HOW TO DEAL WITH INTERNAL PARASITES

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MORE HOME VETERINARY CARE INFORMATION

Further information about how you can keep your farm animals and house pets healthy can be found in the following sources:

1. "Common Sense Control of Internal Parasites in Ruminants", MOTHER NO. 19, pages 38-41.

2. "Worm Your Livestock With Snuff", MOTHER NO. 44, page 95.

3. "How to Give That First Injection", MOTHER NO. 43, page 90a (poster).

4. "Restrain That Beast!", MOTHER NO. 52, pages 84-87.

5. "You Can Too Give That Animal an Injection", MOTHER NO. 53, pages
92-97.

6. "Be Your Own 'Animal Medicine Man' ", MOTHER NO. 54, pages 75-78.

7. "Restrain and Medicate Your Homestead Horse", MOTHER NO. 55, pages
74-77.

(These back issues of MOTHER are available—for $2.50 each plus $1.00 shipping and handling per order—from THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS ® , P.O. Box 70, Hendersonville, North Carolina 28739.)

Caution No. 1: Know what you're doing! Before using an anthelmintic (or any type of medication), read the directions on the label . . . and then reread them until you understand everything that they recommend!

Caution No. 2: Use the correct dosage . Anthelmintics are meant to eliminate parasites without harming the host animal. Overdoses of wormers can make an animal sick, or even kill the beast. Do not assume that a double dose of worm medicine will be twice as effective as the recommended quantity . . . overdosing is an often fatal mistake.

And, since many of these medicines are administered according to the "patient's" weight, be sure that you know how much your critter weighs or that you at least have a knowledgeable person do the estimating for you. (Sale barns or county fairs are good places to learn weight estimation . . . since the animals are all weighed before the sale or show.)

Caution No. 3: Be extremely careful when using anthelmintics on sick animals, young animals, pregnant animals, or lactating animals (critters giving milk) . It is always potentially dangerous to give any medicine to a sick animal, and anthelmintics are no exception to the rule. The same warning applies to young beasts, too, and some worm remedies should never be used until a critter reaches a prescribed age.

Pregnant animals should only be medicated under a vet's supervision. Some of the older wormers acted by increasing the muscle activity of the intestines . . . in order to shake the worms loose and flush them out. This kind of medication could also cause muscular activity in the uterus (or womb) . . . and result in an aborted offspring.

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