The most common question I get here is:
“What dosage of garlic or pepper to use?”
I don’t have an exact dosage. Start small with a sprinkling on their food to get them used to the smell and taste. Increase the amount. I think what we use comes out to be about 1 oz of powder per 500 lbs of animal per day for about a week. That is very much a guess. In the pigs I’m doing a herd on pasture, many animals, many sizes, and then averaging it out. Realize of course that we’re dealing with consumer grade garlic and cyanne pepper which may have varying potency as opposed to medical grade chemicals where this sort of thing is easier to nail down.
This is a close up of a white pine growth tip I took this fall in the north field. We have a smattering of evergreens scattered through the brush in the fields we’re recovering as well as along the edges. The sheep in particular but also the pigs enjoy munching these down. They eat the needles, the growth tips and strip the softer bark. Interestingly they are not as fond of the blue spruce although they will eat them if hungry enough.
Apparently the conifers have deworming properties. This is a topic I have been researching for several years now. I read about this in several articles and noted that our animals do find the boughs palatable. Our first test was to give them pine in their winter corrals. Observing their poops suggested that yes indeed it did appear to work.
One of the important things in deworming is to vary the chemical so as to not evolve your population of worms to be able to tolerate it. With further reading I was able to compile a long list of common natural substances that may have deworming properties. We have been working our way through the list of readily available ones, trying each in turn. I skipped the turpentine but we have tried wood ash (sugar maple), garlic and cayenne pepper.
Our subject animals have included pigs, sheep, dogs, ducks, chickens, guineas and cats. Some had obvious signs of worms in their stools prior to the start of each trial. Others didn’t. In no cases were the sample sizes large enough to be considered significant – even our chicken flock is only around a hundred.
In the fall we feed a lot of pumpkins to the pigs and sheep – the seeds are supposed to be a dewormer. I did not notice much effect but it may be they are not getting a high enough dose of the seeds.
The animals love to eat the charcoal from our bonfires in the field so that gave a ready testing ground. Again the results were pro but not strong enough that I would pick the wood ash. However I think they might be getting minerals from it.
Diatomaceous Earth (DE) certainly works for keeping down the fly population, although chickens work better. For internal application I am not as convinced. More study is needed on it.
The garlic tests were astounding. First it is completely palatable to the animals – an important consideration. They just eat it right up with their feed (cottage cheese, milk or bread). We have not done enough tests to find what the dosage should be but a pound of dry garlic powder is enough for a month to keep a heard of pigs (52 at the time), pack of large guardian dogs, cats and sheep (6) all worm free after killing all the obvious worms that were present before the tests.
Cayenne pepper powder is almost as good as garlic but the animals do not like it nearly as much. Again we mixed it with cottage cheese, milk and bread. The younger piglets rejected it. The chickens accepted it. The larger animals including the adult pigs, sheep and dogs will eat it more readily but don’t care for it. Its effectiveness appears to be close to that of garlic but I’ll be doing more tests. It makes a good alternative.
The results have been excellent. Animals that clearly had worms in their stool samples prior to the trials were clear of worms after the trials with the garlic or cayenne pepper – less so with some of the other things. Furthermore the natural dewormers, especially the garlic, seem to act very quickly. One of the big pluses of the natural wormers is they seem benign to the soil life – the commercial dewormers tend to kill off microbial soil fauna, earth worms and even dung beetles.
Good grazing management also goes a long ways towards keeping the parasite population down but that is another topic. Our winters also are harsh on worms and other parasites because they break up the life cycle.
This has been a great homeschooling experiment and the subject of many discussions. I think it may contribute to the fact that our kids are quite willing to wash their hands. This may be a somewhat disgusting topic that you wish you had not read over breakfast but it is fascinating and good to know that there may be alternatives to the highly toxic and dangerous commercial dewormers. Of course, natural substances also have toxic levels too so do your research.
Also see: Valentine Vampire Drink
Night: 48°F, Day: 54°F, Overcast, light rain in afternoon.
“Observing their poops . . .”
Where else but in the blogosphere could one come upon such a phrase and be interested in where it lead? Nice post. Informed. Detailed. Involved. Educational. A universe far removed from my own, which is why I love visiting here so much.
