The ULTIMATE Baby Goat Guide

All right, so it's that time of year again when a lot of people are contacting us saying they want a baby goat. They've always wanted a baby goat, but there's a few things that you really need to know to make taking your baby goat home successful. You can't just have one for one. These guys love a group. They love a herd. They don't mow the yard. They're not really grass grazers. They prefer to eat browse and things that are up high off the ground and they require vet care. These are just like dogs or cats and they have health issues and you really need to have a good relationship with a veterinarian. So we're going to go over a few of those things as well as housing and a few other things to make sure that when you take your baby goat home you're all ready for a happy healthy relationship. We've got them for the girls. We've got them for the boys. We've got them for the babies. We've got excel sheets. We've got so much paperwork. It's insane. Keeping everything organized is going to be the number one thing that you're looking for in a breeder. Any breeder that you get your goats from the two most important things you should see is one you should see their records that they have tested their goats for something called CAE and that is a goat disease that if you have one goat in your herd that has it all of your goats can potentially get it. Another thing is going to be Yoni's disease. Now both of those diseases are easily tested for just using a small vial of the goat's blood through your local extension. We do it through our Clemson Livestock Poultry and Health Extension and it costs about eighteen dollars per animal to get them tested and we do that annually to a hundred percent of the herd. That's something that you're going to need to ask for anytime that you go to somebody's farm to buy goats. Not only do you need to ask for health records to make sure that the goat is healthy but you also need to ask for breeding records. As you'll see here our goats are registered with the American Dairy Goat Association. Now in this paperwork you can see that our goat, our boy goat, has his lineage and he is registered in our name. Now this just shows who his mom and dad are and when his date of birth is as well as who he can be bred with. It shows the goats on our farm that he's not related to. So with the ADGA records you really need to be able to see where this goat came from and you need to have these in your possession either at the time that you purchase your baby goat or you need to have the register or transfer of registration form. That's what is more often sent with baby goats. Like if I sell a registered goat that's what we send with that and then you can register that baby goat yourself which means that you get to name it. However if you're buying an older goat you're going to have this paperwork that shows that it's already been registered. So buying from a reputable breeder is going to be number one. That breeder should also have a knowledge of goat care and be available to help you if you have any issues with your baby goat. If you go to somebody's farm and they walk out into the center of a field with a bunch of goats and grab a baby from a mama goat and say here you go stick a bottle in its mouth and it'll be fine then you're probably not going to enjoy that goat to the fullest potential because it's probably not going to be very healthy in the long run. Now when we talk about proper shelter there's a couple of different options that you can have. We've got two different areas that we house baby goats in and this is the main one that we house baby goats in when they're the youngest. So if you come up in here you're going to see first off that it's a ramp getting up in here and this just causes them to have to climb a little bit. It knocks some dirt off their feet and there's a cover out front that keeps everything super dry. If you look at the ground here it's actually cracked because it's so dry here. If you look over here we've got their mineral and baking soda feeder in an area where they cannot get their feet in it. If they do get their feet in it then that's going to spread disease from one goat to another and they've got their hay in an area that's high up off the ground where they can't get in their hay and the hay stays dry. So that's a very very important thing because this is what they're going to be weaning off of. They're going to be going from eating milk to learning to eat hay. Now if there's a bad storm coming through or if you're looking at potentially predators coming in or something like that you're going to need an area where you can lock your goats up especially those first few nights. This is where we put our goats at when we first lock them up those first few nights because I can completely watch out babies come on babies work with me on the video now come on babies come on we're trying to show the people how to take care of you okay all right so if you look here I can easily lock this up now if it was 100 degrees outside that day I can still have these goats in here it's totally shaded they're super good ventilation this is a five foot tall door so no goats are going to be able to jump over it and rain is not able to come in here and the inside of this building has ventilation all around the top of it and it's got a secure lock on it so we don't have to worry about predators getting in here at all also we've got animals around the outside perimeter that are guard animals we've got dogs and alpacas that are going to make sure no animals can access this building at all because these goats are totally defenseless they're disbudded they are babies and they cannot protect themselves in any way shape or form from predators now in the mornings when I come out to let them out I can reach over and unlatch this and let them out easily and they're not going to fall they're not going