Getting Your Goats

Literally Getting Your Goat

For the first-time goat owner, it’s important to know the ins and outs of buying a goat. I highly recommend that you never, ever buy goats at a general livestock auction. Buying your first goats from a good, reputable breeder is tantamount to success. Go to the farm, look around, make sure it’s clean. Look at the animals there. Are their eyes clear and bright? Are they nicely filled out, strong, and curious? Are they friendly, free from sores, bumps, and scabs?

When looking to buy milking goats, will the owner let you milk them? If you don’t know how to milk, will he/she show you how to do it? NO? Go somewhere else.

Are you buying milk-goat kids? Ask the owner to point out the mom, take a good look at her udder.

All of these things will help you alleviate a lot of heartache, pain, and expense. There is nothing worse than buying an unhealthy goat, or, worse yet, a headstrong, aggressive goat that you can’t handle. There is no room on anyone’s farm for an unruly goat. Aggressive goats need to take a permanent vacation at ”freezer camp.”

Goat Whisperer 101

The Pack, Otherwise Known as the Herd

How does a herd work, how will this new goat be accepted into my herd, why can’t I have only one goat? These questions are ones that deserve some serious thought and consideration!

First of all, goats are very social animals. They are friendly, playful, enjoy interaction with other animals, and love their young. They are inquisitive, sweet, gentle, fiercely, protective, and, of course, always hungry. One goat alone will probably die of boredom, loneliness, or frustration.

Having just one goat as a pet does a great disservice to the animal. A goat that has been raised as a single will have a very difficult time adjusting when put in a herd.

Not too long ago we had to send two goats to “freezer camp” because, no matter what, they could not adjust to living in the herd. They let the other goats push them around, or they would cower in the corner of the barn and refuse to go outside. They had never even seen another goat besides each other! How sad.

In each and every herd there is a queen. Put four unrelated female goats together in a pen and watch! They will head butt, side butt, and make a general nuisance of themselves, but one of the girls will ultimately reign victorious as queen. If you remove that queen, another will step in and take her place in just minutes! Usually there will be a “herd queen” and “first runner up”! Miss first runner up is just chomping at the bit to have her spot in the limelight. Take the queen out of the pen even for a few minutes to hoof trim, and you will see the second-place girl step right up to the plate and take over.

Now keep this in mind when you think about adding some poor little unrelated doeling to your herd! She has no one to keep her safe, no one to cuddle and sleep with, no one to play with, she is missing her mom, and if she was a twin she is really lonesome!

If you are going to add a small kid to your already established herd, please, do it in pairs. Give the little ones a place to hide from the big girls and a place to eat. A grown doe will remove everyone from the feed dish except her own kid; she could care less if there is another kid there with no mom to protect her.

When purchasing a buck, for goodness sake, make sure he has a buddy! A buck needs someone to play with! Someone to head butt with, eat with, and argue with. If a buck has a companion, he will stay even tempered and friendly.

Even when adding an adult to your mix, the new goat is often ostracized and lonely. It is always easier and a happier experience for the goats if you add them in pairs.

When adding new adult goats to the herd, you will notice lots of posturing going on. There will be much head butting for the first few days. The “new” goats will have to learn the dynamics of the herd. They have to learn to “worship” the queen.

The best advice for you and your herd, though, is to observe your goats; this is best accomplished at feeding time! The goats basically stay in one place and you can really get a good eye on them. You will be able to notice if one of them is consistently getting pushed aside from the feed pans. Weight loss can result; you may have to take that particular goat aside at feeding time until she is more aggressive at the feed bowl. Morning feeding is the time we check out all our pregnant does during kidding time. It's a good time to give the udders a little squeeze and check their butts for mucous discharge!

At breeding time, a doe in heat can quickly be recognized.

Feeding time is a great time to grab run away goats and squirmy kids for shots, etc!

All in all, the only way you can learn about your herd’s dynamics is to watch and learn.

Goat Grub

An entire book could be written about how to properly feed goats, but I’ll spare you all the details. Here’s a list of the basic food and minerals you’ll need to feed your new best friends.

