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My foray into the world of self-sufficiency began with two animals and a dream: two Nubian dairy goats, to be exact, and a whole load of criticism and laughter from those who thought I was crazy! “What do you know about raising goats?” , and “Why bother, isn’t it easier to just go buy milk at the store” Smirk, smirk. Little did they realize, this made me ever more determined to have the last laugh.

My husband was grudgingly tolerant, and my children were excited and blindly trusting their mother to know exactly what she was doing. After all my thorough research I jumped in feet first….and fell. And fell and fell again. But, after some blood, sweat, and tears I believe I have learned a lot and would like to share what wisdom I have gained with those who might be considering the dairy goat as a fresh milk source for their family.

Goats are an excellent choice for family dairy needs! They are intelligent, inquisitive creatures and they each have their own unique personality. Some have endeared themselves to me more than others and I am only a tad ashamed to say that I have my favorites. Most of my does (females) weigh around 130 pounds, and are easily handled by both myself and my small children. Their senses are sharp, and they are curious to a fault. I have one particular doe who will refuse to hop on her milk stand when I have swept the floor underneath it, because she knows something is different.

In comparison to a family cow, goats are much smaller, and obviously require less feed. They are less intimidating than a cow, and again easily handled by children. The only exception to this would be the buck (an intact male goat). Bucks can grow quite large, and some become aggressive or try to show dominance. We have a rather large buck on our property with enormous horns, and my children are strictly forbidden to go into his pen.

Goat’s milk, if handled properly, is delicious. It is not “goaty”, bitter, or distasteful. It is creamy, sweet goodness, and is good for you! Goat’s milk is easily digested, and some folks who cannot tolerate cow’s milk will have an easier time with goat’s milk. Please do yourself a favor and never judge fresh goat’s milk by the vile concoction in the can at the store.

I will only briefly touch on the subject of pasteurization. I believe this is a personal choice, and I do not believe there is a right or wrong choice. Please do your research and make an informed decision regarding what is best for your family. Regardless, your milk will need to be filtered before drinking. Filtering will ensure that any bits of dirt or hair will be removed from your milk. I use milk filters bought from a dairy supply catalog (Hoegger’s, Jeffers or Caprine Supply). I have personally tried using coffee filters and several layers of cheesecloth and those methods did not go over well for me. If you choose to pasteurize, it can be done stovetop with a stainless steel double boiler, or you can purchase a pasteurizer. You will need a thermometer if you go the stovetop route. I use a simple candy thermometer, but there are dairy thermometers available for purchase. Dairy thermometers come in handy if you so choose to try your hand at making cheese! In reference to raw milk please check with your individual state’s laws and regulations. In many states it is legal to drink raw milk [produced by your own goats] but illegal to sell it. Again, please do your research and try to be respectful of others personal decisions.

That said, I would like to provide readers with some insight that I wish I had had when I started out. I love and respect my goats for being providers(of milk or meat), however, should you choose to neglect or abuse them do not expect much in the way of getting anything back.

1. You will become a doctor. You must learn your goat’s body language, and recognize immediately what might be “off” behavior. Once a goat is obviously very sick, I would say you have about 24 hrs. to diagnose them or have them seen by a vet, or you will likely end up with a dead animal. There is a saying “A sick goat is a dead goat”. Most of goat care is focused on prevention, because once a catastrophic illness hits, very rarely will a goat pull out and be “normal”.

