Living With Worms:

Drawn from the American Consortium for Small Ruminant Parasite Control (wormx.info) and the SandHill Oaks Goat Care Reference.

If you're new to goats, here is the first thing to know, and the thing that will save you the most heartache: every goat that has ever grazed a pasture has worms. Yours do. Ours do. The goats at the fair do. This is not a sign that you've done something wrong. Parasites are simply part of what it means to keep a grazing animal, and in Florida, with our warm, wet, nearly year-round growing season, they are part of it more than almost anywhere else in the country.

The goal is not to get rid of worms. That is not possible, and chasing it will exhaust you, empty your wallet, and, as you'll read below, actually make the problem worse. The goal is to keep worm numbers low enough that your goats stay healthy, and to notice the animals that are struggling before they get into serious trouble. That is a completely achievable goal, and the two guides below are about how to do it.

Guide 1: What Is FAMACHA, and How Does It Help Me Use Fewer Dewormers?

The short version

FAMACHA is a simple eye check. You pull down a goat's lower eyelid, compare the color of the inside of the lid to a laminated color chart, and give the goat a score from 1 (deep red, healthy) to 5 (nearly white, dangerously anemic). That score tells you whether this particular goat needs a dewormer today, or whether it's coping fine on its own and should be left alone.

That's it. It takes about ten seconds per goat once you get the hang of it, and it costs almost nothing. Yet it is probably the single most important tool a goat owner in the Southeast can learn.

Why an eye check? What does eye color have to do with worms?

The most dangerous worm in Florida goats is the barber pole worm (covered in Guide 2). Unlike most stomach worms, it lives by drinking the goat's blood. A goat carrying a heavy load of these worms slowly becomes anemic, meaning it is losing red blood cells faster than it can make them.

You can't see the worms. But you can see anemia, because the membranes inside the eyelid go from red to pink to pale to white as the blood thins. The FAMACHA card simply gives you a standardized set of colors to compare against, so that "kind of pale, I think?" becomes "that's a 4, and a 4 gets treated."

Why does this reduce dewormer use?

This is the part that surprises people. For decades, the standard advice was to deworm every goat on the farm on a schedule: every month, every six weeks, whatever the calendar said. It felt responsible. It was not.

Two things went wrong with that approach. First, most of those doses were wasted. Worms aren't spread evenly across a herd. Research cited on wormx.info found that roughly 15% of the animals in a herd carry about half of all the worms, and 20 to 30% of the animals carry 70 to 80% of them. Most of your goats are handling their worms just fine and never needed the dose.

Second, and far worse, every time you deworm an animal you kill off the worms that are susceptible to that drug and leave behind the few that happen to be resistant. Those survivors breed. Do that across the whole herd, every month, for years, and you have carefully bred a population of worms that your dewormer no longer touches. This has now happened on farms across the United States. Wormx.info states plainly that there is now resistance to every class of dewormer used in sheep and goats in this country, with the level varying by region and by farm.

FAMACHA breaks that cycle. By treating only the goats that actually need it, you:

  • Leave most of the herd untreated, which keeps a healthy population of "susceptible" worms around to dilute the resistant ones (parasitologists call this refugia, and it is your friend).

  • Slow the development of resistance dramatically, so the dewormers you have keep working for years longer.

  • Cut your drug costs, often by more than half.

  • Learn which goats are your repeat offenders. The same animals tend to need treatment over and over, and those are the ones to consider selling or not breeding. Resistance to worms is partly inherited, so over time you can breed a herd that copes better with your particular farm.

How to do it: Cover, Push, Pull, Pop

You do need to get certified to buy a card (more on that below), but here is the technique so you know what you're signing up for. Wormx.info teaches it as four words:

  1. Cover the eye by rolling the upper eyelid down over the eyeball with your thumb.

  2. Push gently down on the eyeball through the lid. You'll know you have enough pressure when the upper lashes curl up over your thumb.

