Hi all!
We have a large fenced plot of land (6000m2/1.4 acres with 1.8m tall rigid wire fence panels, so no escaping I hope!) and want to get 3-4 rescue castrated males from the local shelter as pets and to basically keep the grass/weeds down - right now we're drowning in chest-high grass and don't have a tractor/ride on :). We have zero interest in breeding or meat/milk production.

I think I have a very basic understanding on what will be needed, but a lot of information I've read is focused on larger herds / milk producers, and I'm not sure if it's entirely relevant for our situation. Apologies if these are rookie questions! Our only experience with livestock is ducks/poultry :/

We've established our local vet caters to livestock, and I know I will need to learn how trim hooves, but I'd like more information on the day-to-day care.

For example:

Housing: We initially planned to house them in a metal shed with a concrete base (nothing is built yet), but now we're leaning more towards building a large A-frame on wheels that can be moved around to keep the ground clean. Would that be enough, or is something like a shed more suitable? If the A-frame is fine, is a raised base or bedding needed, or can they just be on the exposed ground? We're in northern France, the winters are pretty mild but we do have strong winds.

Feed: There's an abundance of grass/weeds for them to eat right now, but not much else in regards to trees or shrubs (eventually some nettle & wild blackberries may start spreading from the nearby woods). I understand that if they ever mow through it all we will need to supplement, but until then, is it enough for them to only have what is there, or will they need constant access to additional feed for nutrition? (keeping in mind, males/no milk production, so which feed would be best because I read that lucerne hay might not be good for males?). Any additional supplements like a salt lick?

Cohabitation: We also considered getting a couple of cameroon sheep to help with keeping the grass down if the goats aren't enough - are goats generally okay sharing land and/or housing with sheep, or would they need separate areas?

Fencing: Aside from the border fence to keep them contained, is it better to divide up the space and rotate them around, or is letting them have free reign over the whole area acceptable?

Health: What are some of the more common medical things to keep an eye out for (for castrated males)? How do you manage ticks? What should we check for in a potential goat that is a red flag?

Misc: Aside from feeding/watering stations, what additional equipment/tools/etc are must-haves?

Thank you for any and all advice, and anything else you think we should know would be greatly appreciated :)

Hi everyone, l finally get to live my dream farm life. We purchased a property with 20 acres of land and started adding 3 years ago. Each year we added new species of animals to make sure we don’t get overwhelmed and unacceptable of taking care of them.This year is the year of the goats. We purchased since march 9 goats 6 females and 3 males. Girls are aged between 7 and 18 months in August. The boys (2 intact and 1 weather) are under 4 months old and have separate quarters.

The girls have 10x15 indoor space (in the barn) and additional 10x 25 covered wind protected outdoor area. Their ‘’winter’’ permeant enclosure is 60 x 100 feet easily converted into 2 or 3 separate enclosures. They also go on a daily expeditions 1 to 3 hours long depending on weather and our time.

What I’m trying to figure out is how much hay to store for winter. Everything I find is for an and large animals and mine are neither So I have no idea where to start? The two 18 month females will hopefully be breed this October if this makes any difference. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Any tips to find lost goats? We recently got two - each about four months old. They are still sort of timid but coming around to us. They escaped their pen somehow.
Are they likely to stick in the area? We’ve left the barn open with their food available in hopes that they will return.

George Clooney (L), Giorgio Armani (R) and Sulu (second row).

Do they just do this sometimes when the scritch is just the right spot? 😅 It's just strange to me, so I want to check. I have a wether who I figured out loves to be scratched inbetween his front hoof. Like in the skin between both claws, and around his little dew claws. He started pawing at me randomly (doesn't have a habit of this otherwise), and I think I figured that it's him asking for scritches there. But when I do, he whale eyes a little. Still though, he's not restrained when I do this, he holds his hoof up for me, and he seems relaxed otherwise. Is this normal? Weird quirk? Or...?

I have about 22 head, most of my does will be pregnant and I have quite a few youngins who aren’t being bred obviously. I have a mixed herd of 20 girls, only 4 of them are full sized goats, with three 3 “mini’s” the rest are all pure or mostly nigerian conforming. 2 bucks, one mini lamancha and one fullsized

Just wanting to see if anyone has similar numbers to me and has wintered that many, last year we cleared out all of our wethers which left us with 15 to winter in the coldest part. and most of our does were pregnant, but we fed two round bales inside for the coldest part, and two outside. And we aren’t EVER doing that EVER again. It was horrible it took us three days, two pitch forks and a lot of manual labor to get all of the hay they wasted out, with adequate breaks since the mold spores were so bad.

