Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Giving the Goats Copper

Yesterday evening it was cold and raining.  We just finished eating a big slice of quiche with fresh broccoli and pecans in it with sweet potatoes on the side.  Delicious!  I was ready to relax, but we had some work to do first.  It was time to administer copper boluses to our goats.  Not a fun job for us and probably not the goats, but it had to be done.

Copper boluses are capsules filled with tiny copper rods.  

They swallow the copper boluses and it sinks to the bottom of their rumen and will slow-release for 6-8 months.  This trace mineral helps eliminate parasites and gives them healthier hair and growth.  The instructions on the side of the cannister gives proper dosing per weight of the animal.

So, one by one, we got the goats up into the milking stanchion and closed the head gate.

I used a worming medication "pusher" tool for the task.  I pulled the plunger back and then filled the bottom with peanut butter and then stuck the copper bolus in the tool.  The peanut butter held it in place.  I put more peanut butter on top.

We lifted the goat's heads and I stuck the plunger deep down their throats and pushed.  The copper bolus went down the esophagus.  Tricia did try to hold their heads up so that they wouldn't spit up the copper pill.  Two of them did, but we promptly got it back in.  Look at Elsie being all nosy!  She wanted to know what all the commotion was in the barn on this Tuesday night!

At last we were done.  The last time that we administered the copper boluses, we saw very good results.  We hope to see the same this time.

No comments:

Post a Comment