to get hurt and they can get right down to the pasture or wherever they want to go the only bad thing to having a building like this is this floor in here is plywood which means that all their pee and poop is going to soak down into that wood and it's not going to be able to easily be removed so anytime that you're looking at plywood or anything like that you're going to run into issues with stuff rotting and having to clean it out more frequently if you were to house adult goats in here you would really need to have a tarp up under the bedding and you would need to change it out at least weekly oh good little baby I know so we're going to head on over to the other shelter that we have and it's one that I prefer however it does not have an area where you can lock them up so if you had this other type of shelter it would be great but you would need to lock them up in something like a barn stall overnight for those first few nights until you knew that you weren't going to have any issues with them getting tangled up in wire or something like that inside of their pen or a predation now the most important thing with any animal shelter is going to be to make sure that it is actually a shelter what you're sheltering them from is the sun the rain and any type of wind or hail or anything that's blowing towards them that's what this shelter right here does and this is for a very few number of adult goats you can probably put three Nigerian dwarf goats in a shelter like this this shelter is more of what I like it's up off the ground so there's absolutely no wet dampness moistness inside any urine or feces falls between the cracks I've got my hay feeder up here on the side and that keeps the hay up and it's easy to clean any hay that's dropped and it's easy to get any of the pee or poop up off the ground just with a simple shovel or a rake we clean this out probably about once maybe twice a week depending on how many babies are in here the only downfall to a shelter like this is it would really need some type of door across the front to be a permanent shelter so that you could lock the goats inside of there overnight when they're younger and that could be achieved by using a simple piece of cattle panel just something that they cannot get out of and predators cannot get into so you have a safe place overnight I know don't you love your little house don't you love it now when these guys are younger we do put hay inside of their shelter the reason we use hay and not straw is simply because they're going to munch on a little bit of the bedding and we want them to start munching on that hay we use a mixture of coastal and alfalfa but we really want them to start munching on that and it's a little bit tighter now you wouldn't want to use hay for an adult animal because it will mold so because we're cleaning this every couple of days it doesn't really matter but with an adult animal it would get pretty nasty pretty quickly and if you pan around Jonas and look at this pen this pen is all on a slope so there's absolutely nowhere that mud or water can build up this is a nice sunny area for them but they do have umbrellas for shade that we put up on hot days and they also have multiple hay feeders to encourage them to eat and we let the grass in here get really really high if it gets four or five inches then they'll start munching on it but they really don't like it when it's just one or two inches now these slats are just made out of regular deck boards whenever you're making these you want to be really really careful not to space them out too much at all because as the board dries out it will increase the spacing and these baby goats can fit their hooves in between these holes very very easily so you want to make sure that they're not big enough for a baby goat to get its legs stuck and potentially broken so while these are good they do come with issues if you do not correctly size them when you're building your structure and we do use treated wood on this we found that it lasts a lot longer and we really a goat might lick it or bite it once or twice just to investigate when you first build it after that initial curiosity they get over it fairly quickly so as far as water with baby goats this is dirty because i just got done weed eating but you want a little water bowl that you can keep in an area where they are a lot baby goats get hot very easily and figure they are either weaned or going through the process of weaning so you want to make sure that you get a small bowl of water that they can't drown in that they can easily drink out of and don't step in or pee or poop in but you want it to be small and easily accessible for them so something like this it's a heavy duty ceramic bowl is perfect for baby goats all right so as you can see here we have got a lot of medicine so all this medicine has a use we've even got a fridge with medicine in it this is where we keep our cdt shots cdt is one of the most important things that you should be well versed on before you even consider buying a baby goat this is the only shot a goat gets that's all you got to do for a goat vaccination wise so if you don't know what that is you're missing something but anyways you are going to have a tremendous amount of stuff that you have to learn when you get this baby goat the first thing you should do before you even take that baby goat home or even contact the breeder is find out what veterinarians in your area will come out to your farm to help you what happens if that goat breaks a leg or years down the road it's having a baby and there's issues with labor or you go out there and the goat's laying on its side totally non-responsive but breathing what are you going to do then that's not the time to start going on your facebook forum and searching for help that's the time to call your veterinarian and i will do everything i can to help anybody with goat issues but there's