You also need to consider your own comfort when thinking about kidding season and housing. For six or seven years, we sat in the big, cold barn waiting for does to give birth, with other does walking around in the same stall. Finally it occurred to me to use our other barn, which had never been used for livestock and had a small heated room with windows looking out into the open part of the barn. If you are building a barn from scratch, this is something to consider. I probably would not have thought about this configuration if we had not already had the building on our farm.
We decided to build kidding pens in the barn with the heated viewing room so that we could watch the does without freezing. Kidding pens provide a clean space for does to give birth in semi-privacy. Our “semi-private kidding suites” have pig panels between them so that the does can see each other but won’t be able to bother each other when one is in labor.
Credit: Lyn Adams
The inside of a goat barn that will accommodate up to five Nigerian Dwarves, three miniature or two standard-sized dairy goats. The building is 12 feet by 12 feet and split into two sections. The goat area is seven feet wide, with a dirt floor. A goat door leads to a fenced area. The area behind the half wall on the left has a floor and is used for hay storage and milking.
Yodel, a young Nigerian Dwarf, shares his home with one other goat. This little house was created for two pet goats, but could be used for a couple of standard milkers or three or four Nigerian Dwarf does. This setup provides no storage space or place to milk, so you might milk in a garage, back porch, or outbuilding. This could be used as a buck shelter if the size of your herd increased. Keep in mind that if it has a wood floor, it will rot in a few years, so dirt or concrete work best.
Bedding
The two most popular options for bedding are straw and wood chips. The purpose of bedding is to soak up urine, cover up poop, and insulate the goats from the cold ground in winter. Both types of bedding do a good job of soaking up urine and covering up poop. However, straw is definitely warmer in the middle of winter. Straw is also a better option during kidding season because wood chips are small enough that they can wind up in a kid’s mouth or nose, causing choking or suffocation. Straw is the least expensive option in our area, and we need only one bale of straw compared to three bags of shavings to bed one of our 10-foot by 15-foot stalls. In our area, using wood shavings to bed a single stall will cost ten times more than to bed the stall with straw, but this could be different in other areas, so be sure to check prices. If you have a place to store loose wood chips, you might be able to get a good deal on a truckload.
Goats can be very mean to each other, and you never know who will be left alone when she is in labor and who will be picked on. Being herd animals, they tend to get upset when separated from other goats, so using pig panels to separate them meets their need for company but protects them at the same time.
CHAPTER 3
PROTECTING YOUR GOATS
Like most animals, goats need plenty of fresh air and sunshine to stay healthy and perform at their peak, which means you can’t keep them in the barn all day. It is difficult to say exactly how many goats can be kept on a certain number of acres because it varies widely depending upon your climate, what grows on your property, and the size of the goats. As you learn more about the needs of goats, you will start to get a feel for how many you will be able to keep on your property.
It is impossible to talk about pastures without talking about fencing. People often think that they will need miles of expensive permanent fencing and many acres for keeping goats, but there are alternatives that make it as easy for people with only an acre or two to keep goats as for those with a hundred acres.
Fencing
The selection of fencing is one of the most important decisions you will make, and hopefully that decision is made before the goats are on your property. If you don’t have adequate fencing, you will find your goats visiting the neighbors, eating your rose bushes, and finding all sorts of mischief. The saying “If a fence can hold water, it can hold a goat” is only a slight exaggeration. But the fact is that without the proper type of fencing, any species of animal is impossible to keep fenced in. What works for goats doesn’t always work for cows or pigs.
Even if you already have goats and your fencing seems to be working, don’t skip this section. Some people just get lucky with their first goats and don’t have any problems with fencing that suddenly becomes completely worthless when they have goats that are more motivated.
What I Learned from Bucky
I started my herd with three does and a buck. Knowing that goats are herd animals and need company, I was buying my buck from a breeder who was going to give me a wether for company. However, after driving six hours to pick them up, I discovered that the wether had a poopy back end, which meant coccidiosis, and being new to goats, I didn’t want to bring home a sick animal. So I brought home the single buckling, wondering how I would keep him from getting lonely.
We thought we had a great idea. We put together four livestock panels to make a 16-foot by 16-foot square pen for him in the middle of the pasture where the does lived. We had no idea he would be unhappy having a fence between him and other goats, and we spent weeks coming up with one alteration after another to keep him separated from the does. He quickly realized he was small enough to squeeze through the squares in the panels, so we wrapped the whole pen with chicken wire. He learned to hoist himself up high enough to go through the squares that were above the chicken wire. We added more chicken wire. He started jumping over the panels. We bought more panels and put them on top of the pen so that he couldn’t jump out. It was so complicated that it took us five minutes to get into the pen, but finally Bucky could not get out!
The following year when we bought a second buck, we built a pen for the bucks that was on the opposite side of the barn from the does, and for some reason that I no longer remember, my husband put the latch on the inside of the pen. It was a slide bolt style that you lift and slide to open. One day I looked out into the pasture and saw Bucky chasing after the does. I accused my children of leaving the gate on his pen open and told them to go lock him up. Less than 15 minutes later, he was running around out there again. My children insisted they had locked the gate. This time I went out and put him back in his pen. I turned my back but had not even left the pasture when I realized he was running past me to get to the does. He had learned to open the latch!
Goats are incredibly intelligent animals and will copy human behavior to do things like unlatch gates, turn on lights, and even attempt to open doors. We once had a LaMancha doe that would put her mouth over a doorknob and turn her head in an attempt to turn the doorknob as she had seen us do. If only her mouth had not been wet and slippery, I’m sure she could have actually opened the door!
Barbed Wire? Never!
