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HOW TO RAISE HEALTHY GOATS
Rezaul Haque
Mortality and goats go together. Any species that has early sexualmaturity, 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 manyacres to roam in order to stay worm- and disease-free. You cannotsuccessfully 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 atthe most inconvenient time, when you are exhausted, and when youcan least afford it.Trying to breed for all markets generally results in failure in mostmarkets. Unless you have lots of acreage, cheap labor, and a ton of money, you cannot produce quality breeding stock, show goats, andslaughter animals. Each category is a specific type of animal andmutually 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 thestart. Focus on quality animals and honest business dealings and themoney will follow.Show goat and meat goats are *not* the same animal. If you want toraise meat goats, don't take nutrition or management advice fromshow-goat people. Don't try to make show goats into breeding stock orcommercial goats. Show goats are raised completely different frommeat goats.Goats are not the tin-can-eating animals of Saturday-morning cartoonfame. Nutrition is the most complex part of raising goats. Rumens arevery easy to upset. Think in terms of "feeding the rumen, not thegoat." Have a qualified goat nutritionist review your specific needs andrecommend 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 canbe 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 badinvestment. The best you can expect is sick does and dead kids. Goatsneed time to adapt to new surroundings. Use common sense whentransporting 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 eachother regularly to maintain this ranking. Goats are delightful andintelligent animals, but they weren't created to live in the house withyou. Lose the urbanite approach to raising goats.A goat with a big rumen is not necessarily fat. A big rumen isindicative of a good digestive factory. A goat is a ruminant and aruminant is a pot-bellied animal. Fat on a goat layers around internalorgans and also forms "pones" or "handles" that you can grab withyour 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. Alight layer of subcutaneous fat over the ribs is essential.Goats are NOT "little cattle." Goats and cattle are ruminants and therethe similarity ends. Think of goats as *first cousins* to deer in termsof how they live, roam, and forage for food.Goats are linear thinkers. The shortest distance between two points toa goat is a straight line. If you place a gate at the north end of thepasture and the home pens are south, goats are going to stand at thesouth 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 notwalk down and around the fence to get to the water. It's 'right overthere,' so they'll stand in one place until you show them how to accessthe water or until they die of thirst. Cut a gate for easy access andsave yourself some grief. Learn to think like a goat.A male goat has only one purpose in life -- to reproduce his species ingeneral and his lineage in particular. A buck in rut is a dangerousanimal. He may have been cute when you were bottle-feeding him, buthe is a male on a mission when does are in heat -- and you are in hisway. Be careful around and always respect the danger potential of breeding bucks.Bred does will kid in the worst possible weather. When sunshinechanges to storms and the temperature drops below freezing, thekidding process will begin.
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