It is difficult when those big caprine eyes are looking at you with the “please feed me, I’m melting away to nothing” look. Don’t give in to it. Just make sure they have plenty of hay. That being said, overfeeding of grains and treats can eventually kill your goat. Underfeeding will do the same thing. So how do you reach a happy medium? The ration should be approximately one pound of grain per doe and one to three pounds per buck (depending on size). Also, Don’t forget the following specifics:

Let’s start with water.

Goats need lots of water, some as much as a gallon a day. It doesn’t matter what kind of container you use, KEEP IT CLEAN! Goats will not drink dirty water. With the bucks, you can run into problems with urinary calculi from not ingesting enough water to equalize the phosphorous and calcium they ingest. Angora goats are even fussier than meat and dairy goats are! One little piece of poop and they will avoid that water like the plague.

If your containers start building up algae, you are doing a poor job in your management program. A little bleach mixed with some water and swished around with a brush will keep your containers clean. Goats are not dirty animals, don’t treat them that way. If you wouldn’t drink out of it, what makes you think your goats will?

Salt blocks are a necessity!

Keep your goats thirsty so that they will drink plenty. Just like humans, the more water they drink, the healthier they will tend to be! A red salt block, also known as a mineral block or brown block, is the best choice because they contain not only salt, but also necessary trace minerals that work well for goats. Red salt blocks have added iron, manganese, copper, and iodine. The goats love them for the salty taste and they are getting additional benefits from the minerals in the blocks!

Hay, hay, hay, and lots of it.

A goat needs approximately 4 percent of its body weight in dry matter per day. That’s what they will actually eat, not the other two or three pounds that they spilled on the ground trying to get to that little choice morsel that they see in the very center of the pile. Of course, once it’s on the ground, it has gotten stepped on, peed on, and pooped on, so don’t expect to ever see your goats bend down and eat it! A well-designed hay feeder will help reduce hay waste.

Which feed to feed?

Now you get the “feed sermon,” sheep feed is for sheep, goat feed is for goats, cattle feed is for cattle, etc. If you buy a bag of feed that says it is for sheep or goats, you are buying health problems for your goats.

There are many great goat grains on the market, why jeopardize your goat’s health and productivity with a grain formulated for another type of animal? Feeding your goats anything but a formulated goat feed will do them a great disservice.

Goat Treats

Here’s a quick goat-treat recipe to whip-up to make your goats happy and healthy! I swear my goats would stand on their heads to get these. Dogs love them, too.

1/8 cup fresh ginger, minced

2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil

2 cups shredded carrots

two (13-ounce) cans (or 26 ounces of fresh vegetable broth)

1 cup goat milk (or whole cow milk)

1 large clove of garlic, minced

1 cup sunflower seeds

1/2 cup Grape-nuts cereal

1/2 cup corn meal

1/2 cup whole-wheat flour

2 cups sweet goat feed

2 cups rice Krispies cereal

1 cup molasses

1 cup corn syrup

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

In a large skillet, sauté the fresh minced ginger in olive oil until tender, then add the carrots and sauté until tender. Add the vegetable broth and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from pan and puree in a blender. In a really large bowl, add the puree, milk, garlic, sunflower seeds, grape-nut cereal, cornmeal, flour, goat feed, rice crispy cereal, molasses, and corn syrup.

Mix well; you might have to use your hands to accomplish this.

Add more flour if needed to hold the dough together. Roll into small balls about the size of a walnut, and slightly flatten. Bake for about 45 minutes or until firm and almost crispy.

New Goat-Owner’s Checklist

So, you just put a deposit on some goats, what now?

Things you need before your goats arrive:

_____ Feed

_____ Hay

_____ Shelter

_____ Water bucket

_____ Feed pan

_____ Salt block and holder (preferably a red salt block)

_____ Have your fencing up

_____ Put a layer of bedding down

What Other Things Will You Need?

There is an old Boy Scout adage, ”Always be prepared.” The same holds true in the goat business. Here is a helpful list of items that will help keep your goats healthy.