2. Do not expect to find a vet easily or at the last minute. Waiting until your goat is in the throes of a difficult birth, or until they are off feed running a fever are NOT the time to try to find a veterinarian. First of all, veterinarians who are well versed in goat care, or even those who will give it a half-hearted attempt are in incredible short supply. For reasons unbeknownst to me telling a vet that you have a goat is like telling them the black plague has infected your household. Most vets do not want to even talk to you-I have, in fact, had vets actually hang up on me when I mention the word “goat”. I have been so lucky to find a wonderful veterinarian who actually has been spot-on with most of my goats vet needs. It took me five years to find him. Until then I had to read everything I could get my hands on regarding goat care, illness, disease, etc. I wrote everything down in a “goat notebook”, and wrote down vaccines, antidotes, medications, side effects, common diseases, etc. I learned to recognize symptoms and make decisions quickly. There will be times when you just have to guess and hope you’re right, when death is imminent. Do not feel guilty for this, it is part of the trials of raising livestock.

3. Goats will not eat tin cans (although they may nibble on them out of curiosity). In all reality, goats are pretty picky eaters. They are small ruminants, meaning they have a four chambered stomach. They need roughage(hay, pasture, weeds, tree leaves) to maintain a healthy rumen. They love to browse, but will do very well grazing on pasture like a cow or a horse. Growing kids and lactating mothers are benefited by a grain ration. I use a loose grain mix with 16% protein mixed at my local grain elevator. Please do not overfeed grain or let children feed them grain unless you are certain they will not overfeed them. Grain can be measured or weighed, but if consumed in massive quantities can cause death by acidosis. Regular over-usage will result in fat goats which causes difficult births and overall unthriftiness. This can also cause susceptibility to goat polio, which I can tell you first hand is a heartbreaking disease. Goats also need certain minerals to maintain good health. There are minerals in block form, loose mixes, or you can even mix your own if you are so inclined. Please educate yourself by reading as much information as you can on maintaining a healthy rumen for your goats – it is vital to their well-being. In my experience the local extension office and 4-H manuals have been very informative!

4. Buy a good book or two. This is something I wish had done years ago before writing down enough information to write a book myself!

5. Goats require a certain amount of dedication and perseverance. You will have to milk every day. If you cannot commit to this please save yourself the trouble of purchasing any dairy animals. You will also have to learn to give your own vaccinations, trim hooves regularly, assist with birth, deworm them regularly, provide fresh water and food daily, and much more. You will watch them give birth and you will eventually watch some of them die. You may even have to shoot them (or have hubby do it) if they are suffering. In a large herd euthanasia is not a realistic option.

6. Learning to milk will bring frustration and tears. Please do not give up-it is worth it. It will come naturally over time. I did have days that I ran from the barn kicking whatever happened to get in my way, tears streaming from my face, ready to commit a mass murder of those *!#! Goats. You will cry over spilt milk! Or at least feel a tinge of joy at the prospect of committing physical violence against those stubborn creatures!

Remember, just as a new nursing mother cannot “let down” her milk if she is anxious, or in pain. If her baby screams in frustration, she will tense up and the whole thing goes down from there. A goat will sense your nervousness or frustration, or even your anger. The best bet is to try to stay calm even if you must walk away for a few minutes and come back. Learning to milk my Jersey cow was one of the worst times in my life. I know now it was because I was deathly afraid of getting my head bashed in every time I put my face next to those enormous legs. My cow knew this-knew I was afraid, and she decided to become “boss”. Another reason to never let your livestock dominate you. If they refuse to back down, even after time, they become a danger to you and yours, and I would recommend sending them to slaughter.
Milking can become very relaxing as you get better and better at it. Music helps, too. Milking should always be done in a stainless steel bowl/pail and all your milking supplies meticulously washed after each milking. There are commercial washes you can buy, although I think Clorox and soap and water work pretty well. After time your equipment may develop a residue of sorts called “milkstone”, and you can also buy cleaner to take care of that.

Please don’t let this deter you. My six year old can milk (until her little hands get tired!). As with any new skill, it takes practice. One more thing-if your hand muscles tire even after you master milking, or you have arthritis, there are many kinds of milking machines out there. Some are even just simplistic pumps, similar to a breast pump.

