Is there a goat farmer in the house

I would like to know if there's a goat farmer in the house. I have got a friend who is starting up goat farming and would like to have some questions answered.

Tell him to run away.... goats are a PITA!

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Simon you have the wrong goat, check this one of "Benny" could not geta more placid fella.

David, is that one of your goats?

Benny is tethered though.. I never liked tethering my goats and when they were free they always found a way out and never ate what they were meant to... PITA for sure. Mine were placid enough... very friendly but give me alpaca any day.

Loved my goats and parting with them was one of the hardest things I had to do after my marriage busted up.

What does your friend need to know Alee ?

Here's a few pix of some of my girls.
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cheers. Rosalie

OzRose, he would like to know the basics.

What to feed and how often.
What kind of shed they need
Common diseases/symptoms and their remedy
How to take care of their kids till they are big enough.

We don't have a Vet in the country and we dont have much green to offer the goats. I think if he does'nt have daily supply of plants/grass then he should forget about raising goats for meat. Am I right on that?

Do you think one of your goats will survive our tropical climate?

Hi Alee, the animal husbandry of goats would be similar to sheep I would say, minus the shearing. There tuff critters, go over to the west, north of Geraldton for 500km and you will see them every where, makes you wonder what they live on. If there is no grass they go up the trees and browse.

When I was a kid I had goats, the billy was Humbug, the nanny was sympsethia and she had twin kids, which I called Bonny and Clyde, what kids call there pets LOL.

Our three goats were in a 3 acre paddock. They had plenty of green feed and yet they still tried everything they could to get into the chicken feed and my rose gardens. They would climb the blackwood trees and get stuck. I had to climb the bloody trees and get them down again. They graze from the outside in... that is they will graze the fenceline or the limit of their tether first and make their way in. The only way I could keep them in was to tether one and let the others go free. They like to stay together and are social animals. Mine were whethers. Boys with their bits can smell mighty bad and can be harder to handle but you still get nice billies too. The main maintenance will be worming, lice, and keeping their hooves trimmed. Your soil would be mostly soft sandy soil wouldn't it? This will not help keep the hooves in good condintion and may encourage splaying unless frequently trimmed. I would trim mine about once every two months because my back paddock is pretty rocky which helps wear hooves down. They aren't really grazing animals. They like to pick. Mine would graze with the alpaca but would then climb a tree to eat the blackwood leaves and then stand up on their hind legs to pull tree fern fronds down, then they go and pull thistle heads off, browse on a bit of blackberry, go next door and eat their poppies , try everything they could to get my roses, climb fences to get to my mulberry tree and raspberry patch... dead set PITA. I would only ever have goats again if I could afford to completely refence my whole property with goat-proof fencing. Meat goats are goats like Boer Goats. They are much more well muscled than the Saanen and Togs I had. You definately can't go into goats with normal sheep fencing and expect them to stay put. Mine cost me $150 each and I ended up giving them away and am now looking for more alpaca to keep up with the grass we have. The three goats hardly made a dent on the grass in the 3 acre paddock. I'm against tethering so will not get them again here. They're great down to minus 7... don't know how they'd go in the tropics. Your friend would probably end up having to hand feed them bagged goat pellets and feed like chaff etc.

Tonight when the kids [two legged this time and not 4 ] are in bed I will have more time to sit down and add my tuppence worth.
My goats were Anglo-Nubians and more suited to hot climates than Simon's S & T's which are European in origin.
They are a true dual purpose breed as they are good milkers with a higher butterfat /cream content than the higher volume european breeds and the wether goats have a big meaty frame that fills out well .
I will dig out a pic of my buck so you can see what I mean .
He was my darling , cost me an arm and a leg as a suckling but it was the only way I could afford an animal of his breeding .
Bucks smell , that's a fact of life but their musty hoary smell contributes to the does breeding cycle and the most virile bucks smell the strongest.
My goats and rose gardens co-habited together very sucessfully , and indeed complimented each other.
Yes they would eat as many flowers as they could if the gate was left open but escapes were uncommon as I am a firm believer in electric fencing - it even keeps my two legged kids where I want them to be.
All the rose prunings and deadheading offerings went over the fence into the goats much to their delight and all the straw and manure from their shed went over the fence into the rose gardens.

cheers. Rosalie

I have been a Dairy Farmer (Jersey's) , Saanen goat stud and the most sensible thing I did was toss out anything that needs milking and went in for fattening beef cattle. No breeding, no pulling calves in the middle of the night just very simple fattening only and watching the sale prices.

