Deer Worm

Did you ever hear of deer worm or meningeal worm? We did not until we could not figure out what was wrong with one of our goats and we did a lot of research. I will say that I am not a vet. This is just what happened to our one goat and what we learned and did to help this goat without calling a vet and paying a huge vet bill. There may be times that you will have to call a vet for your farm animals but we try to do everything ourselves to cut down on costs. We all know that a vet visit is very expensive.

This type of worm is very different compared to normal worms that we deal with in goats. The big long technical name for this worm is parelaphostrongulus tenuis (can you pronounce it?) but it is normally called meningeal worm or deer worm. While the normal worms in goats affect the digestive tract of the goat, this deer worm affects the spinal cord and neurological system of the goat. Therefore, some dewormers do not help the goat get rid of this worm. It is called deer worm because white-tailed deer carry this worm from place to place. The deer are not affected by the worm. What is interesting is the fact the this worm needs the deer and a snail or slug to actually infect a goat or other livestock. If a deer is infected with this worm they will poop it out and then a snail or slug must get infect by traveling over the deer poop. You know how snails or slugs leave that slime trail behind them? If a goat eats that slime trail or the slug or snail itself they will become infected.

Signs and Symptoms

This type of worm is hard to diagnose. There are many different symptoms and your goat may not show all of them or even most of them. They will have a normal temperature and will continue to eat and drink like normal and be a typical happy goat. That is what is so confusing with this type of worm. Here is a list of the most common symptoms and then I will explain what our goat was doing.

• Weak back end

• Dragging hind leg or entire back end

• Itching so much they have bald patches and ever rip open skin

• Head tilt or wobbly head

• Unsteady on feet

• Cannot walk a straight line

Our goat, Alpha, was a Boar and Spanish cross breed. She was born on our farm and had a great loving personality. The first thing that we noticed with her was a limp on her one back leg. We did not think much of it at first because they were out on pasture where there are plenty of ways that she could have hurt her leg and we thought she would be fine. We obviously checked for a stone in her hoof and swelling or other deformities of her leg but there was nothing so we let it go. We have had other goats that got a limp for a few days (we would check them) but they would stop after a few days and be fine. It was like they were jumping around like goats do and accidently hurt their leg a little bit.

So after a week or two we realized that she was not getting better but not really getting worse either. She was overcompensating and not walking straight anymore. She was weak in her back legs but not dragging them. But she was happy and got around alright. We started to do research to find out if other people had similar problems or if it was a type of disease or something. Sometimes she would not be able to get up from laying down but if we helped her a little she would get it.

Oh, and she was about 4 months pregnant at the time so that was also concerning. We finally decided it probably was deer worm and researched more about how to treat it. We gave her a very high dosage of Safe-Guard once a day for 5 days. We did 10 times the recommended dose, the recommended dosage is 2.3ml per 100 lbs. We estimated her to be 100lbs so we gave her 23ml for 5 days. There are some other things that we could have given her but that would have made her go into labor or harm her baby. This treatment did help her but did not fix the damage done to her spinal cord. She was still weak on her back end but did not get stuck laying down as much.

Sadly, when she did go into labor she was not able to push her baby out on her own and we had to assist. It was a big baby and a hard pull and the baby was stillborn but somehow Alpha recovered from delivering the baby. We gave her some antibiotics, electrolytes and something to help with the pain and within a few days she was able to get up and move about. She still walked crooked and was weak in her back end but we find it amazing that we kept her alive. We knew we would never breed her again and the rule is on a working farm if the animal is not making money you cannot keep it. We sold her at an auction a few months later. And honestly she was looking pretty good. Her weigh had come up from giving birth and she got around good.

Preventive tips

There are really no dewormers that you can give as a preventive. Some people use Ivomec but in order to really prevent the deer worm you would have to give Ivomec quite often and that leads to the other worms building up a resistance to this dewormer and you do not want that so I would advise against this unless this is your only option and you know you have lots of deer in your pasture and in the wet lands.

• Keep white-tailed deer out of your pasture.

• Get Guinea hens (they will eat the snails and slugs).

• Keep your goats on dry pasture. Especially in the late summer through early winter. Snails and slugs thrive in wetlands.

Deer worm is not able to be transmitted from goat to goat. It has to go through deer then snail or slug then your goat. So, at least that is good new if one of your goats have it it does not mean that the others will get it. But if they are in the same wet pasture you might want to consider moving them to dryer land.

Have you ever experienced deer worm in your goat herd? Let us know in the comments and what you did and if your goat recovered.