7. Most of your does (females) will need to be bred once a year to keep a steady supply of milk. Many people who choose not to keep a buck for this purpose can usually find someone in their vicinity who is willing to let their buck “service” your doe for a small fee. You will need to do this when your does go into heat. Watch for these heat signs-Excessive bleating, tail wagging (called flagging), swollen, red vulva, discharge, riding other does. Some will display all, some, or none of these behaviors. One of my does has a few hour window where she will stand to be mounted by a buck. This is called “standing heat”, and sometimes it’s difficult to catch! Some breeds of dairy goats will go into heat year round, some only in season (usually September to March).

If you decide to keep [an intact] buck he will grow big and usually pretty stinky! He will urinate on himself, and do some pretty obscene things! A buck needs care as well, so even though it is difficult sometimes, please don’t neglect him. Hoof trimming is an area where bucks often get neglected. Who wants to pick up that smelly, urine soaked leg? I always enlist my husband’s help in dealing with my buck, especially if he is in rut. Please don’t ever turn your back on a buck in rut. That is unwise at best, dangerous or deadly at worst.

8. Have an idea beforehand what you want to do with your surplus goats. It is always exciting when kids are born, but then you have to figure out what to do with those boys. It is not realistic to think you will be able to keep them all. Yes, they are adorable when little, but they grow quickly.

Castration can be done in a few different ways. There is banding, which is simply placing a string latex band around the testicles with an Elastrator–a tool designed for that purpose. This will of course cut off circulation and cause the testicles to go necrotic and fall off after some time. If done too early, you risk the urethra not maturing enough and susceptibility to bladder stones. If done too late, it will be agonizing for your goat. I know this because it happened to me recently and after watching said goat literally screaming and writhing on the ground, I had to cut the band off. Now I have a young buckling trying to breed all his sisters, and I have to rid myself of him ASAP. He will either be sold to slaughter or will go in our own freezer. This was a huge mistake on my part, but being the softie that I am, I could not bear to see an animal in so much pain. This method seems to me more torturous as time goes by and I can hardly bear to do it anymore.

Another method is to find and crush the cords carrying the sperm to the testes using a tool called a burdizzo. This involves no blood and is considered a “closed” castration. I have no personal experience with this tool however there is a lot of support for it on the Internet.

The last option is surgical castration which , in my opinion, is not a feasible option for most folks, considering the price tag. A lot of people are in support of keeping a wether (castrated male goat), as a pet. In my experience they are sweet and wonderful for about two years. Then it seems that this would be about the time a buckling would be coming into maturity, and they get some dominance issues. I have known many goat people who have sweet and loving wethers. This has just not been the case for me. Your excess males can be sold for meat or 4-H projects, or as pets. It will be a decision you will have to contend with.

9. Last of all, try to find “goat people” to help you out especially the first few years. There were many times when I called upon others who knew way more than I did. I even called some late at night in desperation. They will be your best support system!

In closing, all of this may seem intimidating, but as with anything new you will find what works for you. As raising my own “kids”, it has been a challenging , yet rewarding experience. And I promise you, you’ll never see any sight more joyful than children playing with all their new “babies”. It doesn’t get any sweeter than that!

A friend of mine was thinking of getting into the meat goat business.  Since I have been raising goats for several years now, she asked me a few questions to which I responded with the following.  I thought that preppers considering adding a goat or two to their menageries might be interested in these thoughts as well.  In the past five years I have learned a lot and it has taken five years to become really competent.

First off, it is important to get your goats from a reputable source.  I got mine at auction, which meant that I was getting other people’s culls.  Most of the does I bought this way were fine, but they did bring in some disease that I have had to fight ever since.  I knew to isolate the animals for two weeks before putting them all together, but that was not long enough for a classic problem to arise.  This is casseous lymphodonitis (CL), which is a bacteria that gets into the goat’s system through a break in the skin and manifests as an abscess, usually on the neck.  It is said that there are only two kinds of goat ranches; “the ones that have CL or the ones that will have CL.”  Everybody gets it sooner or later, I am told.  You can have a specific vaccine made for it by sending a culture to a veterinary lab, but I haven’t done it.  I have tried the commercial vaccine, which is good on several strains, but it did not work on mine.  So, now I just lance the lumps and isolate the goat until it’s gone, but it seems to pop up again every so often.  At least I have never had a kid get it and that is the most important thing.  The disease seals itself off from the body, so there is no harm to humans to consume the meat, but it is illegal to sell the carcass of an animal that has it. 