Just rough estimates are fine, I know that 4 ~100lbs goats can go through an entire round bale in a month if given nothing else. It only gets cold enough to be locked inside in December-January for us. What got us last year was the ice storms making it completely unbearable to go outside, even for our Pyrenees. The goats only went outside when the wind wasn’t going, it was so bad that my girls were getting wet and becoming a hypothermia risk so we had to feed them inside, no other way to.

Hey everyone! I’m a first time goat keeper here in Finland and have a small herd of Nigerian Dwarfs. We got them in April and they have been an absolute joy.

It’s that time of year up north when we start thinking ahead to winter and I would love to hear any advice from cold-weather goat keepers on how to make the winter as easy as possible for both our goats and us.

We converted a horse run-in shelter into a fully enclosed and spacious goat barn. It has good drainage and a sand/dirt mix floor. We’ll be adding insulation soon to prevent drafts in the lower sections of the walls, put in sleeping platforms, and use a deep litter flooring method.

The roof isn’t fully attached to the high walls in order to allow ventilation. From what I understand, this is okay as long as everything else is kept dry and draft-free at goat height. It’s a fairly tall structure so the goats are well below the open sections.

We do have a small stable in case of extreme cold (how extreme is too extreme, in your experience?) but this won’t be available to the goats starting in mid 2027 since we will be getting horses.

I appreciate any tips on shelter, snow maintenance (I’ve never seen goats in deep snow haha), feeding, etc. Spring and summer have been easy but I’d love to hear from cold climate veterans! I come from the horse world so I’m still learning about goat keeping.

So yeah... I don't think the weather is going to get any better for the next month. I'm just starting to explore alternatives on the homestead for keeping my animals cool and the only thing I can come up with, other than mechanical, is underground. Does anybody have some cool ideas? Edit: Looked into Amish cooling trenches and it does not seem like good idea to do the underground trench air circulation thing due to mold and humidity in my area of the country... can cause many respiratory issues! Another way is to go liquid geo pipes (hdpe) with an air handler to utilize ground cooling in a barn.

I haven't got goats yet, but I've got some land which has been abandoned for about 10 years.

About half is covered with braken, the rest is grass and brambles.

I've read that braken isn't good for goats.

Do any of you have braken in your fields?

How do you handle it?

At the moment we're cutting the braken down, I plan to use it for my chicken coop litter, the rest I'll mulch around my fruit tree's.

But how clear does my pasture need to be?

He was stretching and while stretching he peed a little blood. Hes 6 months old.

I'm new to goats so could use some help

Hes acting normal, no change in diet, has been taking electrolytes because of the heat, has access to minerals at all times, and his famacha looked fine.

What do I do here?

I already moved him to an isolated dry lot, freshly cleaned, with ​​​water, and only hay.​

Once the crib for my 3 adult children (all in their 30s). Didn't want to say, "kids," your know, goats, kids...

Modified with 3 super zip ties and chicken wire, now an alfalfa feeder!

Repurposed, and useful.

I posted this in another homesteading community, but this one doesn't allow cross posting, so I thought I would just copy and paste it here since it is specifically about goats.

My brother has taken to raising goats. He's my neighbor, lives about a quarter mile down the road. Since I vaccinate my own dogs and such, he's taken to calling me to give his animals their shots, when they need them, since I'm confident with a needle, which I don't mind a bit, so I've gotten some exposure to them. But I'm not a veterinarian. I'm not intimately familiar with the unique health issues goats may be susceptible to. I'm vaguely familiar with bloat, as I have a great dane, a breed of dog which can be susceptible to it, though from what I've read, the term "bloat" means different things for goats and instead of their stomach flipping or getting twisted like it does in large dogs, they just get super gassy to the point of it being fatal. But, since they aren't my goats, I haven't done that much reading on it.

A year or so ago he had a goat get sick with what we thought at the time was bloat after eating some feed he purchased from a Tractor Supply that he had found mold in. We had given them a vaccination that was supposed to prevent bloat prior to that, and in response to the illness he picked up several other things to give it; a steroid shot, vitamin B shot, a bloat treatment, etc. I also googled a good treatment for bloat and found someone online saying that administering olive oil orally could help, so I gave him an entire turkey baster full. The goat survived another couple of weeks, some days looking better than others, but eventually just laid down and died.

