Meat Goat Blog

Goat Minerals Follow-Up Question

Post suggestion by Allan

I recently got an e-mail from a long-time viewer of the blog with some follow-up questions regarding a post I wrote a few years ago about avoiding Coccidiosis. Here's how the conversation went:

Matt,

I have several questions but first a little background. My wife and I bought a ranch as I retired ten years ago. It is in south Texas and adjoins her parents’ ranch. We have also taken over my father-in-law’s cattle operations.

However eight months ago, at age 89, he decided he would start a goat business. He knows little about goats so I have been trying to learn as much as I can from websites like your blog ever since. That said, I am very interested in learning better ways to do it both for helping today and to prepare me for tomorrow.

Your blog has me interested in Rumensin minerals. Would you be willing to give me some advice as to how you feed this product to your goats?

What period of the year do you use the SweetLix with Rumensin?

Do you control which goats have access to it?

How do you make certain all the goats you feel should have it actually get it? Our goats have a pecking order around the feed and I’m sure some don’t get any at all.

Do you have to get the doelings/bucklings you wish to sell off of the medicated feed for a defined period before they can be sold?

My father-in-law still has good forage available (50% south Texas brush, 50% pasture with mixed grasses/ weeds). The only supplemental food he puts out is corn. Initially it was to train the herd to come in every night. But as soon as we get a freeze things will change more.

Thanks,

Allan

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Allan,

Welcome to the goat business! I hope you enjoy it as much as we have.

I'm happy to tell you about what has worked for us; I'm not a vet, though.

We don't mix our minerals with anything. We just leave them out for the goats to eat whenever their bodies need them. We offer free-choice minerals year-round but mainly worry about Rumensin minerals from about a month before kidding until the kids are weaned. We offer minerals to every goat on the ranch but NOT TO HORSES. I've been told that goat minerals have too much copper for a horse and can kill them. I'm not sure if this is true for cattle. We give our goats Sweetlix 16:8 Meat Maker with Rumensin. I found an online store that carries it here.

Since the minerals are always available, the goats usually don't fight over them too much. Any goat that wants the minerals can walk over and get them. We have had to stop providing minerals for a few months occasionally; when we put them out again, the goats will sometimes eat a whole bag in about 48 hours. After a couple weeks, they slow down again. 200 goats will eat a 25lb bag about every 2 weeks. But, the rate varies wildly depending on the season.

I believe Rumensin is safe to feed to animals before slaughter. I found this FDA article that says it can be used to increase weight gain in slaughter cattle (among other uses).

We use a swivel feeder that we got from a friend to give the minerals to the goats. At the time, we never would have paid this much money for a glorified feed bowl. However, I would definitely pay for one today. We've been using ours for over 10 years and it still gets the job done. The fin on the top of the feeder turns the opening away from the wind when it's raining. This keeps the minerals dry. The swivel also prevents the goats from knocking it over. It doesn't take very many bags of ruined minerals to pay for the feeder. Here's a link to a similar Sydell product.

If we do give feed (separate from the minerals), we usually use 20% protein cattle cubes. The main reason they need feed is to supplement a lack of good weeds to eat when the property gets eaten down too much. Protein is the most important thing in bagged feed.

I hope this helps! Keep questions like these coming. I'll probably start turning them into posts that might help other people who have the same questions!

-- Matt

 

When to Wean: There Go the Kids

With the 2017 kidding season already underway, we've been getting lots of calls from people wanting to buy goats as soon as they're available. But, the kids need to be raised and weaned before they can be sold. So how long should a goat rancher wait before weaning?

Well, there are a couple of things to consider when weaning kids. You don't want to wean them too early - otherwise their growth will be stunted. But, you don't want to leave them too long either; then, the bucklings will start breeding everything they can reach.

We've found that it's usually best to wait between 60 and 90 days before separating the kids from their mothers. This gives the kids adequate time to grow strong on their mother's milk and to begin eating a few weeds. Once the kids are separated from their mothers (preferably out of her line of sight), the doe will have a chance to regenerate her strength for next breeding season without needing to provide nutrition for three.

Thanks for the suggestion, Allan!

Where to Tag a Goat's Ear: Here Come the Kids!

Well, it's that time of year again - babies will be hitting the ground pretty soon, and that means lots of little ears to tag. I know I've given a lot of advice for Kidding Season in the past, but the other day I was thinking back to when we started raising goats (I can't believe it's been over a decade!). I still cringe at some of the silly mistakes we used to make while tagging, but I hope this blog will help you avoid our mistakes.