Great work. Thank you for letting me enjoy a bit of your knowledge. I wish I could do as well.
Great information Walter. Love the new blog!
-Jeremy Merritt
http://www.wovencode.com
Software Development | Consulting | Systems Thinking
I wish I had deworming properties. I’d make a strange superhero.
Hi Jeremy! How are you all doing? How are the pigs? We are getting more rain today, as likely you are too. I think mother nature is trying to make up for the dry summer. I won’t complain. :) Cheers, -Walter
Jay, you are a strange and delightful super hero. :)
Interesting information there, and timely for me as I’m looking into ways to deworm my “herd” of outdoor cats. They’ll eat just about anything; perhaps a pinch of garlic powder with their cat food is in order.
Deb, when I experimented on the cats I fed the garlic powder to them mixed in with non-fat cottage cheese. Non-fat just because that happend to be what I had 14 pallet loads of. :) They gobbled it right up and were quickly worm free. Not only that but we saw no reoccurance of the worms after that. I still gave them more three weeks later. Note that there is garlic powder, garlic granuals and garlic salt. You don’t want to use the garlic salt. Cheers, -Walter
Hi Walter,
Great information on the dewormer experiments. I would think the “conventional” methods would be quite toxic.
Lene
Someone recently asked about dosage for garlic and pepper. I don’t have an exact dosage. I think it comes out to be about 1 oz of powder per 500 lbs of animal per day for about a week. You may be able to do it for just three days and still get good results and it is very possible that less would still do the job. More experiments are needed to figure it out accurately. Realize of course that we’re dealing with consumer grade garlic and cyanne pepper which may have varying potency as opposed to medical grade chemicals where this sort of thing is easier to nail down.
Hey any more knowledge gained on worming au natural? I hate worming my animals. Putting toxins in…
i have slash pines, my goats run to it when a tummy ache starts, as does the pig. My horse runs to the bamboo. Wonder if either of these have natural deworming properties. So true about the charcoal pit. they all run to it. Personally, i would stay away from DE its just a risky thing to inhale it.
What kind of garlic do you use? anything powdered from the store? Or it has to be fresh?
LOVE YOUR BLOG>>>>jojo
Hey any more knowledge gained on worming au natural? I hate worming my animals. Putting toxins in…
i have slash pines, my goats run to it when a tummy ache starts, as does the pig. My horse runs to the bamboo. Wonder if either of these have natural deworming properties. So true about the charcoal pit. they all run to it. Personally, i would stay away from DE its just a risky thing to inhale it.
What kind of garlic do you use? anything powdered from the store? Or it has to be fresh?
LOVE YOUR BLOG>>>>jojo
Jojo, We use powdered garlic (not the garlic salt) which we buy in bulk. You can get small one or two pound containers at some grocery stores or even 50 lb containers online. It isn’t fresh. I have been thinking about this and I suspect that it is primarily the sulfer that is the primary active ingredient. I bet that copper would also help as that can be lethal to invertebrates but be aware it can kill sheep too. I’m not sure about goats on the copper. Maybe the bamboo has something in it too.
Hi Walter,
Nice posts. Just wanted to say, copper is not so good for sheep but very important for goats! I’ve got info on alternative de-wormers in my blog and also in my links if you have time to look at that. Maybe it will help.
This is a awesome blog!Thanks so much for the info,its always nice to learn from someone thats tryed it already.I have some very picky goats,three of them dont want eat the comercal wormer,so iv started looking for other alteritives,Pine being one I tryed today.Im definitly going to try the garlic and mabe cayeene,I grow my own cayenne pepper,And I need to start growing garlic too,i have a dehydrator so i can make my own powder from it,Thanks for sharing,Michelle
We use DE as a wormer and it works great. Best of all because it is mechanical there is no resistance to it.
For the dogs I mix the DE with kelp meal and garlic powder and brewers yeast and put several tablespoons over their food–with DE there is no overdosing.
For the sheep and cattle I mix it in with their once a week treat of beet pulp, tiny bit of grain, and strands of kelp. Everyone seems happy with it.
I also sprinkle the DE in with the chickens dust bathes and over their food as well. Mites are virtually non-existent and worms. . .what worms??
