When I was still fairly new to goats, I became totally starstruck and wanted to buy goats with milk stars in their pedigrees, not realizing there can be a difference of hundreds of pounds of milk between two goats each of which has a milk star. A goat that barely squeaked by to earn her milk star is definitely not as valuable as one that is on the Top Ten list of breed leaders. And if you want goats to provide milk year-round, a 305-day milk record is definitely more important to review than a 1-day milk star, which is simply verification that a goat milked a certain number of pounds on one day of her lactation. Some goats can produce a lot of milk early in lactation but then dry up after only a few months, so it’s important to look at long-term milk records.
Reading a Pedigree
In both ADGA and AGS, there is a system in place to have a goat evaluated against the ideal standard. In ADGA it is called linear appraisal (LA), and in AGS it is called classification. Although the evaluation and grading systems are not identical, it is highly unlikely that an animal would score extremely well in one and poorly in the other. The letters E, V, VG, G, G+, A, or F or a + sign, after a goat’s name indicate the classification or LA score. In both registries a score of 90 percent or more is Excellent (E); a score of 85–89 percent is Very Good (V) in ADGA and (VG) in AGS; 80–84 percent is Good Plus (+) in ADGA and Good (G+) in AGS; a score of 70–79 percent is Acceptable (A) in ADGA and Good (G) in AGS; and 60–69 percent is Fair (F) in both registries.
As a matter of practicality, scores of less than 80 percent are not usually advertised because the market for “acceptable” goats is not very big. Those are the goats that go to the sale barn where no one cares about LA scores.
American Dairy Goat Association (ADGA)
American Goat Society (AGS)
DOES
1*M: A one-star milker is a doe that has met the minimum requirements to earn a milk star, whether in a 1-day or 305-day test. A doe may also earn a star if she has three daughters that have earned stars or two sons who have earned +B.
*D: A star dam is a doe that has met the minimum requirements to earn a milk star, whether in a 1-day or 305-day test. A doe may also earn a star if she has three daughters that have earned stars or two sons who have earned +S.
2*M: A two-star milker is a second-generation doe that has met the minimum requirements to earn a milk star, whether in a 1-day or 305-day test. A 3*M would be third generation, and so on. Stars cannot skip generations, so if a doe’s grandmother is a 1*M but her mother is not, she will be a 1*M rather than a 2*M.
2*D: A two-star dam is a doe that is the second generation to meet the minimum requirements to earn a milk star, whether in a 1-day or 305-day test. A 3*D would be the third generation to meet the requirements, and so on. As with ADGA, stars cannot skip generations.
CH: The doe has won three grand champions at shows with at least ten does entered.
MCH: The doe has won three grand champions at shows with at least ten does entered.
GCH: The doe has won three grand champions at shows with at least ten does entered, and she has earned a milk star.
ARMCH: The doe has won three grand champions at shows with at least ten does entered, and she has earned a 305-day milk star.
BUCKS
*B: A star buck’s dam and his sire’s dam have earned their milk stars.
*S: A star sire’s dam and his sire’s dam have earned their milk stars.
+B: A plus buck has three daughters out of three different dams who have earned milk stars, or two sons who have each earned +B.
+S: A plus sire has three daughters out of three different dams who have earned milk stars, or two sons who have each earned their +B.
++B: A two-plus buck has three or more daughters who have earned milk stars and two sons who have each earned +B.
++S: A two-plus sire has three daughters who have earned milk stars and two sons who have each earned +S.
CH: The buck has won three grand champions at shows with at least ten bucks entered.
MCH: The buck has won three grand champions at shows with at least ten bucks entered.
GCH: The buck has won at least three grand champions at shows with at least ten bucks entered, and he has earned +B.
ARMCH: The buck has won at least three grand champions at shows with at least ten bucks entered, and he has earned +S with at least three of his daughters earning their 305-day milk stars.
Genetics is a gamble, and if you are buying kids, you are buying genetic potential based on the goats in that kid’s pedigree. Although you can’t be guaranteed a bucket-busting milker based on a great pedigree, it is highly unlikely that you’ll get a great milker from a mediocre dam and grandmother. On the flip side, don’t get too excited about goats that are far back in a pedigree. Having an outstanding milker as a great-grandmother in a goat’s pedigree only represents one-eighth of that goat’s genetics, and if the rest of the goats in the pedigree are only mediocre, the odds are against the kid getting only the spectacular genetics.
Purchasing
Although you can find goats on internet classified ad sites and in sale barns, the quality is often questionable. Keep in mind that no one is going to sell a goat for $50 if they can sell it for $300 or more, and if they can sell it only for $50, there is probably a very good reason. The animal could have a disease, a disqualifying defect, kidding problems, or poor milk production.
