FIVE BASICS OF RAISING GOATS

Contrary to popular belief, goats are most difficult livestock to raise. Learning how to work with them will make your life easier and the lives of your goats will be better.   Once you learn to "think like a goat" -- to understand how they live, see, and interact with the world around them -- you will begin to recognize problems  as they occur and even learn to anticipate them.   Plus you will save money, because the most costly  goats are always the sickly "poor doers."

Internal Parasites.   Everything begins with Haemonchus contortus (barberpole stomach worm).  Goat health revolves around controlling this blood-sucking, anemia-causing strongyle that consumes  blood volume and deoxygenates the body's organs, killing the goat.  Heavy worm loads are  completely preventable.   An established deworming program that involves random monthly egg fecal counts using a McMasters (gridded) slide under a microscope is your first line of defense towards maintaining healthy goats.

Do fecal egg  counts before you deworm. Count  the number of eggs per gram.  Select a   dewormer  (not a white-colored dewormer*) and give it orally at a goat-appropriate dosage, ignoring label  directions because we use dewormers off-label (not labeled for goats because virtually nothing is made for goats, or if it is, it doesn't work).   Do not use feed-based dewormers and don't  put dewormers in  drinking water.   Dewormers for goats must go into the goat's mouth.  Seven (7) days after you dewormed, do fecal egg counts again. If you didn't get a 95% reduction in the number of eggs ("kill rate"), then your dewormer didn't work.  It only killed  susceptible worms and let  resistant worms survive.   Start over   with a different class  of dewormer.

* In most parts of the USA, the "white-colored" dewormers (Safeguard, Panacur, and Valbazen) don't kill stomach worms.

Because you dewormed does not mean that it worked. Fecal egg counts using McMasters (gridded) slides and a single eye-piece (monocular) microscope with an adjustable stage that allows the slide to be moved side to side is the only way to get accurate readings.

The dewormer to use is the one that you determine works (by doing fecal egg counts) with your goats on your property.    Use this dewormer until it quits working. Do not   rotate dewormers. When it quits working, change to a different class of dewormer and continue random monthly fecal egg counts,  as well as fecal egg counts before and seven (7)  days after deworming.

You can use FAMACHA eye membrane checks as a guideline to your goats' health, but only fecal  egg counts  using gridded microscope slides will tell you what is really going on inside the goat.

At  www.tennesseemeatgoats.com on the Articles page and in the MeatGoatMania archives is the  article  DOING YOUR OWN FECALS IS EASY.  Read the article   and buy the MSK-01 microscope, fecal floatation solution, gridded McMasters slides, pipettes, tubes/containers and other supplies and learn to do your own fecals.   At 2024 prices, you can likely buy all of these items for about $300 on Amazon.com. It doesn't take long to spend $300 with a vet or lose $300 when a goat dies from worms. You will have firsthand knowledge of wormloads in your goats in the timeframe that  you need this information by doing  your own fecals.

Acreage.  Sufficient acreage is critical so the goats aren't in constant contact with worms, both in pasture and in feces. You cannot feedlot goats. They can't handle the stress and sickness caused  by the closeness, and they can't overcome the worm load that occurs with constant exposure to fecal material in overcrowded conditions.

Raising  20  goats on 2 acres is a feedlot. I've talked with hundreds of people who are raising goats in  overcrowded conditions and they all have internal parasite  problems. Stocking rates for goats are all about reducing exposure so that the wormload can be  controlled.   If your goats are wormy, you are overcrowded.

Think of goats as DEER. They need space to roam.   They stress easily. They must eat "from the top down" (leaves and weeds) to avoid microscopic stomach worms that live at ground level and on grass blades as tall as eight (8) inches.

Worms are very adaptable.  The barberpole stomach worm  goes  into hypobiosis (hybernation) in a pregnant doe. When  she  goes into labor, the worms re-start their life cycle  and are waiting on the ground when  her kids  take their first bite.

Worms  are more adaptable than goats to their environment,  so you have to provide conditions in which the goats can thrive.  This means lots of land  over which to forage-browse. Some  people don't have enough acreage  upon which to raise goats. WET equals WORMS. Much of the USA is too wet to raise goats successfully. Goats  are a dry-land species.