Excellent blog! Thank you!
I am trying to gather as much info on raising pigs. I am seriously thinking of getting a couple young ones this coming spring. Hopefully I can find a place that sells them here (BC, Canada), as well as someone to butcher them.
I want to learn all info. before getting the pigs though. :-)
Also enjoy your humor, you make learning fun!
Lynn
Hi there, just came across your blog in my search for info on garlic deworming horses. I use the chemical wormers but want reduce their use and start herbal.
Thanks for the great info. We are raising pigs (Tamworth’s) and just had a litter of 6. However, so far, only two have survived, and we are wondering what’s happening. It appears that the sow may have rolled on them, but we really don’t know for sure. Do you have any ideas? Thanks.
Hi Michelle,
Where do you live? My daughter and I are thinking about getting a Tamworth boar for our next dad. We live in Oregon and haven’t seen many here advertised.
We have 3 sows out in pasture, our first one had her babies in the shed and we put up a bumper so the babies could get away. The others are out in the field and I found a nest last night and will go see how that turns out. We are trying to go with survival of the fittest, but intervene as much as possible.
Good luck
Carol
Are the piglets flattened and blue? That would indicate roll overs perhaps.
How heavy is your sow? If she is obese then she is more likely to squish piglets. Sows in good condition set themselves down gently but fat sows plop down more out of control and are more likely to squash a piglet.
Is she in a small stall or crate or does she have lots of space? When they have less space then squashings become more of an issue. A bumper board about 8″ up along the edges might help if she is in a small space, or letting her have a much larger space with lots of bedding hay.
Good luck with the last two and hopefully she’ll do better with the next litter.
Walter, you’re the best. You share incredibly useful information all the time, you’re kind and thoughtful in your interactions with folks, taking time to explain all sorts of things, even to the sometimes clueless (I’m including myself in that category). Thanks for all you do!
This was a great read. I wonder if it has the same effect on humans? Anyone willing to experiment? Maybe I will and get back to you…
Mrs. R
New visitor to the site, and am intregued by what I’ve found thusfar… but a word of caution.
Garlic, although an effective holistic wormer, can be horribly toxic to cats. Each cat reacts differently, and some can tolerate a large dose, while others become ill with the smallest doeing possible. The effect is hemolytic anemia, and is bad news. Just a word of warning from a 20 year veterinary technician trying to keep my animals as holistically as possible. Diatomaceous Earth is almost as good as garlic, and much, much safer.
hi there great site lovin the blog have just took hold of 3 piglets(saddle back , gloucester oldspot, an tamworth mix)first time except for 4 chickens, would love to know if there tails dont curl (these dont) is a sign of worms(gonna try the garlic).thanks again
p.s. were in northern ireland.
Hi Walter-I am going to try your method to weight my daughter, Sara’s, 2 Yorkshire 4-H pigs…in the mean time I have just learned recently that black walnuts placed in the animals water troughs can also help with de-worming. I am trying this with our 4-H show pigs and sheep. Enjoy yur blog!
Pat Garmezy
Pat, please do let me know how the black walnuts work. I have read that they are a natural dewormer but haven’t tried them as they are not something I readily have. -Walter
DE does not work for internal parasites myth and busted. It will keep external down but, it will have no effect on internal. Also in the long term it would be like feeding crushed powdered glass to your animals. A lady in my poultry group found this fact out when her hens started dying off from internal cuts from DE. It just shreds the internal digestion system over time.
Garlic Works
Cayenne Pepper Works
Black Walnut Hulls-Works
Wild Garlic-Works to a degree
Apple Cider Vinegar-More of a preventative
Jalapeno-Is Promising, I gave mine picked jalapeno mixed in their water.
I kinda rotate what I use as well. I will give Cayenne pepper and a week or so give garlic or walnut hulls.
I doubt the DE killed the chickens. It is so fine that it doesn’t act as you are imagining broken glass. We’ve fed DE to our chickens, and I know a great many other people who have, without having it kill them. More likely it was something else that did the birds in. I’m not promoting DE, just doubtful it killed her chickens.