An internet search will find the websites of breeders in your area. Search for your state and the breed you want, such as “Oregon Nubians.” Many goat breeders have websites where you can learn more about their herd, breeding philosophy, and individual goats. They often have photographs, milk records, show records, classification or linear appraisal scores, and sometimes even stories about the goats.
It is a good idea for a couple of reasons to buy your first goats from a breeder who has a philosophy similar to yours. First, if the goats are thriving in their current environment, they may not perform as well under a different management system. For example, if you want to raise your goats in a sustainable system, you won’t know if goats from another farm will do well on yours if they are being given multiple vaccines and chemical dewormers on a regular basis. Also, if a farm bottle raises all of their kids, they will have no idea whether their goats are good mothers, which could present a challenge if you are planning to dam raise. Hopefully the person who sells you your first goats will be willing to serve as a mentor. Having someone who shares your philosophy and personally knows your goats is invaluable.
Keep in mind that if you want good quality stock of a specific breed, you might need to look at surrounding states or even across the country. When I was starting my herd, there was no one in my state who was raising Nigerians for anything other than pets, so my foundation animals all came from other states, including bucks that came from as far away as Massachusetts and Alaska. Goats can be shipped by air in dog crates. When buying from a distance, it is less expensive to buy kids than adults because the cost of shipping is based on weight or size of the crate.
Should You Buy All Your Goats from a Single Herd?
From a veterinary perspective, it is safer to buy all of your goats initially from a single herd. If you are bringing in animals from a variety of places, they will each come with their own germs and parasites. Although each individual goat has been living with its bugs forever, the other goats have not, and their systems will be faced with the stress of fighting off new bacteria and viruses. It is not plausible for a goat to be completely parasite free, and with the growing problem of dewormer resistance, bringing in goats from a variety of herds could result in severe parasite problems. There are only three classes of dewormers, so if you bring in goats from three different herds, it is possible that you will have put together goats that are carrying parasites that, combined, have resistance to all known dewormers.
Probably at some point you will be bringing in at least a few goats from different herds, and when you do, it is imperative that you quarantine new goats
for both their safety and the safety of the rest of your herd. Moving to a new farm is stressful on goats, whether it is across the continent or across the road, and being isolated from other goats can stress them even more. If you can afford to do it, bring in two goats at a time from a single farm so that they will have a friend to stay with them during the quarantine period.
If you buy a single goat, put a wether with it for company to keep its stress as low as possible. Although it may appear that a castrated male would have no place on a farm, he can provide a variety of important functions, such as letting you know when does are in heat as well as being a companion to animals in quarantine, such as those newly purchased or showing signs of illness. They can also help out around a homestead by pulling a cart or carrying firewood. Because they are not producing babies or milk or sperm, they tend to be very easy keepers with high resistance to parasites and illness.
How Do You Know You Are Buying Healthy Goats?
Goats can have a number of health problems, and some are more obvious than others. Few people would be willing to take home a goat with a crusty nose or diarrhea, but there are some diseases that can be asymptomatic in the early stages.
Caprine arthritic encephalitis, usually called CAE, and Johne’s (pronounced like yo-nees) can often be detected only by testing animals. There is no requirement for testing, and everyone handles it a little differently. Some herds are tested annually, especially if they attend shows and the goats are exposed to other herds. A herd may be closed, meaning the breeder no longer buys goats and does not offer breeding services. But a herd may be called closed even though the animals are taken to shows, so the term “closed herd” does not have a universal definition. After several years of negative test results in a closed herd that does not show, some breeders may test less often or not at all.
If the animals you want to buy are not tested, you can ask that adult goats you want to buy be tested or the dam of any dam-raised kids you want to buy be tested. Because it takes months for a goat’s body to develop enough antibodies to show up in a blood test, pathologists recommend that kids not be tested until six months after they have stopped nursing. As an additional precaution, you can ask to have the kid’s sire tested because research has shown that CAE can be transmitted through breeding.1 If the dam was infected during breeding, she could infect nursing kids with the virus, even though she might still test negative. Normally the buyer pays for pre-sale testing. Although a single negative test is not as convincing as several years of whole-herd negative tests, it is better than nothing. More information about CAE and Johne’s is in Chapter Seven: Injury, Illnesses, and Diseases.
What I Learned from Tom Selleck — The Goat, Not the Actor
After two years of goat ownership, I bought Tom Selleck, a new buckling, and immediately put him into the pen with my other bucks. A couple weeks later, I took a fecal sample to the vet. She said he had a heavy load of barber pole worms and tapeworms and should be given a dewormer for three days. A week later we found him unable to stand and rushed him to the University of Illinois veterinary hospital. Within less than an hour of our arrival, he was dead.
