HOW TO RAISE HEALTHY GOATS

Rezaul Haque

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 if
not from others’ mistake.

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 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

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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.

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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.

rezaaaron@yahoo.com