This is a dirty subject, but what's the best way to do a fecal exam? I use garlic and DE on my pigs, but I'd like to be sure what I'm doing is working.
Any progress on the new pig greenhouse/barn?
Todd
What's the best way to do a fecal exam? We've got a few pigs and use DE and garlic. I'd like to be sure that our treatment works.
Can we get an update on the pig greenhouse/barn?
Thanks
Todd
The greenhouse is on hold right now, as it isn't needed in this season. We poured concrete right up until it got very cold and then the weather changed fast so I didn't dare put a wind grabbable roof up on the concrete incase it hadn't cured yet. Good thing as a barn just over the mountain that got poured at the similar time was ripped way by the winds this year.
For fecals, get a simple microscope and google for instructions. There are some excellent ones out there with photos of the various worms and eggs.
Great blog you have here. I found it looking for natural wormers like black walnut. I was hoping to find a dose.
To the person who wrote: At February 22, 2009 7:40 PM, Anonymous said…
"DE does not work for internal parasites myth and busted. It will keep external down but, it will have no effect on internal. Also in the long term it would be like feeding crushed powdered glass to your animals. A lady in my poultry group found this fact out when her hens started dying off from internal cuts from DE. It just shreds the internal digestion system over time. "
You are wrong. I fed my chickens fossil shell flour AKA DE to my chickens all winter safely. If that woman killed her chickens it could have been she used DE for swimming pools which is deadly or used way too much. DE for pools is super heated which brings out some toxic chemical in it that makes it poisonous. Most likely that's what that woman did. To use DE on animals or humans (I tried it internally on myself too) it MUST be food grade. The dose is small only 2% mixed with your animals food daily should be given. It can take up to 2 or more months to clear an animal of most parasites. It doesn't work on tape worms well at all so be forewarned.
I wormed a cat for 4 months with DE and I saw visible segments of tape worm and I had read twice online that vets say it doesn't work on tapes.
Cats (and anything else) with tapeworms regularly poop out segments all the time- the segments are full of eggs, and shedding them from time to time is how tapeworms distribute their eggs. If anything, seeing the segments from time to time is proof positive that the DE *didn't* work. Have to side with the vets on this one.
I have not seen evidence of worms in my two pigs or 20 chickens (I have not used a microscope either). Should I still worm them just to be on the safe side? I have had the pigs since last spring.
Also it is very cold, windy and snowy here, does weather play a part in keeping the worms away (at least for the winter)?
Hello from North Carolina. I've been using food grade diatomaceous earth, sprinkled in the chicken food and on the floor of the henhouse (deep litter) about once a month. So far (almost 2 years) my hens seem worm-free, lay well, etc. However, I ran out this fall and went a couple months without using it (also the hens were kept penned during this time due to the addition of a new dog to the farm). This week, after seeing what appeared to be cecal (sp?) worms in the henyard, I have added garlic and yeast powder. After reading your blog, I think cayenne will be part of the mix. The hens seem to love anything spicy.
When the hens are allowed to freerange in fine weather, they will ignore items like black walnut leaves and carrot tops for weeks, and then consume them. I believe they are "self-medicating" when they do this, as both carrot and walnut are vermifuges.
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Very cool, I raise milk goats sheep and ocassionally horses here, I noticed several years back that animals coming in with worms very quickly got rid of them. I was very curious as to what would cause that and the only thing I could come up with was the eating of pine and fir branches. Having read this makes me more certain of it than ever. I guess it makes sense, the old fashioned remedy for worms was turpentine which is just pine oil.
have you had any experience with deworming horses using turpentine and flax seed oil
I haven’t but I don’t have horses. Pine boughs are a dewormer and turpentine is made from pine sap.
So is garlic safe for baby pigs that are intended for food like 8 weeks.old. ?? And do they need worming right away. I know foals can be really wormy but don’t know @ pigs. We do have horses and routinely rotate toxic paste wormers for them. I am glad for the clarification on the food grade DE. I was thinking that pool DE was OK.. for chickens (I have 50 of them) I usually use piperazine in the winter when they are not laying to worm with but never wanted to taint the eggs while they were laying nor waste the eggs while worming with piperazine.. so sounds like food grade DE is a good year round non toxic choice.
