07/05/2026
We’ve been working through our kids the last few weeks and starting the selection process on them and that’s got me thinking about the part parasite resistance plays in the selection process. So I thought I’d talk about worms and what our selection process is for our goats.
It would be easy to assume our goats are not under much parasite pressure because of the arid environment we’re in. Most of our parasite pressure is related to our management. Even though we rotationally graze most of the year, we don’t during kidding season. Kids don’t travel well or we would.
We also don’t deworm anything, goats or cows, on any kind of regular basis. Our cow herd has never been dewormed. We don’t gather mature goats just to deworm them. They only get their eyes checked if we’re already handling them for something else. If they score a 1–3, we leave them alone. If they’re a 4 or 5, we look at the whole situation. Some get dewormed, but I make note of it. If it happens again or they have another issue, they don’t stay here. Like the old joke goes, that’s 1. Since the majority of our doe herd has never been dewormed, we know it’s possible and have adjusted our expectations accordingly. It should go without saying that if a buck needs deworming he best have a good excuse.
I believe our animals need to be able to function without crutches in the environment they live in so long as we keep grass or browse or feed in front of them and take care of the basics like minerals. I also feel like overuse of dewormers is detrimental to our goat herd in the long run and to the soil in a round about way. Drugs like ivermectin pass through cows and goats and wind up in the manure where they kill off beneficial insects like dung beetles. Soil health is important to me so avoiding deworming is also very important to me.
During kidding season this year we had over a 100 does on about five acres before moving them and their kids onto twenty acres. Then we got 15 inches of rain over two months. The kidding pasture turned into a dirt-and-manure stew until the grass finally started growing. Since we haven’t routinely run the does or bucks through the chute to check eyes or deworm in a couple of years, you can bet those does were shedding worm eggs, and that pasture was dirty. As soon as there was an inch of green, every goat on the place was eating it—right where the parasite larvae were waiting.
That’s where our selection process started. We don’t know which kids will make the cut to be replacements until the day we vaccinate and check eye scores. Is FAMACHA a foolproof way to identify parasite-resistant genetics? No. But it’s where we start.
I’d love to tell you every kid had a great FAMACHA and we got to select strictly on growth, muscle, and phenotype, (or blue eyes and spots) but that wouldn’t be true. And that leads to another thing. Just like everything else, those eye scores are influenced by the genetics on both sides of the pedigree. If a kid is scoring a 4 or 5, his mama should get a closer look too. So kid selection winds up being part of doe selection.
Balance is another important part of the selection process for us. The spotted buck in this photo is a good example. He isn’t a barn burner for growth—he was probably in the upper third of the contemporary group. He isn’t the first kid that catches your eye when you walk into the pen either. But he’s solid, functional, and he’s consistently carried a nice, red eye score.
Those are the kinds of kids we keep around a little longer. They’re also the kind I like to put into buck tests.
Here’s the bottom line. If we propped up the bottom end of our herd enough to make them perform like the top end, two things would happen:
First, we’d go broke feeding and worming and medicating.
Second, we’d make it nearly impossible to identify the genetics that actually deserve to be propagated. That’s the biggie.