certain things that i don't know where i can't do on our farm we use arc veterinary services llc you can google them they have a web page and you can contact them and do what's called a herd visit they're just going to come out a day a week a month after you get your baby goats and they're going to look at the housing they're going to look at the health they're going to do fecals on the baby goats and they're going to tell you things that you need to be doing to make sure that your baby goats are healthy now it sounds like this would be astronomical in cost but it's surprisingly low cost just to do a herd visit they can show you things like how to do your own fecals like we do on our farm which will tell you about parasites that may be living inside of your goat they can do things like tell you about medicines that you may need to get like we have so that you can treat goats preventatively and also have things on hand so that if there is an emergency you can handle it yourself you don't need to schedule these visits even annually you can schedule maybe one every two or three years but you really need to treat this like you're bringing home a kitten or a puppy goats deserve the exact same amount of care as that cute little fluffy angel that you brought home from the pet store they have all the same type issues and plus some and there's a lot of veterinarians that aren't well versed on goat care so you really need to make sure that you find one that is willing to see your goat there's simple things like bar vac cdt this is the best cdt that you can get this has the highest rate of success with establishing antibodies in your goat herd and you can purchase it at valleyvet.com in either 10 dose vials or you can purchase it in 250 ml bottles like i get but this is something that all goats need annually and they have to have it twice when they're between three and six weeks old so you really need to have some of this and know what it's used for if you're going to have goats on hand as well as things like toxaban this right here if your goat gets into your azaleas and you're worried about them getting sick you can give them this and it's just oral suspension charcoal and it's going to make sure that they do not suffer from any of the harmful effects of poisons they may ingest if you catch it soon enough do i look cute just like walking rubbing my hand on the fence like all like freaking like i'm awesome and stuff i think so one of the biggest issues that people are often faced with when it comes to goats is predators being able to get in goats being able to get out or goats getting their head stuck in the fences so what we use on our fencing is the top board is two inches by six inches and the bottom board is two inches by six inches and then on this pin we have two inch by four inch welded horse wire fencing and you can also use woven wire i would recommend using woven wire it's a little bit easier and cheaper to put up but this does do good with the top and bottom board but if you use the welded wire you do have to have a top and bottom board now the good thing about having the top and bottom board is that a goat cannot push out from the bottom and a dog cannot push in from the bottom and in addition to it being a top and bottom board so that animals can't push in or out you also want to make sure the goat's heads can't get stuck out of the fence if you're using say four inch by four inch or six inch by six inch wire then a goat can have its head outside of the fence and a stray dog or something like that can attack them the minimum height for a goat is always going to be four foot tall but it's recommended to go five because if there's anything setting around the sides goats can jump about three or four feet depending on the breed so four feet minimum i definitely would recommend for adult goats to go with some type of electric in addition to this fence right here and we'll show you what we do for our adult goat in regards to electric you want to get really fancy with your goat enclosure you can also build a corral because as soon as you go to visit with your lovely little babies they're all going to try and run to you so what we've done here is we have a two gate system so what that means is that when i'm going inside i walk in and close this gate and then i can walk into this pen and if the goats happen to get out they're still in a controlled area and this is also nice for when you're doing things like vaccinations or worming you can worm one at a time and leave them in the corral while you're grabbing another one so that you don't do one twice or not one at all all right guys so what we have here is the setup for electric on our goat pen so what this is is just obviously an electrical outlet and on that we have this 15 mile electric fence it's made by american farmworks we got it at tractor supply hooked to that is a grounding rod that goes down into the ground and then buried under the ground is the hot wire that actually runs to the goat pen to electrify this top line now our goats only have a top line one because we don't like our goats jumping up on the fence but two because we didn't want our dogs getting out we have livestock guardian dogs with our adult goats because they're a lot farther away from the house and so this hot wire right here keeps them from jumping out but if you look at the fence that goes around the perimeter it also keeps predators from being able to crawl over the fence you can see here this portion is about six inches above the top of the fence so if there was a dog or any type of bobcat or stray animal that was trying to crawl over this fence they would hit that electric and it would keep them out it would at least deter them from coming in so if you just have a few baby goats it isn't that big of a deal to hold the bottle but for us because we have up to 60 70 baby goats a year we have these nifty