I'm totally sold on copper boluses for our goats. It's been two months since Artemesia's first treatment, and I was surprised to see how much orange showed back up in her hair during the intervening period. The change in hue is a clear sign that she was deficient in this important mineral despite having free-choice access to kelp and a salt/mineral mixture, so I'm glad I finally figured out the essential caprine supplement.

Our doe isn't all the way back to her original coloration, though, probably because I was careful and only gave her the bare minimum amount of copper recommended for a goat her size the first time around. So I decided to follow Dr. O'Brien's advice and give her another dose.

At the same time, I'm bolusing our kids for the first time too. The stress of weaning can cause worm overloads, so now's a good time to make sure Punkin gets off to a good start. My planned dosages were 1 gram for Punkin (because he's huge and being weaned), 0.5 grams for Aurora (because she's smaller and not being weaned), and 2.5 grams for Artemesia.

Unfortunately, my no-bake bolus balls were still a bit too big to be eaten in one go. So Artemesia actually got about 1.25 grams, Punkin got 0.5 grams, and Aurora got nothing. I'll try them again this afternoon to see if they'd like another dose, but I'm also pretty willing to be content with that dosage since I'm allowed to readminister as early as six weeks. Here's hoping that by then Artemesia's belly is once more as orange as it was when she was a kid.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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