Meat Goat Blog

Keep Goats from Getting Squished - Quick Tips

Don't put sides on your goat barn. The goats will crowd in and press each other against the walls. When they do this they can smother each other - especially kids. It seems like the goats would get cold, but they stay warm by sharing body heat. The ones on the edges just rotate to the inside if they start getting chilly!

Don't Lose Your Goats - Quick Tips

When you build a goat pen, make sure there isn't anything next to the fence that the goats can use to jump over. Whether it's an old tree trunk or a broken-down pickup truck, the goats will use it to get that little bit of extra lift they need to reach the greener grass on the other side!

What are Fecal Egg Counts?

We talk all the time about using Famacha eye scores to determine a goat's parasite load. But what if you really need to know for sure how many worms your goats have? Enter fecal egg counts. Fecal egg counts are pretty basic for the people who know what they're doing (i.e. veterinarians) but lay-folk like me wouldn't know the first thing about how to do one.

So here's a video by Parassitologia, using sheep, that explains what you need to send the vet and how to collect it.

If you're also curious about how the fecal egg counts work, check out this video from the UK by ScientifEQ (FYI, they spell fecal with an extra "a" across the pond). The video performs the count on horse manure, but they do a good job explaining how the process works.

The idea behind fecal egg counts is that if you use a microscope to count the number of parasite eggs per unit area it will give you a rough idea of the number of worms in the animal. This method is the accepted standard for getting quantified data on the parasitism of the animal.

But for most commercial operations, fecal egg counts are not economically viable for keeping records on individual goats within the herd. Most veterinarians charge $10-$15 a sample and it takes more work to collect the fecal samples than to check the eyes. Fecal egg counts are most effective, for small operations and large operations that only want to get a rough idea of the parasites in the entire herd. Otherwise, we recommend the Famacha eye score system.

Don't be Afraid to Cull - Quick Tips

Culling is not an easy thing to do. But if you're going to be successful in the goat business, it's very necessarry. If you want to be able to breed for a trait, you have to get rid of the animals that don't fit your criteria in order to make room for the ones that do - even if the one getting culled is pretty or friendly or has big kids or ...

"Raising Meat Goats in a Commercial Operation" - Advice from an Experienced Rancher

To the 2 to 4 year goat-ranching-veterans who are feeling a bit discouraged:

Maybe your first year didn't go like you planned - but you shrugged it off because you just "needed to get the hang of things." Then you were waylaid by another discouraging season (of course, due to the poor conditions, none of your neighbors did very well either). But last year's lack-luster performance really doused your spirits and you're sick and tired of losing goats for no apparent reason. Well take heart! Maybe it's time to look at your operation through the eyes of someone with a little more experience.

Greg Christiansen, bachelor in Animal Science, has raised goats for over 12 years and he's picked up plenty of experience-based advice along the way. I just finished reading his book, Raising Meat Goats in a Commercial Operation, and, let me tell you, this book would have made life a lot easier if I'd read it a year after we started raising goats on our ranch! So if you're in the same boat I was, maybe some hands-on advice is just what you need to really turn your operation around.

In his book, Greg covers essential 'trouble shooting' tips for struggling ranchers and gives positive solutions to address the underlying causes. To hit the highlights, Raising Meat Goats in a Commercial Operation explains parasite management, kidding, mothering, fencing, predator control, cross-species grazing, nutritional requirements, and marketing. The book is an easy read and covers everything from the perspective of someone who's put in the time to learn what actually works (and doesn't). As you read the book, you realize that Mr. Christiansen makes his management decisions based on economics and logic - not what someone told him was the way he should do it.

From the onset, Greg Christiansen makes his ranching objectives clear: the animals "should be able to take care of themselves for the most part. [...] As long as they have feed and water they should be mostly trouble free." So, with that goal in mind, he explains how to effectively manage a goatherd that is too large (600 head) to babysit.

At the same time, Christiansen, as a full-time rancher, also knows the importance of helping struggling animals regain their health (if only long enough to take them to the sale). According to Mr. Christiansen, you should be active when identifying unhealthy livestock; "[y]ou must be able to spot a sick goat before he spots you." Otherwise the animal's defensive instincts for avoiding predators will spur them to feign good health - only to be dead 5 minutes later.

Despite all the information Raising Meat Goats in a Commercial Operation packs into less than 100 pages, I think my favorite most relatable section was Chapter 7's "Other ways to kill goats." In this section, Christiansen lists some of the ways he has lost or almost lost goats over the years. If you've been in the goat business very long, you know how creative goats can be at getting into trouble. Reading a section like this will allow you to think one step ahead of the goats as you, for instance, build a fence with holes that are big enough for a goat to get their head stuck.