Alee, that's the best goat knowledge I can give you so I won't bother going into feeding housing etc.

Simon, OzRose and Ozeboy, Thank you for the first hand information.

I'm also doing some reading on internet.

Please keep them coming.

Sorry I didn't get back Alee , I needed a couple of early nights.

Goats are a ruminant animal like cattle and sheep , but unlike cows and sheep which are "grazers" [that is eat feed at ground level] , goats are naturally "browsers".
This means that given the choice , they will eat as first preference , herbs shrubs and trees at head height or above .
As Simon noted they liked to stand up and browse in his trees .
[Simon at $150 ea for wethers .... man you were had a lend of big time ]

Here is a picture of my beloved Pav [Indigo Pavarotti on his papers] he shows the good robust square frame of a top bred Nubie , and despite standing in nearly knee deep grass he was still stretching up to eat the overhanging branches of next doors cotoneaster.[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

As browsers , there in lies part of their great success in doing so well under tough conditions .
Grasslands are so much more local climate sensitive and the internal parasites that can decimate a grazing herd , do not climb trees.

What would be available for goats to browse on in the Maldives is going to be vastly different to what my herd lived on in Australia .
Mine received lucerne [alfalfa] and kibbled oats , lupins and barley plus a constant supply of really rough weedy meadow hay in their overhead hayracks.

I don't really know what to suggest for fodder in the tropics , that's totally outside my ken there.

I'm going to sleep again. catch you later.

cheers. Rosalie

I think goats would do ok in the Maldives, where I lived as a kid, was Papua New Guinea, on an island called Manus Island, it is situated 200miles South of the equator. I bought these goats from the Lutheran Mission, but what they where, could nt tell you. The tropics did'nt really seem to worry them and I never drenched. I think the european type goat may struggle but as Simon said Boer goats would be you best option or goat types from India.

Alee, there is a way to find what type of goat might live in the Maldives, what lives along the same parallel to you should live in the Maldives, either side to a distance when the climate/ plant growth changes, this is only a thought.

Warren, Rosalie and David, all goats are welcome. You can send them for our trial ground.

After trial period we'll have a BBQ.

This is 'Bob' (so called cos he was disbudded as a kid):

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Then he'd sit on the fence as a convenient resting 'sling':

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This was Rags down the back paddock up a tree fern. Rags suddenly died one day for no apparent reason while I was away on camp. We think he was either bitten by a tiger snake or ate something he shouldn't have eaten. He was an anglo nubian cross toggenburg from memory.

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Sorry I can't add anything useful to the opening poster's questions but I do have a goat living next door with a rather unusual headdress...

Meet Jerry:

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Jerry had a nack for getting his head stuck: in the wheel wells of 4x4wdrives...and lately in the brand new ringlock fencing...(new because it was SUpPoSeD to be goat proof and was replacing the flattened fencing as a previous poster Simon has demonstrated)

His exasperated dad fitted the bar after about a month of freeing the goat up to 10 times a day from the fence (as did I).

When you're a neighbour you tend to not bring up difficulties but it got to the stage where I just had to say something...this was what Pete came up with.

As far as I know it's just nail like - no nerve endings - and he's never been stuck all day since!
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Plus I'll add I've seen him use it to scratch those hard to reach places...

I hope it is not uncomfortable for Jerry.

So do I Alee! As I said before, I *think* horns are made of a fingernail-like substance, and therefore he wouldn't have felt anything, but I really don't know very much about Goat anatomy so I'm most open to correction...

Does anyone know if it's uncomfortable? (for the goat that is... )

Sure he's gonna have problems at the airport metal detectors

Alee wrote:Sure he's gonna have problems at the airport metal detectors

AHAHAHHA! Sure is!! Those hooves are not flight approved!!

Goat horns have a blood supply closer towards the head. Up there you shouldn't encounter any nerves or blood.