them as a starting point, then adjust with your vet and the results from your own counts.

Use this checklist once a month, and again before any festive sale:

• Score the eyes of every animal, and write the score next to its number.
• Check body condition with your hand on the spine and ribs.
• Weigh the young stock and any animal that scored poorly.
• Look for a soft bottle jaw and note any animal that shows one.
• Move the flock off the wettest and most grazed ground when the rains are heavy, as set out in our pasture and grazing guide.
• Send faecal samples when your vet or extension office can take them.
• Record every treatment, the product class, the weight and the withdrawal date.

Keep a worm log you can read a year later

A worm log is a school exercise book with a few columns. Date, animal number, eye score, body score, weight, faecal egg count if you have one, treatment product class, and the withdrawal date. That is the whole thing. It takes two minutes a month and it answers the questions that matter most: which animals go down first, which paddock was the problem, and whether the product still works.

After one year the log becomes a farm record worth more than any single treatment. You will see whether a particular doe always scores badly after kidding, or whether the lower field is always the worst after heavy rain. You can show the record to your vet, who can then advise with much more confidence than if you only describe the flock from memory. A log also protects you if a buyer asks how the animals were managed, and it is the evidence an insurer will want if you carry livestock cover. The same habit of dated notes runs through our poultry record-keeping guide, and a single notebook can hold both sets of entries if you keep the pages separate.

Keep it somewhere dry and in one place. A tin box in the store is better than a phone that gets wet in the pen.

Where the poultry side of the farm fits in

Halaal Farms does not sell goats, sheep or deworming products. We are a day-old chicks hatchery, and our job is to supply healthy chicks to farmers who want to raise poultry. We mention worms in goats here because plenty of farmers who keep chickens also keep a few goats, and the decisions on the goat side can change how the pen and the grazing are used for the birds. Keeping small ruminants and poultry on the same plot is common, and it works well when each species has its own shelter and feed.

Do not let the goats and the chickens share feed or water troughs. Chickens pick at anything, and a goat's dung can carry worm eggs that end up in a chicken's feed. Keep the chicken house on separate ground if you can, and keep the goats off the litter area. The hygiene steps in our biosecurity guide for poultry farms apply to any shared yard, and the notes on keeping chickens and goats together cover the housing side. For chicken worms, which have their own signs and their own treatments, read our guide to worms in chickens and deworming, and keep the two sets of records apart.

If you are planning a mixed farm, start with the chicks. Our day-old chicks in Ghana page sets out what we supply and how it is delivered. You can order through the order section, or call or WhatsApp us on +233 24 915 1503 with the number of birds you want and your region. Our day-old chick prices page lists the current starting rates for the breeds we hatch, and our breed guide helps you pick a bird for your climate. If you are thinking about a larger poultry project, you can also look at how we work with partners. For the goats, talk to your vet and your district veterinary officer, who will know the local worm picture far better than we do.

Questions farmers ask