Can You Have a 100% Herbal Goat Herd?

I started out in 2008 doing everything the way the “experts” told me: vaccinating, copper bolusing, deworming with conventional dewormers, coccidiosis prevention, etc. etc.

But my heart cried out for something different. As a new mother, I was looking to clean up my household with better quality ingredients, organic food, and so on, so going the other direction with the goats who were going to provide our milk was counterintuitive to me.

I began then to take incremental steps toward my end goal, which was a herd that needed no conventional inputs. I wanted them to be healthy and organic, yes, but I also had in mind the idea that I might not be able to easily purchase the conventional remedies so many relied on and I wanted to be independent of the world *out there*.

It took awhile. I had 4 babies of my own, some significant health issues, lots of life going on and that ever present desire.

But I want to write today to tell you that it absolutely can be done. Sometime nearing a decade ago, I switched to herbal remedies for almost everything. I was on my way there on my own, but the Veterinary Feed Directive in 2017 compelled me to take the plunge and figure out how to manage coccidiosis without conventional prevention. And finally, around 2018 or 2019–I think, I wish I’d written this down–I felt confident enough to stop using any conventional dewormers, the final holdout to fully embracing a 100% herbal approach.

Here we are now in 2025. I have generations that have never received a pharmaceutical input of any kind. Contrary to what you might have been told by those who have products to sell you, my goats are not sick, weak, struggling, under condition or any of those things.

In fact, they are thriving. I spend essentially zero time per year fixing things. I feed them, I trim their hooves once in a great while, I deworm them with essential oils on occasion and mostly I just step out of the way and let them be who they are. They get unsprayed, unfertilized, unkempt pasture in summer and free choice alfalfa in winter. They get the mineral buffet, of course, and beyond that, there is nothing I need to do to have healthy goats.

My experience is not unique. It is easily repeatable. It can take time, sure. It can take making some hard cuts when you have a goat who requires a lot of intervention to stay healthy. It can take some setbacks, some heartbreaks and some steely resolve, but man, the way it feels on the other side of all that when I need to do nothing special to keep herd health is indescribable. And totally worth all that came before.

This is your encouragement to keep going if you’re in the middle of that struggle forward. It’s your encouragement to get started if you’ve felt that longing. And it is a testimony to the power of Nature when we step out of the way and shed off the “education” we’ve been given all our lives.