FreeBSD 14 - Not able to resolve hostnames locally on the VM running FreeBSD

FreeBSD 14
nextdns version 1.43.3

FreeBSD 14 - Not able to resolve hostnames locally on the VM running FreeBSD - I am trying to ping google.com where i have nextdns installed (FreeBSD) and it is not able to resolve anything.

root@testdns:~ # ping google.com
ping: Unknown host

Log:
May 12 11:42:01 testdns nextdns[953]: NextDNS 1.43.3/freebsd stopped
May 12 11:42:01 testdns nextdns[1685]: Starting NextDNS 1.43.3/freebsd on :53
May 12 11:42:01 testdns nextdns[1685]: Listening on TCP/:53
May 12 11:42:01 testdns nextdns[1685]: Listening on UDP/:53
May 12 11:42:06 testdns nextdns[1685]: Setting up generic router
May 12 11:42:06 testdns nextdns[1685]: Activating

Config:
report-client-info true mdns disabled bogus-priv true use-hosts true setup-router true auto-activate true log-queries false control /var/run/nextdns.sock cache-size 10MB cache-max-age 0s timeout 5s debug false listen localhost:53 profile 123 max-ttl 5s discovery-dns 10.200.1.1 detect-captive-portals false hardened-privacy false max-inflight-requests 256

resolv.conf

# This file is managed by nextdns.
#
# Run "nextdns deactivate" to restore previous configuration.


search example.com
options edns0
nameserver 127.0.0.1

I am going with FreeBSD as there seems to be consistency issues using a distro that has systemd - perhaps FreebSD is not the way to go and someone can point out a better solution/OS?