A necropsy showed that he had died from anemia caused by the barber pole worms. I was confused because we had just given him a dewormer. When I talked to the woman at the farm he had come from, she said, “Well, everyone knows that dewormer doesn’t work.” That was my first lesson in dewormer resistance. That particular dewormer had always worked well on my farm, but the internal parasites on the other farm had developed resistance to it. Not only did I lose a buckling, but we then had worms on our pasture that were resistant to the dewormer we had been using.
The vet told me to start deworming the bucks monthly, which I did, not knowing at the time that it was a terrible idea, which would lead to even more dewormer resistance. A couple of months later, two more bucks died from parasites. It was bad enough to lose one goat, but it was even worse to lose three. Although quarantining might not have saved the buckling I had purchased, I would not have lost the other two bucks.
You may think that if you are buying your goats from a herd that has tested negative for all of the most insidious diseases there is no need to quarantine. However, it is sometimes the simplest things, such as parasites, that can cause the biggest problems.
One should be concerned about tuberculosis (TB) and brucellosis when buying dairy animals because these diseases can be transmitted to humans through body fluids, such as blood, milk, and vaginal secretions during birth. Tests are available for both of these diseases, but the incidence of TB and brucellosis in humans is quite rare because of aggressive programs to eradicate the diseases in dairy herds. According to the Centers for Disease Control, around one hundred cases of brucellosis occur annually in the United States.2 Almost all states are accredited tuberculosis-free, and many have not had a case of TB in 25 years, but this can change literally overnight if a new case is discovered. When the first edition of this book was published, there were only two states with herds that were affected by TB. When writing this second edition, that number had increased to five states. This is why most TB-free states have strict rules about importing animals from states that are not accredited TB-free.
When animals cross state lines, whether in an airplane or private vehicle, they are supposed to have a certificate of veterinary inspection, often called a health certificate. In many cases it simply contains information on the seller and the buyer, along with goat identifying information, such as tattoo numbers. A veterinarian signs the health certificate, signifying that the animal is not exhibiting any signs of disease. When a goat is coming from a state with a known disease problem, such as TB, the form will also include the test results required by the state the animal is being imported to.
CHAPTER 2
HOUSING YOUR GOATS
One of the advantages that goats have over cattle, sheep, and pigs is that the equipment and infrastructure required for them is not nearly as costly. Goats were the first livestock we bought after chickens, and we had to buy very little equipment for them. When we added other livestock, however, we quickly learned that we would need to upgrade our infrastructure to properly contain them. Cattle require heavy-duty steel handling equipment, which is very costly. Although ewes are not any harder to keep than goats, the rams are very hard on housing and gates. The first time we put a ram in our one of buck pens, he put his head down, ran straight for the gate and busted right through it. Pigs also tend to tear up a lot of buildings and fencing simply by rubbing on them. You will probably discover that goats are easier to keep than you imagined.
Shelter
Many people who live in northern climates assume they will need insulated and heated barns for their goats in the winter. However, goats grow a thick, fuzzy undercoat of cashmere to keep them warm during the winter, so adults are usually fine in unheated barns in most of North America. If kids are born in freezing temperatures, someone should be there to get them dried off as quickly as possible so they don’t get hypothermia and their ears and tail don’t get frostbitten while still wet. Once kids are dry, they are fine down to around zero Fahrenheit.
Goats need to be protected from snow, rain, and wind because these things will cause a lot more stress than cold temperatures alone. Unlike sheep and cattle, goats seem to think they will melt if they get wet, so most of them will start to scream wildly if they are outside when it starts raining. Three-sided shelters in the pasture are ideal because the goats can get out of the rain and wind but still have fresh air.
A three-sided shelter works well for buck housing. Just be sure that the opening is on the opposite side of the building from the prevailing winds during the winter. For us, the openings are on the south side. However, when we had a blizzard a few years ago, we brought the bucks into the barn, and we were very happy we did because the three-sided shelters filled up with snow. If you don’t have a backup housing plan for bucks, use bales of straw in front of the opening in case of a blizzard.
Credit: Sarah Schwimmer
We have cut several goat doors in our big barns to make it easier to put goats out to pasture.
You may have heard of using an old doghouse as a goat shelter, and although this can provide shelter, it may not work for more than one goat. There is a hierarchy in every herd, and if the shelter is not big enough, the less dominant goats may be left outside in the rain. If you are planning to milk your goats, you will want a building that not only will shelter the goats but will also provide a comfortable environment for humans during birthing and milking.
Although I have heard of people milking their goats outside, it is more comfortable to have a milking parlor to keep you and the goat out of the weather. It needs to be separate from where the goats live; otherwise, all of the goats will be fighting to get on the stanchion and eat the grain in the bowl. Some city dwellers have a simple goat house but milk their goats on their back porch, which is covered, so they are out of the rain.
Raising Goats Naturally Page 5