Another reason people cull a goat is that she might harbor parasites.  It is said that 5% of the goats carry 80% of the parasites, so if a rancher notices one that gets wormy a lot or sooner than the others, he is going to be culling her.  Parasites are responsible for nearly all goat death and battling them is the most important part of raising a herd.  We drench with Ivermectin every three weeks through the summer, starting in March, or the month before kidding is expected to begin.  Each nanny also gets a drenching the day she kids because birth causes an explosion of parasites for some reason.  You check for anemia by looking at the inside of the eyelid, the pinker the better.  If I see that the Ivermectin isn’t keeping the goats in the pink, I switch to Cydectin.  It is recommended that you use only one type of wormer for a year because parasites develop immunity and you need to have a back up medicine that still works.  Don’t even bother with Safeguard, goat parasites are completely immune to that. 

The great goal of all goat people is to get to the stage where they don’t have to use any commercial wormer at all.  This is accomplished by frequent field rotation so that the goats do not re-ingest larvae as they graze.  Rule of thumb is to move the herd every three weeks to interrupt the life cycle of the pests and to move goats off a field whenever the grass is shorter than six inches.  Some goat people swear by diatomaceous earth as a supplement, and we have tried it with good results. 

To start with 5 or 6 goats, you wouldn’t need that much fenced space. You want to use field fence or some other stuff they are calling “goat fence” with holes of approximately 8 x 12 “.  I just use the regular woven wire 39-inch stuff that sells for around $120 for 330 feet.  The benefit of the larger holes is that goats with horns are not likely to get their heads stuck and all goats seem to think that the grass is greener on the other side.  If you are going to grow meat goats, one good thing is that they are not the escape artists that the leaner dairy goats are.  They seem to know that they are too heavy to jump over unless they are highly motivated.  We also fenced off about half an acre to hold the billy when he is not in use as stud.  Again, a Boer buck generally knows he is too heavy to jump over the fencing and as an added bonus, the Boer males are usually quite gentle and sweet tempered. 

I would fence 10 acres to start and also invest in some solar powered electric mesh fencing so that you can rotate the goats from one section of the field to the next (to avoid parasite infestation).  General rule is that one acre will feed 6 goats, but I don’t agree with that.  We run 30 to 35 goats on ten acres, but we have two extra ten-acre fields into which they rotate every 3 weeks.  This amount of land supports them fine as well as all their kids, of which we usually get around 50 a year.

Prior to when TSHTF, you will want to know about selling your kid crop for profit.  Recent butcher kid prices were $1.34-1.44 per pound for 40-50 pound kids.  50 to 70 pound kids were fetching 1.60 a pound.  Bigger than that and the price goes down.  So, you can get $100 per kid if you can raise them to a good weight before summer forage peters out, which is questionable around here.  My kids were not up to weight by the end of August this year, but I think it was because no one wanted to eat much during the heat wave. You will be paying at least $7 a head to the auctioneer and of course transportation costs because there are only a few places to sell goats.  Get on line and search for usda goat auction prices.  I am unable to get the URL to transfer in here, sorry.  They publish each week the prices they are getting, August and Sept being prime time for goat selling.