• Hoof trimmers Shear Magic Hoof Trimmers are the best.

• Dr. Naylor’s Hoof N’ Heel

• Antibiotic Procaine Penicillin G (more commonly called “Pro-Pen-G”). A bottle of LA200 is great to have on hand also!

• Ivomec Sheep Drench clear wormer for most types of worms

• Safeguard for Goats (white wormer for stomach worms such as tape worms) (DO NOT give Valbazen to a pregnant doe!)

• Bottle of Listerine (old-fashioned kind, DO NOT get the store brand or any of the “flavored” ones!) A small amount used on a paper towel is worth its weight in gold for cleaning up runny eyes or noses. It’s antiseptic, so it makes a great cleanser.

• Bottle of Pepto-Bismol (The store brands are sometimes different and can be ineffective for the goat.)

• Bar Vac (or other brand that contains both CD/T Perfringens Type C & D Tetanus Toxiod. You will need this for your new kids! Don’t let the name scare you, it’s just their annual booster shot and it’s around $6 for a 50ml bottle!)

• Covexin 8 (a great annual vaccine used instead of CD/T. It has the CD/T in it and protects against other Perfringen-type diseases!)

• A roll of Vet Wrap (good to have on hand for an emergency.)

• Needles and syringes (we recommend 22 gauge with 3/4-inch needle. Please do yourself a favor and order Luar lock needles. The Luar Slips can come apart too easily and you will curse them!)

• A nylon feeding syringe (made by Cotran — is great to have for administering wormers.)

Ear Tagging

We tag meat goats at birth. They grow quickly and if you delay you’ll be sure to forget which one was born first. The babies’ ears are very thin at this point, and it’s easy to insert the tag.

It’s a bad thing to be walking around asking, “Who’s your mama?” to your baby goats! Use a plastic/paper collar marked appropriately for dairy goats. We mark the dam’s name and the kid’s date of birth.

Ear tags on a young kid should be put on so that the point of the tag faces the front of the ear, away from the skull. Kids play and they fall and it’s a good idea not to have that pointy end facing their skull.

Be very careful about tag placement in relation to the veins that run through the ear. These veins are very obvious, so just take your time. Make sure that when you put the ear tag in, that there is also plenty of room for a tattoo.

If you have several types of goats, i.e., percentages, full bloods, different breeds, you may want to have different colors to designate those goats. You will be able to tell at a glance which goat you are looking at!

You can use a different tag color for different years, sires, family groups, etc.

For our dairy kids, we use pink collars for the girls and blue collars for the boys :).

Tattooing

Right ear is your herd prefix

Left ear is the “year letter” and the tag number

Each year is assigned a “year letter” by the goat registries. Any goat born in 2010 should have a “Z” in its ear along with the tag number, for example, Z101. Check with your registry to make sure you are using the right letter for the year according to that particular registry! The dairy registry and meat registry use different letters. Dairy goats born in 2010 have “A” and 2011 is “B”!

The reason for tattooing is tracking. If you should buy a goat with no papers but it has tattoos you can contact goat associations, let them know what the year letter is, the herd prefix, and the tag number, so that if the goat was registered they can help you to obtain its pedigree and registration again! (Be aware that different associations use different letters!)

We use small tattoo letters because we tattoo our kids when they are young. It’s easier! Green ink will show up much better than black, especially on a dark colored goat.

The ink is smeared on the ear, the tattoo gun is placed into position, and depressed. After releasing the tattoo gun, more ink is smeared on and then the area is rubbed with baking soda, causing the tattoo to scar the ear. Again, be careful of the veins that run through the ear. Have blood-stop powder on hand just in case!

Caprine Castration

Or maybe I should title this “Ouch.”

This part of goat ownership makes some men just a little squeamish. Castrating should only be done to those males that will be kept as pets or as companion animals.

There are several methods of castrating, but, here at Stony Knolls Farm, we have decided that banding them is definitely the least stressful and the most kind to the goat.