You had mentioned in another comment that they are in a stall. I would suggest worming them in that case. You might want to do an initial worming of ivermec or SafeGuard (fenbenzadole).
Part of how we manage worms is the garlic – they’ll only eat a safe amount in my experience although I have read that too much garlic, like anything, can be a problem. Part of how we manage worms is the managed rotational grazing which leaves the parasites behind – works just like it does for cattle and sheep.
Chickens are also great for controlling pests in general.
I have never seen a worm problem with chickens.
Thank you so much for your information. My husband & I moved from America to a “3rd world country” to have a different life doing rescue work with small wildlife/exotics as well as assist some of the local population. (Our primary focus is the animals, it is just our passion.) Our supplies have not arrived from the States (hung up in customs) & we were brought an Asian Jungle Cat about 3 weeks old. She appeared healthy except for obvious signs of worms, and needing a good ear cleaning. This is a new species for us to work with, and honestly I am used to having “modern science” at my disposal, which I DO NOT have here. After reading many pages I saw yours, and though I know the old garlic trick for my dogs you really went the extra mile on posting, and I used the info to treat this little girl successfully. No side effects, no toxins, and READILY available! Thank you for your assistance & reminding me that going back to the basics is going to be our best option.
Looking through your older posts, I came across this tremendously valuable one. Just thought I’d mention that while melons and tomatos and so on evolved to propagate through primate poop (use biosolids from a sewage treatment plant and get hundreds of volunteer reverted cherry tomatos, from my personal experience) avians evolved with the capsaicum producing peppers. Peppers want their seeds to take flight! Capsaicum is toxic to us, even if it is fun to flirt with in our cooking, but totally innocuous to birds. I’ve never used it on chickens, but suspect you could really “overdose” and simply achieve faster worming results with no harm to your biddies. Thanks for the information, Walter. You constantly amplify my resolution to return to the land!!
Well, once again I have found some really great, useful info on how to take care of my pigs right here on your site. Thank you. I had brought home from the auction a mid sized pig that is “roaster” size, I believe? Maybe I am getting the terminology mixed up with my rabbits. Too big for a weaner, not quite ready for butcher- in the middle somewhere. It had developed a cough I think from my wonderful husband keeping her cooped up in the hot stationwagon for too long before he came to get me. She was frothing. I hosed her down and anyways, so she had this cough. She was a little skinny, too. It’s the auction. I knew I was taking a risk. So after I brought in another pig, she started eating well, instead of just meandering around with her food. She fattened up a little but then later I started seeing backbone a little bit and she is just really kind of rangy looking instead of fat looking like the other pigs. Then, walking in the field I saw a poop with white things on it. I debated on whether or not it was worms from the pig, or maggots that got into it later. Went to the farm store and a bottle of the wormer stuff was $11 but I needed to get some other stuff first so I held off on that, knowing I had garlic at home. So I went home and grabbed two cloves of garlic and wrapped them up in some wheat bread so it made bread balls, because I wanted to get the concentrated garlic dose to just the one pig. So I’m out there in the field and I let the pig get real close to my hands because I want to make sure in all the pushing and shoving from the other pigs, that only the one pig gets it first. I’ll catch the other girls in a few days when I get more garlic. She swallowed one bread ball, which equated to one whole garlic clove. About that time, the one sow that is almost 200 lbs. decided to latch onto my wrist to make me let loose of the other bread ball. It hurt like hell, I kicked her in the nose and she let go, but I had already dropped the bread ball and all the pigs ate the bread, nosed the garlic clove around in the dirt some and left it alone. I knew they’d probably reject just the garlic clove which is why I put it in a bread ball because I knew they would just snarf the bread down whole. So, we shall see if I see more white things in the poop or if that pig starts putting on weight. Does it take more than one time doing the garlic for a couple of days, or what? Also, out of a whole field of poops, I only saw one lil turd with little white things on it. They weren’t moving though, and didn’t really look like the ones I’ve seen with the cat or dog. They were just little maggot sized white blobs, but fatter, like the rain had swelled them up or something. They haven’t been eating any white rice, so I guess it would look like cooked, white rice blobs. Hope that helps.