  3. Pull the lower eyelid down with your other thumb.

  4. Pop. The pink bed of membrane will pop into view. Score that — the fleshy bed, not the inner edge of the lid itself.

Hold the card right next to the eye and match the color. Then do the other eye, because the two can differ, and use the higher (worse) score. If you're between two numbers, round up. Never guess from memory, never use a photocopy or a picture off the internet, and never score in the shade or under barn lights. Natural daylight only, outdoors if at all possible.

What the scores mean

ScoreEyelid colorWhat to do1RedHealthy. No treatment.2Red-pinkHealthy. No treatment.3PinkBorderline. Treat if it's a kid, a pregnant or nursing doe, a thin goat, or anything else worries you. Otherwise, watch closely and recheck sooner.4Pink-whiteTreat.5WhiteTreat now. This goat is in danger.

The "3" category is where judgment comes in, and the guidance in your reference document is worth repeating: kids have small bodies and little blood to spare, so they can slide from moderate to severe anemia fast. Does lose much of their natural resistance to worms from about two weeks before kidding through their whole lactation. For both of those groups, a 3 gets treated. When in doubt, treat.

A couple of herd-level rules also help. If 10% or more of your goats are scoring 4 or 5 at a check, wormx.info recommends rechecking weekly and considering treating everyone at 3 and above, and moving them to a fresh pasture if you have one. And regardless of score, any goat with "bottle jaw" (a soft, doughy swelling under the chin) gets treated, because that swelling is a sign of severe protein loss from blood-sucking worms.

How often to check

In Florida, this is the honest answer: more often than the general guidance suggests, for more of the year. Wormx.info recommends every two weeks during peak barber pole season (warm and wet), stretching to three or four weeks when it's cooler. For most of the country, "cooler" means a real winter where checks can nearly stop. Our winters are mild enough that transmission never truly shuts off, so plan on checking every two weeks from spring through fall at minimum, and don't drop below monthly even in January. Check more often around kidding no matter what the calendar says.

The most important "don't" on the whole list: don't wait until something looks wrong to start checking. By the time a goat looks sick from worms, you are already behind.

Things FAMACHA can't do

Be honest with yourself about the limits. FAMACHA only detects one worm: the barber pole worm. It won't catch tapeworms, coccidia, or the other stomach worms that cause diarrhea and poor growth without anemia. That's why the veterinary guidance in your reference document pairs FAMACHA with a "five point check" (eye, jaw, body condition, tail for scouring, nose for discharge) and with periodic fecal egg counts on the herd.

It also only works if the dewormer you reach for actually works. Because FAMACHA lets a goat get somewhat anemic before you treat, a failed treatment is dangerous. A useful clue from the FAMACHA guide: if the drug worked, the eyelid should be noticeably redder within about a week. If it isn't, that drug is not working on your farm, and it's time to talk to your vet about testing (a fecal egg count reduction test) and about combining drug classes.

Getting certified

You cannot simply buy a FAMACHA card. Training is required, both because the technique matters and because a mis-scored goat can die. Louisiana State University is the only distributor of cards in North America. Training is offered in-person by certified instructors and online through several universities; wormx.info's "Online FAMACHA Certification" page lists the current options, and the University of Rhode Island also offers a Spanish-language version. The online course typically involves watching a video, taking a short quiz, and submitting a video of yourself scoring an animal correctly. Once approved, the card and certificate are mailed to you. Plan on a couple of weeks.

Store the card in the dark when you're not using it, keep a spare, and replace it every 12 to 24 months. The colors fade, and a faded card makes every goat look healthier than it is.

Sources: wormx.info (American Consortium for Small Ruminant Parasite Control): FAMACHA topic page; "Do's and Don'ts of FAMACHA Scoring" (Petersson, 2016); "Potential Solutions to Highly Resistant Worms" (Hart, updated 2024); "Best Management Practices: Understanding the Biology" (Zajac, 2018/2024); Dewormer Resistance topic page; "Why Didn't Deworming Improve FAMACHA Score." Also: SandHill Oaks Goat Care Reference, sections on FAMACHA & Other Scoring Systems, Internal Parasites/Haemonchus contortus life cycle, and Dewormers. This is educational material, not veterinary advice; deworming decisions and extra-label drug use should be made with your veterinarian.