little bottle feeders and what we do with these is we can feed multiple goats at one time and it makes it a little bit easier to look at them and give them a little health check while they're eating the main things we're looking for is just to make sure that there's no diarrhea everybody's eating and everybody is hungry a goat should always be it should never act uninterested now before you take a baby goat home the person you're buying that baby goat from should tell you how much that baby is drinking and they should help you with an idea of understanding how to go about weaning that baby goat if they don't do that then it's probably not a good place to get a baby goat from now these babies are probably about three they're actually about five weeks old now and they are currently on morning and evening bottles they're eating lots of hay and lots of branches as well what we do with our branches is i just threw these in here but the best way to keep your branches is up where the goats sleep and hang out a lot because throughout the day they're going to get hungry and that encourages them to eat them so i like to stick the branches in the hay feeders kind of like this so that they see them up high and it encourages that metabolism to start kicking in so the baby goats start eating these branches up branches and hay are going to be the best thing that you can ever feed your baby goats we do not feed our baby goats any grain at all until they're probably about six months old three to six months old and that's just because we want to make sure that that cvt vaccine is working well so that you don't have any issues with bloat or enterotoxemia and really they don't need any grain if they're eating a good amount of hay and they were weaned at the correct time now you can see these guys are starting to finish up so once everybody's done we're going to watch these two little tinier ones just to make sure that one goat doesn't go to the other goat's bottle and take it from them because if one goat overeats if he eats more than he's supposed to then what will happen is he may get diarrhea and diarrhea can cause a lot of issues dehydration among other things now with your bottles you're going to want to make sure that you keep them very very clean we use new bottles every probably four or five times we rinse them out we use sprite bottles because we have a sprite drinker in the family and the type of nipple that you're using is a pritchard's nipple but again whenever you take a baby goat home you're going to go over with whoever you're buying that goat from what to feed them and how much to feed them you want to stick to that because getting a sick baby goat is no fun so just to summarize feeding baby goats generally what we do is for the first 10 days to two weeks of the baby goat's life we feed it goat's milk it's mother's milk it gets colostrum and then full goat's milk after that initial two weeks we start gradually switching it over to cow's milk which whenever we sell a baby goat and it goes home with the new owners that's what it's going to be on a hundred percent cow's milk now you want to make sure you don't get one percent or two percent you want to get whole red top cow's milk it doesn't really matter if it's organic or not it's whatever your preference is but be sure it's whole cow's milk you're going to feed it the amount that you've discussed with me or whoever whoever you're purchasing the goat from we do not recommend using any type of powdered formula or any canned formula or anything like that cow's milk is great for a growing baby goat and it is the next best thing to actually giving it goat's milk if you feed them raw cow's milk then you are going to be opening them up to a few of those diseases we spoke about earlier because those can be transmitted through milk so we do recommend feeding them a pasteurized milk if you're not feeding them our goat's milk another thing is i cannot stress the importance of learning what different types of trees grow in your area pine trees are the number one thing that we serve the baby goats year round we put pine branches all over this pen that's what all of our baby goats learn to eat initially they start out with pine it has lots of tannins in it which helps with parasites and it's kind of sad rumored to also help with coccidia which is number one thing that causes death to baby goats so stick with lots and lots of tree branches learn your local flora and make sure that you keep your babies happy dry and healthy all right guys so one of the breed of goats that we primarily sell is the Nigerian dwarf goats and this is one that you can see here just kidding but we do have to go feed this guy so we're going to wrap up this video while we're feeding him in the barn let's go so the reason why i wanted in in this pen right here is because this would be a good idea for if you were taking home young young babies let's say that you were taking home babies that were one to three weeks old we generally don't sell them that young but if you were they are not smart enough to know to go in out of the rain so their entire shelter would need to be enclosed meaning that at this point they'll rain outside they need to you need to make sure that they don't have the option to get wet so this right here is a fully covered stall and this is where we keep our baby on cold nights all right guys as always if you're interested in purchasing a baby goat from us check out our website www.goatdaddies.com and we've got any available babies listed on there freya you're eating cow poop and that's disgusting i think okay let's just wrap this up all right so um yeah check them out on freya you're so disgusting um check out any available baby goats on facebook on check the website out if you want to go make sure you have your setup i gotta like you if i don't like you no baby goats are going home with you all that stuff bye