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September 24, 2006
20 truths about raising goats
This was posted to a mailing list I read about goats by Suzanne Gasparatto of Onion Creek Ranch. If you are thinking of raising goats, these all ring true so pay attention! :)
- Mortality and goats go together. Any species that has early sexual
maturity, short gestation, and multiple births is going to have deaths --
despite your efforts. Do your best and learn from your mistakes. - Confined goats become unhealthy or dead goats. Goats need many acres to
roam in order to stay worm- and disease-free. You cannot successfully
feedlot goats; they can't take the stress and crowding. - Unexpected problems *will* occur. Illnesses, weather problems, broken
fences -- when you raise goats, problems are going to occur at the most
inconvenient time, when you are exhausted, and when you can least afford it. - Trying to breed for all markets generally results in failure in most
markets. Unless you have lots of acreage, cheap labor, and a ton of
money, you cannot produce quality breeding stock, show goats, and slaughter
animals. Each category is a specific type of animal and mutually exclusive
of each other. Select one as your focal point and "dabble" in the others
-- if you must. - If making the almighty dollar is your driving force, you are doomed from
the start. Focus on quality animals and honest business dealings and
the money will follow. - Show goat and meat goats are *not* the same animal. If you want to raise
meat goats, don't take nutrition or management advice from show-goat
people. Don't try to make show goats into breeding stock or commercial
goats. Show goats are raised completely different from meat goats. - Goats are not the tin-can-eating animals of Saturday-morning cartoon
fame. Nutrition is the most complex part of raising goats. Rumens are
very easy to upset. Think in terms of "feeding the rumen, not the
goat." Have a qualified goat nutritionist review your specific needs and
recommend a feeding program adapted specifically to your herd. Improper
feeding kills goats. - If someone offers you cheap bred does in the dead of winter, you can be
sure that the deal is too good to be true. The act of moving them
cross-country under such conditions is enough to make this a bad
investment. The best you can expect is sick does and dead kids. Goats
need time to adapt to new surroundings. Use common sense when transporting
and relocating them. - Goats are livestock -- not humans, dogs, or cats. They live outside,
having a distinct social pecking order, and beat the heck out of each other
regularly to maintain this ranking. Goats are delightful and intelligent
animals, but they weren't created to live in the house with you. Lose
the urbanite approach to raising goats. - A goat with a big rumen is not necessarily fat. A big rumen is indicative
of a good digestive factory. A goat is a ruminant and a ruminant is a
pot-bellied animal. Fat on a goat layers around internal organs and also
forms "pones" or "handles" that you can grab with your fingers at
locations like where the chest meets the front leg. If you can pinch an
inch of flesh at that point, the goat is likely fat. A light layer
of subcutaneous fat over the ribs is essential. - Goats are NOT "little cattle." Goats and cattle are ruminants and there
the similarity ends. Think of goats as *first cousins* to deer in terms of
how they live, roam, and forage for food. - Goats are linear thinkers. The shortest distance between two points to a
goat is a straight line. If you place a gate at the north end of the
pasture and the home pens are south, goats are going to stand at the south
end of the pasture until you have the sense to cut a gate there. If water
is on the immediate other side of the fence, goats will not walk down and
around the fence to get to the water. It's 'right over there,' so they'll
stand in one place until you show them how to access the water or until
they die of thirst. Cut a gate for easy access and save yourself some
grief. Learn to think like a goat. - A male goat has only one purpose in life -- to reproduce his species in
general and his lineage in particular. A buck in rut is a dangerous
animal. He may have been cute when you were bottle-feeding him, but he is
a male on a mission when does are in heat -- and you are in his way. Be
careful around and always respect the danger potential of breeding bucks. - Bred does will kid in the worst possible weather. When sunshine changes
to storms and the temperature drops below freezing, the kidding process
will begin. - Bottle babies are a pain in the rear. Delightfully cute as they are, they
grow up to be adults that are poorly socialized within the herd,
overly-dependent upon humans, and usually at the bottom of the herd's
pecking order. Do everything you can -- short of destroying a kid -- to
avoid bottle babies. - Goats are creatures of habit. If you have a goat that repeatedly hangs
its horns in fencing, that goat will stick its head in the same place time
after time until you fit the horns with a PVC pipe secured by duct
tape. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. - Goats are HERD animals. More so than any other livestock, goats depend
upon staying together for safety. They have few natural defenses and
many predators. - There is no such thing as a "disease-free" herd. There isn't a goat
alive that doesn't have something that could be deemed *disease* in its
system. The immune system requires a certain level of bacteria, worms, and
coccidia in order to keep the goat healthy. No producer can
guaranteed totally "disease-free" animals. When raising
livestock, disease is a fact of life. You are never "in control" to the
extent that you want to be or think you are. - Goats are the "Houdinis" of the fence world. If a goat can get its
head through the fence, the body is going to follow. Goats do not
naturally have a "reverse gear." Fencing material designed especially
for goats is a *must.* - Cull or cope with your creation. Goats that are repeatedly sick, are
overly susceptible to worms and coccidiosis, have chronic mastitis or foot
rot/scald -- such animals should be culled and sold for food.
Their line should not be perpetuated. Sell the best for breeding
stock and eat the rest.
Posted by roosterh at September 24, 2006 8:43 AM
Comments
Thank You so much for this info list about goat raising. A man called about four goats that he needs to find a home for because of a divorce and ask if I wanted take them. This list helps. Penning them in a place I had raised pea fowl and chickens brought up concerns for disease issues. Thanks Marjorie
Posted by: marjorie at October 11, 2006 9:13 AM
Posted toI love the list. So far, out three months of goats has been an adventure. We love every minute of them but they are not without their challenges. Please check out our blog.
BTW, I never thought of my tractor as sexy, but yeah it fits....
Peace
Tom
Posted by: Tom B at December 12, 2006 3:13 PM
Posted toYou make it sound like this is the worst posible animal to try to raise. The experiance that we have had with our goats has been wonderful. Our kids were all born during good weather and they pretty much take care of theirselves outside of a little hay, grain and water. These animals are not as hard to take care of as you make it sound.
Posted by: Todd at February 22, 2007 6:17 AM
Posted toLots of truth here. I lost my Nubian doe this first year. She kidded out three live and one dead. I suspect a stuck or dead kid that she wasn't able to deliver. I think I've learned from it. I've never had a doe with delivery problems before. The kids were bottle fed, but seem to be socializing okay with the other goats.
I think I would add: Don't underestimate the nutritional value of browse. So many people think that they are starving their goats if they don't feed grain and top quality hay. Deer manage to raise nice fawns without those things. Your goat can too. Many of the things they eat, with lots of browse, have better nutrition than the grains and hay.
Posted by: Teri Pittman at July 27, 2007 7:39 PM
Posted to