Tagging kids doesn't seem like it should be that hard. All you do is grab the kid and pinch their ear with the applicator - but if you do it wrong, you'll be kicking yourself for as long as you own the animal. If the tag is too low, it will rip out. If it's too high, it may be hard to see (or even worse, it could damage the ear). So where's the best place to tag a goat's ear?

 

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I thought I'd better use one. As you can see, the tags in this little goat's ears as just about dead center both top to bottom and left to right. In my opinion, this is usually a pretty good way to do it - but it depends on the circumstances. Like people, not all goats are exactly the same.

Some may have big veins running down the center of their ears. If you can miss them, you always want to avoid veins. Not only does it decrease the chance of infection, it also just hurts less when you poke the hole (it seems like the areas without veins have less nerves).

Others goats may have ears that are very thin and prone to ripping. You may want to take this into account by tagging a little bit higher. But don't tag too high - it gets easier to hit a vein the higher you go.

Another problem we've had with goats with short "airplane ears". The little boogers have ears that stick straight out like an airplane. It makes them very cute, but when they get older and the tags are no longer heavy enough to bend their ears down, it makes them hard to read at a distance. With goats like these, you may want to tag a little lower - but not too low, otherwise it might tear out.

Now it may not seem like it could be that hard to get the tag in the center of the ear, but goat kids learn quick. Especially if you're using a system that puts a tag in both ears, you may get off easy with the first tag, but the baby will be ready as you grab their other ear and prepare to "bite" it. Baby goats are very good at shaking their head right before you tag them. The best solution is to grab a second person to help you - that way they can hold the baby's head still. Just ask your helper if they want to come hold some baby goats this afternoon - they'll be dying to come along!

LGD's: Here Come the Kids!

I know I have talked about this before, but it's been on my mind since we recently got a new Livestock Guardian Dog pup. As a puppy, when kidding season hits, it is a GREAT time of year! The grass is growing, the weather is perfect, and there are all these fluffy little toys running all over the place. You've been looking for some fun lately and these baby goats seem like just the thing. Besides, you know it's okay because you've seen the rancher chasing them around and poking tags in their ears. So why not just do what feels natural? Let's chase'em!

This has been a big problem that we've run into in the past; but we're trying to avoid it this year. LGD pups learn by example. When they're little, they watch mama eat dog food, so they eat a little bit too. They watch mama bark at predators, so (after they get to safety) they growl a little bit too. Since this is how life works, they don't understand why they can't play along when you start "hunting goat kids." As they mature, they start to get the picture - but that's at least a year away. Until then, when the pup is around try to avoid doing anything with the kids that you wouldn't want to teach your puppy. Otherwise, you might have just shown them a new form of entertainment that will be very hard to forget!

Be sure to check out our directory of Livestock Guardian Dogs for sale.

Avoiding Coccidiosis: Here Come the Kids!

Coccidiosis - one of those big 'sciencey' words that I usually like to avoid - "is a potentially fatal intestinal disease of goats." Now you may be thinking that "I better make sure that none of my goats have the little critter that causes this disease." But I'm sorry, that's not how this thing works!

According to an article by Sweetlix nutritionist, Jackie Nix, "All adult goats contain coccidia in their gut, even healthy goats." Now that's just great! What am I supposed to do to prevent my goats from getting sick?

Here's the good news and the bad news. Most adult goats have built immunity to the parasites that cause coccidiosis; however, "Kids less than 5 months of age are particularly susceptible since their immune system is often still developing and they are prone to stress. Stresses that can induce a coccidiosis outbreak include: weaning, drastic weather changes, rapid feed changes, transport and rough handling." That can mean that those kids you've been waiting all year to sell just drop dead for no apparent reason! But fortunately there's a solution.

We talk all the time about how we don't provide our goats with much more than weeds, water, one or two yearly wormings, and minerals. Well here's where those minerals can really pay off. Every year, near the start kidding, we start putting out minerals that have one extra ingredient: Rumensin. Rumensin minerals,  like  the 16:8 Meat Maker with Rumensin, are "a medicated mineral supplement for goats designed to prevent coccidiosis." You can also use water supplements that are designed for cattle, but on our place, the goats usually prefer the creeks and ponds to the chlorinated tap water, so it doesn't do us any good. The babies don't eat many of the minerals, but their mother transfers the Rumensin to their systems through her milk.

