Did you ever Hear of Copper Sulfate for Goats?

Copper sulfate is an organic deworming solution for goats and . If you own goats you know how important it is to deworm your goats to keep them healthy. When we first got goats we had to learn all these different dewormers. What was safe for pregnant does and what was not. When we should deworm using the famacha scale. The difference between white dewormers and clear dewormers and which took care of what kind of worms. It was confusing and honestly expensive getting all the different dewormers because worms build up resistances to these chemical dewormers so you have to keep switching dewormers. It was basically a deworming nightmare. THEN we discovered copper sulfate for goats.

Copper sulfate is a dewormer that is not chemically formulated. It is an organic deworming solution for goats. We have been using it since beginning of 2023 in our goats and love it. There is not a withdraw time for meat or for milk. Therefore it is great for both meat and dairy goats and you do not have to worry about keeping track of withdraw times.

Another great thing about copper sulfate is that worms do not build up a resistance. So this is a consistent thing that you can use year after year.

Copper sulfate is a lot cheaper then regular chemical dewormers. We give it to our goats every few months. You can give it up to every 2 weeks but that is not normally necessary. We do it about every 2-3 months. It varies on if they are on rotational pasture or in the barn. If they are experiencing the stress of kidding or weaning we give it more often. And also just by knowing your goats and you should be able to tell if they are starting to have problems. We give 100ml per 100 pounds. This may seem like a lot. But it really needs to be the full amount to do it's job of flushing all the worms out.

WARNING: You cannot just up and decide to start your whole herd on copper sulfate tomorrow. There is prep work that needs to be done first to ensure you do not kill your goats. Copper sulfate is used to eliminate worms in your goats. If your goat has quite a few worms giving the copper sulfate could be dangerous. As it will quickly kill all the worms and the goat will go into worming shock and possibly die. Chemical dewormers are more gentle on the goat. Therefore we start out with giving the goat Dectomax injectable (clear dewormer) and a week later giving them valbazen (white dewormer) and then within two weeks start them on copper sulfate. We start with the chemical dewormers to eliminate most of the worms in a gentler way before we get rid of all the worms with the copper sulfate.

For kids, we start them on dectomax a day before weaning and then a week later give them valbazen. About a week or two after the valbazen we start the copper sulfate. We give kids under 50 pounds 50 ml.

ONLY start the copper sulfate if your goat is doing good after giving the dectomax and valbazen. Other wise start over with the chemical dewormers and wait for them to get back up to where they should be on the famacha scale.

We learned a lot about copper sulfate from Linessa Farms. They have a website and YouTube channel that you can learn more about copper sulfate and raising goats and sheep. The University of Kentucky has also done a study on it. Learn all you can from others that use it before you jump in and start. We have been using it for about a year now and plan to continue to use it in the years to come.

If you use copper sulfate in your goats or sheep let us know as we do not know of many people that use this organic deworming solution.