If you insist on raising goats in wet environments, you must keep your stocking rates super low and put extra focus on fecal egg counts. The worm to concentrate  on is Haemonchus contortus, the barberpole stomach worm, which sucks blood, causes anemia, deoxygenates organs, and kills goats. The protozoan to monitor and control is Coccidia. See the Articles page at www.tennesseemeatgoats.com for many helpful articles addressing these issues.

Shelter  and  Weather.  Goats need protection from wind and rain. They need shelter from extreme cold and heat.   In hot climates, they  need shade, especially darker colored goats. Goats expel heat from their bodies through their horns. If you disbud or dehorn, they can overheat, mouth breathe, and die. Goats, especially kids, have trouble maintaining internal body temperature during wide swings of outside temperatures. Pneumonia is often the result and is second only to worms in killing goats. Proper shelter varies based upon the weather conditions in your part of the country.

Nutrition. You can do everything else correctly  and if your goats aren't properly fed and hydrated, you will still have problems. Proper goat nutrition is difficult to get right. Too many  people either overfeed or underfeed. You have to know the nutritional values of what you are feeding.   If you mix your own feed or buy it from someone who isn't a trained goat nutritionist, then you have no idea what amount of protein, fat, fiber, energy, vitamins, and minerals you are feeding.

You can't "starve the profit" out of a goat. Goats have a very fast rumen passage rate (11 to 14 hours). Whatever the goat eats, it must be palatable, easy to digest, and highly nutritious or the goat's digestive system won't have time to extract nutrients from it. Cattle can survive on dead grasses in poor pastures because their rumens take two to three days to digest them. Goats literally cannot digest coarse and stemmy plant materials; they  contain too much lignin (indigestible fiber).  Believing that goats can eat anything is 180* out of sync with reality.

Develop a relationship with a goat nutritionist at the plant that produces your feed and have that professional analyze your particular needs. There is usually no charge for this valuable service if you are buying their feed.   I feed 3/16th inch pelleted feed.  Textured ("horse & mule") feed has a molasses base that molds easily. Mold kills goats in multiple ways, including but not limited to Listeriosis. You don't want Listeriosis in your goats.  I developed the protocol for treating Listeriosis many years ago.  It works, but it is time consuming, tedious, expensive, and exhausting.  Avoid  problems by not feeding sacked or bulk feed that can easily mold. Keep the feed room securely locked and located away from the goats.

When buying hay, never tell the sellers that you raise goats. Most of them think goats can eat anything, including tin cans. Ignorance about goats is mind-boggling. Tell them you want to buy horse-quality hay. Never feed hay with mold on it . . . not even white-colored mold. This includes sileage, baleage, haylage, and alfalfa that has been packaged with high moisture content.   You can't tell if hay is of good quality by looking at it.

Test your hay. Dairy One Forage Lab in New York  provides  a basic analysis via their postage-paid mail-in sampler for about $24.   You (or your goat  nutritionist) can take samples of plant materials in your pastures for nutritional analysis too. See my article on hay and forage testing on the Articles page at www.tennesseemeatgoats.com.

Spend the money necessary to buy good quality feed and hay for your goats. Proper nutrition helps prevent health problems with goats.  A starving goat scrapping for food on pasture will quickly develop internal parasites. It is much cheaper to feed them properly.

Get these five basics of raising goats right and managing your goats becomes much easier when you approach their world from the goats' point of view.   Which brings me to the sixth BASIC of raising goats:  If you don't provide proper management along with the five BASICS above, your goat problems will never end.  Attend GoatCamp™ at Onion Creek Ranch north of Austin, Texas every October to get the information you need to be a successful  goat raiser.

Suzanne W. Gasparotto, Onion Creek Ranch, Texas    10.1.24

The author, Suzanne Gasparotto, hereby grants to local goat publications and club newsletters, permission to reprint articles published on the Onion Creek Ranch website under these conditions: THE ARTICLE MUST BE REPRODUCED IN ITS ENTIRETY AND THE AUTHOR'S NAME, ADDRESS, AND CONTACT INFORMATION MUST BE INCLUDED AT THE BEGINNING OF THE REPRINT. We would appreciate notification from any clubs or publications when the articles are used. (A copy of the newsletter or publication would also be a welcome addition to our growing library of goat related information!)

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