While we don't buy into a lot of these types of treatments, this one really works. After having lost a good portion of our kid crop during a couple exceptionally worm-heavy kidding seasons, I can assure you that those couple extra dollars we spend on minerals are well worth it!

How to Catch Babies: Here Come the Kids!

In our last post, we mentioned the 'giant butterfly net' that we use to catch the baby goats. Now you may be wondering why we don't just run them through our working chutes - it seems like that would be more stress-free for the goats than being hoisted into the air by a 'big monster.' And besides, chasing baby goats is still a whole lot of work, even with a butterfly net. But here's why we stopped running the newborns through the chute.

Despite all of our negotiations, the kids still refuse to be born all on the same day. Since they have been so uncooperative up till now, we would have to run the goats through the pen every day in order to tag the babies before they were too old to stay with their mothers. Running the goats through that tiny little head gate, one at a time, is very stressful to the livestock. They are stuck in a tight area, getting butted on all sides. But not only that, there are little ones in there as well.

If a big doe get nailed by the 'bully' in the herd, it's one thing. But newborns, who don't have a clue what's going on even in the best of circumstances, will often get trampled or butted when things really start to get crowded. When there are as many as 800 hooves to dodge, the babies often have too much to handle at once. Having waited almost a year to get the kids on the ground, it sure seems silly to let them get run over, just so we don't have to work as hard. Besides, we wouldn't be able to relax and enjoy the babies playing if they were stuck in a little pen!

Tagging: Here Come the Kids!

With kidding season finally here, we've just set up our kit for "Open Season" on goat tagging. Though it varies somewhat from year to year, here's our general setup.

Each year, we select an seperate ID tag color for the bucklings and the doelings. The difference in color helps us easily sort them when we wean the bucklings in 60 days. The doelings' tag color changes every year so we can easily tell how old each doe is after they are grown. We keep the tags in seperate compartments in the kit, so we don't accidentally put the wrong color on the wrong gender.

We also tag each baby with USDA Scrapie tags. The tags are required if you plan to move the goats off your property (to sell, slaughter, or show). Since the USDA will provide the tags and applicator free of charge, we try to tag every animal we own - whether we plan to move them or not. Since we make a record of both tags, the Scrapie tag also acts as a backup ID tag - just in case the main ID tag falls out. By tagging early we don't have to worry about it on the day we sell them.

With those things out of the way, we still need a way to get hold of the little guys (they're very good at staying just out of reach). That's where our secret weapon comes in! We use a fishing net with a 6' handle as a giant butterfly net. It may sound funny at first, but it really works! The netting is lightweight (not the kind made out of rubber) and has very fine holes so they don't get tangled up. When the speedy kids are cutting back and forth, the net lets us keep up without moving our entire (significantly larger) bodies every time they move theirs. Plus, the extra arm length will often trick newborns into thinking they are safely out of range.

Finally, when we tag the kids, we will often see the mother nearby. This is an opportune time to write down the mother's ID number next to her babies' ID and Scrapie tag numbers in our cheap 50¢ notebook. When we get home, we'll transfer the 'field notes' into our herd records.

What Kidding Season Means to Us

For a lot of folks, kidding season is a dreaded time of the year - late nights pulling kids, lots of miscarriages, long hours bottle feeding babies. I can definitely see how miserable that would be. In fact I have seen it! When we first started raising goats, we, like many people, bought Boers. The experience was not a pleasant one! We did our best, but they kept dropping like flies - especially during kidding season. We got so discouraged that we almost quit the goat business entirely! But then we heard about Spanish and Kiko goats. Needless to say, we are much happier now.

When kidding season rolls around, our problems are not burying dead babies, but trying to tag them before they get to fast to catch!  We haven't birthed a kid or bottle-fed a baby in years; we spend our time watching the kids running around, jumping on rocks, and exploring the world. Now that is what kidding season ought to mean!

The Kids Are Here!

Our favorite part of goat ranching has finally arrived! We had our first birth of the kidding season today! A beautiful set of Kensing Spanish twins. We can't wait to see what they grow up to be, but we won't have to wait very long - the little boogers shoot up like weeds! We'll wean them in April, when they're old enough to be away from their mothers. Between now and then, it sure will be fun watching them grow!

Here Come the Kids!

We're excited to say that our baby goats will be coming any time now! We bred pretty early last fall so we'll be kidding a little after the first of February. The weather may end up being kinda chilly, but the Spanish goats never seem to mind that too much. (besides, they've kidded when there was snow piled up over their heads!) Whatever the weather turns out to be, I'm sure it will warm up by the time we wean in April!