First thing you will need is an elastrator tool along with the rubber bands. The next is a male goat with these qualifications. He must be at least ten weeks to three months old, his testicles must both have descended and be at least the size of a walnut.

The reasons for waiting until the ten- to twelve-week mark are several. Firstly, do you really want to castrate him? Castrating a male goat that will eventually go to “freezer camp” is NOT a good idea! Castrating stops the production of testosterone, which is responsible for muscle growth. Muscle is meat! By castrating, the growth that the animal will have predominantly fat. For a freezer-destined animal, you want more meat (muscle) and less fat!

Secondly, the young male’s urinary tract has got to be developed enough so that the castration won’t harm him. If castration is done too early, there is always the possibility of the little guy being prone to urinary calculi due to an underdeveloped urethra, usually resulting in a very painful death.

Angoras grow much slower so it’s best to wait until fall shearing. Shear first, then apply the elastic band. This assures no fleece is in the way. A third CD/T shot should be given to an angora buckling at this time to prevent the possibility of tetanus.

Horns

To keep them or not to keep them, that is the question. Here are a few horn facts that will give you some perspective.

• The USA is the only country that removes horns from goats. It started in the ‘60’s when one state fair decided that horns could injure people peering over the railings at the goats. Ever since, horns have been deemed “dangerous.” Not so, but, whatever. We do disbud our baby dairy goats because we sell them, and most people do not want the horns, especially if they are planning on showing the goats.

• Horns are “social” organs; goats use them to re-establish the herd “pecking order,” which they do constantly. Removing the horns does not stop a goat from butting another goat, which is a goat’s natural claim to fame. Goats butt with the heavy front plate of their skull, so butting is still going to take place, horns or no horns.

• Horns are a cooling organ that regulates the temperature of the blood supply to the brain.

• Horns are convenient handles that enable you to control the goat’s head when giving meds or wormers, and also to move a stubborn goat from point A to point B.

• Horns are useful tools to goats; they serve not only as back scratchers, but also as a natural working appendage that assists the goat with small daily tasks. (Goat owners may not consider this a “plus factor,” since goats are very adept at using their horns to open gates and feed bins, create and enlarge holes in fences, bash down boards in confined areas, etc.)

• Horns are beautiful! They are incredible works of art and are interesting to look at and to compare.

Hoof Trimming

Hoof care is one of the most important parts of not only grooming your goat, but also keeping your goat healthy!

• Poorly maintained hoofs can lead to many health issues, such as hoof rot, sore legs, and eventually severe mutilation of the feet and legs.

• To observe a healthy hoof, take a good long look at kids’ hoofs. They almost look like they are walking on their tip-toes; the hoof is straight and keeps even pressure on all parts of the foot and leg.

• Regular trimming is the only way of achieving this goal. Hoof trimming is fairly simple and the equipment needed is inexpensive and easy to use. A pair of hoof sheers and a hoof pick are all you need!

• Overgrown or incorrectly trimmed hoofs can be brought back into shape, but this can be time consuming, and can take months and several trimmings to straighten out the hoof, so it’s much better to do it correctly to start with.

• Start by cleaning the hoof. Clean out any obvious debris. Take off enough of the wall so that you can see the sole.

• Trim the hoof walls, and then even out the sole. Think flat!

• If you trim a curve into the hoof, the goat will have a difficult time walking. This is called “rocker hoof,” so keep checking to make sure the hoof is flat.

• Trimming the heel more than the toe can put uneven pressure on the foot, causing the goat’s pasterns or fetlocks to weaken. Leaving a goat in this condition will eventually cripple it.

• Check between the cloves of the hoof. Any rash or sores should be addressed immediately! Dr. Naylor’s Hoof ‘n Heel works terrificly to dry up these problems quickly and easily.

• If you are using a fitting stand, the feet will be much more visible. Let the goat put the foot down between snips so that you can see how you are progressing. Remember, think flat!

• Back feet are harder to do, because most goats don’t want you messing around back there! Girls nearing the end of pregnancy, milking does, and nursing moms are the worst.