There is no need to be around to take care of the kids once they are born. Nannies are great for taking care of their kids. Of course, you will almost always get one bottle kid a season, where for some mysterious reason a nanny will reject a kid.  If you are going to insist that she feed that kid, then you would have to be on hand to catch her and make her do it 4 times a day, or you would have to be around to do that feeding for the first couple of weeks.  But the easier thing to do at that point is to sell the kid cheap, or give it away to a 4-H-er. I only feel that I have to be on hand for the births and most of the time, not even then.  Out of my 30 nannies this year, I was needed for only one breach birth.  I stay with them long enough to make sure the kids know how to eat and after that, they are on their own.  I do “jug” my new families, put them into privacy stalls for three days before returning them to the herd.  This is to make sure all is well, the doe is getting enough to eat, and the kids know exactly whom their mothers are, but you don’t really have to do this.  If you are willing to lose a few kids, you can leave them completely on their own. 

If you leave your kids on their nannies, there is little that you need to be on hand for, but maybe you were thinking of taking the kids off and feeding them from a milk bar so that you can re-breed the nannies faster.  If you do that, of course, you will have to be around to fill those canisters.  But, if not, all you really should do is watch to make sure the kids are eating.  Right after they are born, they usually find the teat within a few minutes.  If a kid searches too long and gets tired before getting that first dose of colostrum, he may just give up and die.  So, I help them out in finding the teat.  Often though, a doe will kid unexpectedly and by the time I have found her, she will already have those kids cleaned up and nursing.  I would say only about ten percent of the newborns need any intervention at all, as long as the weather is reasonably warm.  About an hour after the kid has had its first meal, I check back to stir the kid up for a second meal.  They can get sugared out and sleep too long if their mothers don’t wake them and then they are too weak to get back to the breakfast table.  I find that it is usually a first time mother that doesn’t know to nose the kid back to life.  If a kid doesn’t get to the teat at first, I milk some of the colostrum out and give it to the kid in a syringe.  Just an ounce of that stuff is enough to save a kid’s life. 

Timing your kidding is the most important thing to being able to sit back and enjoy it.  I don’t put my buck into the herd until November 1, so that our kidding always starts in April.  If kids come in the winter, you MUST be there to dry them off, warm them up and get them in under a heat lamp.  They will almost certainly die if you don’t.  Much better to wait until all danger of freezing is past.  Gestation is five months and five days, so you can pretty much time your kidding for your vacation or take time off from work if you want to do all of the things I do.  Lots of people just let Nature take its course and they lose a few kids, but that is the price of not having to be there.  One great thing about goats is that they almost always kid during daylight hours.  I don’t think I have ever had one kid at night.  In April, one of us checks the herd every two hours during the daylight hours.  When we notice kidding happening, we stick around, but more often than not, the nanny doesn’t need us at all.  But, if a doe is in labor for an hour without kidding, you have to intervene, go in and get those kids out.  Most men’s hands are too big to go inside a doe, so I hope there is a willing woman on the ranch.  If you don’t intervene in a breach, you won’t just lose the kids; you will lose the nanny too.

The other big thing about goat tending is trimming their hooves and this probably takes more time than anything else we do for the herd.  If you don’t do this, you will get foot rot, the animals won’t want to go far to graze, they will re-ingest parasite larvae and then they die.  So, foot rot is no laughing matter.  You may get rot even with perfectly trimmed hooves and they get a kind of weepy skin condition in between their toes in wet weather.  I slather them with a commercial hoof antibiotic and give antibiotic (LA 200) injections if the case is a bad one.  A footbath through which the goats must walk each day would probably get me out of this chore, but I haven’t ever figured out how to make those demons go through one.  They hate wet feet.  Putting the goats’ feed stations on top of a circle of gravel or rock also helps to keep hooves drier and excess hoof growth in check.