Rather than using cloves of garlic I would suggest powdered or minced garlic. The bread ball is a good idea. Mix some oil or butter in with it too.
Have you tried free-choicing garlic powder, cayenne, et al to your pigs? Do you provide free choice salt and/or other minerals? I’m running Mark Bader’s 16 bin free choice minerals (http://goo.gl/IPfBp) to my cow herd and I’m becoming a believer in their ability to preferentially self-select what they are deficient in. Interestingly, one of the bins is sulfur and I’ll be very interested to see if we continue to have a low level of parasites with that available to them.
They don’t eat the garlic or cayenne free choice as it is too intense. We add it to the whey. They are not happy with that initially but get used to it and we gradually increase the percent.
We don’t provide salt. We tried but the pigs weren’t interested nor were they interested in mineral blocks. They are very interested in blocks of dirt which we make from our farm soil. Our soil is fortunately full of all the right minerals. The hay we get from the farmer east of us is low in selenium which is an issue and why we provide our own dirt in winter.
Interesting about Bader’s 16 bin free choice minerals. In our setup with many herds I would not use that as it would mean 160 bins or so to manage. For us it is easier to provide our dirt which seems to have what the pigs need for the most part. We have also experimented with providing mineral powder mixes with good results and I would like to try a kelp mix sometime. However, I’m not sure that either does better than our own dirt since we see such good results.
Another good old time trick is putting iron into their water or whey. It dissolves slowly providing iron to the pigs.
As winter comes on do you still manage the parasites? Our winters here in Northern Michigan are long enough that I would assume the parasites do not continue the cycle once the ground has been covered with snow for some time. I could be way off here…
Winter is very hard on parasites. It breaks their life cycle very effectively. If we had winter 12 months of the year instead of just six months of the year the parasite cycle would be killed off in grazing animals. Of course, the grazing animals would be killed off too. Notice that there aren’t too many pigs, sheep or cattle on the north or south poles. :) Santa’s pulled a fast one there as his real address is considerably south of the north pole.
If you are having a parasite problem then late fall or early winter when the ground freezes is a great time to deworm livestock. Of course, this assumes the animals are kept outdoors in the cold temperatures. If one were keeping them in heated barns then that is more like the warm seasons, or worse.
hello Walter~
We do feed round bales of June Clover hay. These are just on the ground, no ring. We usually begin to peel the layers and the pigs will do the rest, once started. We do feed minimal grain. Usually we feed the grain on/in the hay. We’d like to work away from grain, though our growth rates have seemed very slow.
I’ve found myself wondering more and more about parasites and about our feed (as well as genetics, time and generations under this minimal grain approach, etc, etc).
Do you test on a schedule for parasites? Treat on a schedule? Is your approach subjective, objective, or both?
Do you feed mineral free-choice? Do you feed wood ash from your wood stove? Usually in the whey? Or, for that matter, d.e. or garlic, cayenne? In the whey?
thank you Walter. We appreciate you sharing all of your efforts openly.
chris
On the growth rate, make sure your animals are getting balance. In particular lysine tends to be a limiting amino-acid, a building block for proteins. There are other limiting ones after that.
The wood ash from our stove gets scattered on our fields to help with local warming and we don’t generate very much since our cottage only uses about three quarters of a cord of wood or less a year. We are fortunate that our soil is very rich in minerals. I dig soil in the winter to feed to our pigs. This year I’m experimenting a little with some kelp too. We’ll see how that does. I have tried mineral blocks years ago but was not impressed with the results or the process. Do get your soil tested so you know if you’re low in anything. Selenium and iron are to biggies.
I no longer do fecal counts for parasites because I have learned how to spot infections by eye. After years of doing it you learn to have a keen eye for their health. We also simply don’t get much parasite activity. Basically, managed rotational grazing, plenty of space, low animal density, dairy in their diet, copper in the soil, winter and garlic all work a as great de-wormers. Healthy animals don’t tend to have a problem with parasites. This may be why the factory farms are so intent on using chemical de-wormers, antibiotics and the like – they have a fundamentally unhealthy situation and bad genetics.
By the way, I suggest de-worming your pigs rather than worming them as some people say they do. :)