Marvelous Seeds- Natural Dewormer for Dogs and Others

Naturally de-worming animals can be challenging, and some people will say that you are just better off going with the chemicals.  There are several problems with chemical wormers however.  You see, a chemical wormer is actually a poison, which is fed to the animal in large enough doses to kill, or expel the worms, but in small enough amounts that it hopefully will not injure the animal.  Trouble is, worms have an ability to build up resistance to the chemical poisons used in these wormers.  For example:  A few years ago, when I first started with dairy goats, I had major trouble with worms.  In fact, I lost quite a few goats to them.  I tried using the chemical wormers- SafeGuard (at 4 times the dosage for horses, for 3 days straight), and Ivermectin.  The goats' hair remained curly (a sign of a heavy worm load), and their gums and eyelids were pale.  Finally, most of them died- including three beautiful purebred, registrable Nubians.  I was heartbroken.

     Several years later, I got back into goats and found a good herbal wormer.  I now use this for my new goats (the ones who've been here a while rarely need it- the copper sulphate keeps them de-wormed).  We didn't know what to use for our dogs though.  (I need to look up the herbs used in the goat wormer to see if they're safe for dogs, but haven't gotten around to it yet.)

     Anyways, Kep never seems to have a problem with worms, but Inez always has a heavy load after a litter of puppies, and shrinks to about half of her regular size.  The first time this happened we became quite alarmed, not knowing what to do for her, as we were unsure at the time that it was worms.  Something clearly needed to be done though, as she was becoming weak and anemic, and had lost a lot of weight.

Inez in very wormy condition.

  I started blending up whole eggs (shell and all) with kefir and milk in our VitaMix and feeding that to her every day.  Then I thought to add some dehyrated pumpkin seeds to the concoction.  So I put in about a cup per day and fed it to her every day for a week.  By the end of that time, she had energy, was not too pale any more, and had started putting on weight.  Within three weeks she was back to her beautiful self- her old hair coat shed out and new hair grew in, she was filled out, and no longer lay around weakly all day.

Inez in good condition.

     So, without more ado, here is the approximate recipe I use whenever she gets worms:

1 cup dry,* fresh or frozen pumpkin seeds

2 cups kefir or yogurt

1-2 cups milk

1-3 whole eggs

*Do not use baked pumpkin seeds- I think the heat destroys the de-worming properties.

 

Blend all together until as finely ground as possible.  Our dogs seem to find this concoction quite delectable, drinking it up quickly and thankfully.  You can skip the kefir and just use milk instead, but then the pumpkin flavor comes through more, especially if the seeds are fresh or frozen, and they don't seem to like it as much.  One other thing:  Inez is a Great Pyrenese, which is a rather large breed, so for a smaller breed you may want to use less, or for a very large dog maybe a bit more.  Pumpkin seeds also work quite well for de-worming cows, and some people use them for their chickens as well.  In fact, I think they would work for just about any creature, as they don't seem to be poisonous to anything but worms.

Garlic is also good for worms, but I have never really used it, so don't know how effective it is.  Another good wormer is black walnut hull (not good for horses), cloves and wormwood.  We have used this in the past, and I think it worked pretty well, but don't remember the amounts.

Hopefully these recipes will be helpful to someone... If you have a de-wormer recipe that works for you, please let me know in a comment, and I may try it out and pass it on.