Greg Christiansen's book is chock-full of useful information that would be a lot of help to someone whose operation is struggling. As I'm sure Mr. Christiansen would agree, none of the information in the book is designed to be highly technical or scientific - but you will save a lot of time and money if you listen to his advice.

What to Avoid in a New Goat Herd

This is a follow up to a post I wrote a couple weeks ago on what to look for in a new goat herd. A lot of people are buying goats for fall breeding right now - and, if you have never been in the goat business before, all the conflicting information can get confusing. So here are the top five things to avoid when shopping for a new goat herd.

1. Ranchers that worm all their goats on monthly intervals – This will allow the internal parasites to become resistant to the wormer. Goats should not need to be wormed more than 3-4 times a year – we prefer even less.
2. Goats that are breed solely for their color – If color is the primary breeding criteria, they may be missing other more important traits like mothering or parasite resistance.
3. Goats that rely on pedigrees over ability – Not all goats with pedigrees are bad; but, if the only thing they have going for them is a piece of paper that says their great great grand sire was a particular breed, it may be time to look elsewhere.
4. Goats that need help kidding – Goats should be able to have kids on their own. If they can’t, you’re asking for a lot of trouble and heart ache.
5. Bottle kids – If a kid’s mother didn’t have the instinct to raise her babies, the kids probably won’t either. I can tell you from past personal experience, bottle feeding kids is a full time job.

What to Look for in a New Goat Herd

Breeding Season is rolling around again soon. That means a lot of people will be doing some last minute goat shopping to get in on next year’s kidding. So here are the top three things to look for in your new herd.

1. Goats need to be parasite resistant – without it, you will watch a lot of wormy goats drop dead for no apparent reason.
2. Mothers need to have good maternal instincts for raising and protecting their kids. Breeding does need to birth and raise kids every year – and they should usually be twins or more.
3. Goats should be living in a similar environment to the one you will put them in. If they were raised to lounge around a barn and you throw them into the pasture to fend for themselves, you will be doing a lot of “natural culling” – at your expense. "Breeding up" doesn't work.

Teach Goats about Feed - Quick Tips

Considering how hard we avoid pampering with our goats, it feels odd to say: teach your goats to eat feed. Most of the year, goats should not need to be fed in order to thrive - but, unless you have a herding dog, feed is almost essential to round up the goats from the pasture when you want to work them (or get them back after they find a hole in the fence).

Livestock Guardian Dog Directory

We're happy to annouce our new Livestock Guardian Dog For Sale Directory! If you've been in the goat business for very long, you probably know how important it is to protect your herd from predators and how difficult it can be to find a Livestock Guardian Dog or Puppy. This directory is free to post and view. The main Livestock Guardian dog breeds (although there are many more than just these) are Anatolian, Great Pyrenees, Akbash, and Komondor. Just send me an e-mail (matt@postoak.us) if you have Livestock Guardian Dogs for sale. Check out the directory here!

Worming Regularly: A Bad Practice

As responsible livestock managers, we all know that the more time you spend taking care of your animals the better off they will be. But be careful translating logic like this into your worming practices – you might regret taking such good care of you herd!

Like people getting a booster on their flu shot, parasites can become immune to wormers – the more you  worm, the more immune they get. Now you’re probably thinking: “How can they become immune if the wormer is killing them?” Well, it comes down to a numbers game.

In order for a wormer to be considered effective, it must reduce the fecal egg count of the treated animal by 90% - anything less means you’re building immunity. In almost any set of worms, there will be a few that are not affected by the wormer – it doesn’t matter how much you pump through, those worms are gonna stay alive. Wormer is designed to get rid of the other 90%. But if you kill all the worms that are not immune to the wormer (thereby eliminating the "refugia") then, as the parasite population rebuilds, it will be built only on the genetics of the parasites that survived because they were immune.

This is where things get tricky. In order to prevent the worm population from becoming immune to the wormer, you must allow the worms that can be killed to mate with the ones that cannot be killed. By doing this, you allow the genetics from the immune worms to be “corrupted” by the non-immune parasites. But if you worm the entire herd every month, the worm population will very quickly dwindle down until the only worms that are left cannot be affected by wormer – they’re immune.

So don’t worm unless you have to – and even then, remember that 80% of your worms come from 20% of your herd. If you worm the bottom 20%, it will do almost as much to cut back on the parasites as worming every animal on the place – but you’re less likely to build immunity.