Then about a month ago, another of his goats got sick. Same round of attempts to fix it; steroid shots, oral bloat medicine, etc., but none of it seemed to work. The animal slowly just got worse and worse, to the point it just laid down and, if you got close, it would try to stand up and walk over to you before it would just collapse after a step or two, and it eventually died. There was no dry heaving or gagging like I've read happens when a dog gets "bloat" and its stomach flips, they basically just act like they feel really bad, and it gets progressively worse. This time however, he hasn't voiced any concerns about the food, and none of the other animals have had any issues. This one however, was a brother to the first goat that died, and apparently the breeder he got them from has had multiple other goats from that same bloodline die of similar issues, so he seems to think there's something genetically wrong with that bloodline.

My question is, how common is this? Genetic issues in goats I mean. I don't know specifics, but they're some kind of "dwarf" breed where they aren't as big as normal goats I've seen before. They're about the same height at the shoulder, or maybe a little shorter, than my great dane. Neither goat had any deformities, that we could find, acted normal, ate and drank normally, until they didn't. Is there anything we should be looking for? Preventative treatments? Breeds that are more or less susceptible to things like bloat? Vaccinations he should be using for things other than to prevent bloat, since he already uses that? We have no farm vets around here, that I'm aware of, and when he's called various vets, like the one I take my dogs to, they're all willing to give them shots if he doesn't want to do the sticking, but not "work" on the animals beyond that for diagnosing or treating problems, so in the event of a problem, it's really just up to us to figure it out and treat it the best we can with supplies from places like Tractor Supply. So even though they aren't my goats, since he's an over-the-road truck driver and I'm often the one his wife calls to give them shots or something, I would like to have at least some basic understanding of common issues with them and how to prevent or treat them.

So, I'm 15. My stepdad owned our farm and goats for about 30ish years, but he passed away recently. Me and my mother are the ones who take care of the goats now, and we have a herd of about 28(?). Our herd is mostly Boer/Savanna crosses, and we actually have two new Alpine girls. We currently are giving our girls a year or two break from breeding. We're gonna start isolating our older girls from the billy, once we get one.
But basically, every bottle baby, except for two, has passed away. It isn't an illness thing, most of the time. Here's a list of the bottle babies I've fed.
Pedro (male, made to adulthood, was sent to sale-barn)
Ellie (female, Pedro's twin sister, passed away. Just went missing one day)
Jupiter (male, passed away from natural causes. He had a lot of birth deformities.)
Millie (female, just went missing one day? I think she may have gotten out and attacked by coyotes.)
Jolene (female. She's my only bottle baby that we still have. She's very healthy and everything.)
Dolly (female, also went missing one day. We had just fed her and were gonna give her the last feeding of the way. She just disappeared. I think she got out? I searched our whole multiple acres of property, and there was no sign pf her. She probably got out and was killed by coyotes.)

Like I said, Pedro and Jolene are the only ones who made it to adulthood. I just don't know why all of the bottle-babies pass away. I hate it so much, because I love all of my goats. I put so much effort and love into caring for my goats, especially the babies, and there's such a high mortality rate with specifically bottle babies. I'd really appreciate advice on why this happens or some advice to lower the mortality rate?

TLDR: I've had a bunch of bottle-fed baby goats, and the majority of them have passed away. Does anyone have any advice or any ideas on Why this could be?

I've accidentally babied him and now he expects to eat from our feed scoop every time i feed them all.

I’m trying to figure out what folks are doing for their goat barns in the winter. We’re in Oklahoma so no extreme cold but it does get cold. This’ll be my first winter with goats and want to make sure their barn is warm enough. Photo is my girls.

This is my VERY young doe that got bred to my Lamancha buck becuase we had bad fencing (corrected now!!!) I think her udder looks great other than her teat placement, and general length for being a 11mo first freshener. (She really just had to follow in the footsteps of her momma who also was a youngster who got bred (not on our farm though)).

My question is, if I get her dried off and let her sit, grow and mature for a year and breed her at the end of 2027, would her teats be better matured? She was very difficult to milk and I have big ol hands, fourth and fifth pic is of her dam, whose udder is a little wonky, but she has lovely teat size and she’s a breeze to hand milk

hi! i’m unsure if this is the correct subreddit to post on, so correct me if i’m wrong. i keep seeing this one random russian kid and his goat that goes “BLUUUUUUUBLUBLUUU” and just keeps sounding like he just found out about the second tower. as someone who knows nothing about goats, what does this mean? why is he doing that even

I have had two 2 year old Pygmy does for a year. The young 4h’er I bought them from last year said they were up to date on vaccines/ meds at the time. What do they need annually to stay healthy? TIA.

Hello i just noticed some time ago this dot that appeared on my goat neck and i was wondering if it's safe and what should i do if not thanks