Goats do need some shelter.  They hate rain, but don’t mind snow a bit.  As far as food goes, goats need higher protein levels than other ruminants, so we feed clover/grass mixed hay in the winter, alfalfa for the last month before kidding.  We also set out several high protein vitamin and mineral blocks.  Goats are picky eaters and they are terribly wasteful with hay.  We use V-shaped square bale feeders with a tray beneath to catch falling hay.  You can also just set a round bale in the field, but pretty soon it will be soiled from goats jumping up on top, and most of it will be strewn around the ground. But a round bale of plain old grass is fine for filling them up, even if it doesn’t give them all that they need.  If you go this route, you should also feed a cup or so per goat per day of commercial goat pellets.  They push and shove each other in a mad dash to the dinner table when you feed pellets, so we have to make sure that the underlings in the herd get something to eat.  No goat will ever admit that she is full and will always tell you that she is starving. 

Few vets have much experience with goats, so you are on your own a lot.  You will need to learn about health issues, preventions and treatments. Whether to castrate or not.  Vaccinations.  Get some good books and make friends with other goat people.  Your local land grant university may have a goat expert and a small ruminant project, so you can go to classes or even just call them up.  And be prepared to fall in love.  You know, a sheep is a sheep is a sheep, but each goat is an individual.  They are clever animals and very personable.  You will quickly learn their language and be able to communicate with them.  After my dogs, my goats are my best friends.  Oh, that reminds me.  You don’t want to have a herding dog on the ranch.  Instead, you want a guardian, like a Great Pyrenees.  Any dog that starts to chase a goat should be banished from any dealings with them, for sooner or later that dog will give in to instinct and either hurt or kill a goat.  Even little dogs are a danger in this regard.  Your enemies are dogs first, coyotes second. 

And that also reminds me to tell you that goats don’t herd, they follow.  If you try to herd them, more often than not, they will just scatter and circle around the herder to get back to wherever they want to be.  We accomplish herd moves by pouring goat pellets into a wheelbarrow and walking down the lane with the herd following.  Goats are so smart that they learn any routine involving food in a matter of a day or so.  I just honk my truck horn and they all come running up from the field.  They can be stupid too, though, forgetting how they got where they are and wanting to go through a fence instead of back to a gate.  Just remember that you are smarter than a goat and if you think about it for a minute, you will figure out a way to get them to do what you want them to do.  One of the best bits of advice I ever got was, “if you are fighting with your goats, you are doing something wrong.”  Pay attention to what motivates them, which is always either food, the need to be in a herd, or the well-being of their kids.  Pay attention to what is happening in any move.  If kids get too far behind, you will lose them because they only care about Mommy, not pellets.  So, always make sure the kids are keeping up, slowing your movements to allow for that.  Keep the herd herded up as much as you can.  Any stragglers will be impossible to catch.  Watch the nannies too.  They will show you what they care about most at any given moment by looking at it.  If they start to lose interest in the food you are offering to make them follow you, it is a matter of proximity, so get closer. 

In conclusion, I know that I have neglected to tell you which items you should stock up on and how to tend the herd without any commercial products.  I have not yet addressed this issue in my own herd in a complete manner.  I would definitely pre-order a good supply of a long-acting antibiotic along with a drenching gun that doubles as a vaccinator.  Be sure to order replacement parts and lots of needles.  Get five good pairs of hoof trimmers.  An annual vaccine that must be kept refrigerated is Clostridium Perfringens Types C and D with Tetanus Toxoid.  I have stocked a five-year supply.  I also keep on hand about twenty pouches of powdered Corid for the treatment of coccidiosis, a condition that can be avoided for the most part by keeping goat quarters clean.  To get around purchasing commercial feed, we have planted twenty acres of alfalfa and that is a complete feed.  I feel that Vitamin B injectables are necessary just in case you see a goat convulse.  I also mix up my own “go juice,” which is a combination of water, corn syrup and vitamins.  I give this whenever a goat may need a quick jolt of energy.  Finally, I keep a powdered supply of electrolytes for dehydration.  There are many supplements and preventative or curative products on the market.  You will simply need to decide which ones to stock up on for yourself, given your specific circumstances.