This was not even listed in the first edition of this book because it is completely inappropriate for using with goats, and I had never heard of anyone using it. I am including it in this edition, however, because I have since heard horror stories of people using it. Barbed wire should never be used with goats because their skin is far too thin. Barbed wire was originally invented for cattle and horses, which have incredibly thick hide compared to goats. In addition to other wounds, does have had teats torn off and udders ripped open. One goat owner told me the following story and said I could share it here to educate people about the dangers of using barbed wire fencing:
We had quite a few barbed wire fences on our farm, and they weren’t very effective at containing the herd. Sumac came in at milking time after having been out in the fields all day. She hopped up on the milk stand, and when I was cleaning her udder I found a very deep cut down the side of her teat. The inner tube that the milk comes down was exposed. It was not the first injured udder we’d had due to barbed wire, although it was the deepest. I attempted to milk her gently as she had to be milked, injured or not. Unfortunately the tube burst and the milk ran out. With no ori
fice to hold it in, the milk leaked out and just kept on leaking.
We actually bred her again the fall after the teat injury. She cut her teat around the beginning of September and kidded again in March. Her teat didn’t heal at all. So it was at least six months that we gave it. Looking back, breeding her was a poor decision, but we probably really needed her milk and were hoping for the best. She did end up being slaughtered for sausage as she couldn’t be used as a milker. Not only would her production have been halved, but leaky milk is gross and it would only have been a matter of time before bacteria made it up into her udder.
It is also not a good idea to electrify barbed wire. You may assume that if a goat gets shocked they will jump away from the fence, but the opposite could happen. Many times when goats get shocked by a fence, they go through it. If there are barbs there, the goat’s skin will get torn.
Chain Link
One of the most goat-proof fencing options available is six-foot chain link. Unfortunately, it is also the most costly. Standard-sized bucks can go over five-foot fences, and Nigerian Dwarf bucks can go over four-foot fences, so you really do need the height to keep bucks on the right side of the fence. Because of the cost, very few people use chain link for fencing goats other than bucks, and few use it for that.
Electric — Permanent
I cringe when I see articles and books written with the blanket statement that electric fencing works for goats. It is far from simple to use electric fencing successfully with goats. In addition to training goats to electric fencing, you also need to install electric fencing differently for goats than for other livestock, such as cattle, horses, or pigs. Permanent electric fencing is generally individual horizontal wires attached to a charger that sends an electric current through the wire to shock any animal (or human) that touches it. Goats have small feet, though, and are not very heavy, meaning that they are not well grounded, so they won’t feel a shock as much as a cow or a human will.
You can get expensive high-tensile or the less expensive electric fencing that is often sold at local farm supply stores, and neither one will work unless the strands are close enough together, close enough to the ground, and high enough, and the charger is strong enough. The effectiveness of permanent electric fencing varies so much because it is dependent on how it is installed. Goats can jump through fencing wires that are not close enough together, and they can jump over fences that are not tall enough. They will even go under an electric fence if it isn’t close enough to the ground.
I bought my first goats from someone who had successfully used electric fencing for years with her goats, but it didn’t work for us. Why? We had moved to a former horse farm, and the three fence wires were a foot apart and a foot from the ground. We thought the goats looked too big to go under it or through it without getting shocked. But the goats thought differently. Although they did get shocked, they really didn’t care. By the time we started adding more wires and lowering the bottom wire, it was too late. The goats had gotten into the habit of going through the fence, and they never stopped, even after we had six strands of electric wire, six inches apart. We also have hilly pastures, which makes it nearly impossible to get the bottom wire close enough to the ground in every area without having it touch the ground in other places, causing it to short out.
If you do want to use electric fencing, be sure to use five or six strands. Space the strands six to eight inches apart, depending on the size of the goats that will be in that pasture. The charger is also very important. Buying the cheapest charger you can find will probably yield disappointing results.
Using temporary or permanent electric fencing in an urban area is a bad idea due to liability issues. Although there has only been one death ever associated with an electric fence, it is possible for someone to be hurt by the electric shock from the fencing.
Electric — Temporary
Temporary electric fencing has a number of benefits over permanent electric fencing. There are now temporary electric fences available for every species of livestock, including poultry, and even for keeping predators out of gardens. The fences are all different, designed for specific purposes. It is important to get the fencing made for goats. The temporary fencing for goats is made of electrified horizontal wires a few inches apart and nonelectric, vertical plastic struts or strings, which creates a net. We have used only the fencing with the plastic struts, which I recommend because the one with vertical strings has more issues with sagging, making it easier for goats to jump over it. Kids are also more likely to get tangled in the netting that is made with vertical strings.
Regardless of which style of electric fence you use, temporary or permanent, it is always a good idea to have someone present when kids are first introduced to electric fencing. You may need to turn off the fence to pull a kid out of electric netting or to grab it on the outside if it manages to go through as it is being shocked. Dam-raised kids tend to stick with mom and may touch the fence with their nose, then run back to mom when they get shocked. Bottle-raised kids, on the other hand, are more challenging to train to electric fences because they view you as mom, and they want to get back to you.
We always make sure we have several people available the first time we put bottle-fed kids behind electric netting. Because Nigerian and Pygmy kids can go through the netting, it is very important that someone be standing close enough to the netting to stop them from doing so. Once they’ve done it, it is much harder to get them to stop. If you see a kid about to come through the netting to you, simply put your hands close enough to the fence that you can touch their nose if they start to stick their head through the netting. By slowing them down, they are more likely to get shocked, and because your hand is in front of their face, they are more likely to jerk their head back, rather than simply plowing forward and getting out.
Temporary electric fencing works well for most goats because the electric wires are spaced so closely together.
Temporary electric fencing is great for a farmette, where goats need to be kept on a small area and moved frequently, but it also works well for multi-acre properties using rotational grazing, which is beneficial for pasture management as well as for controlling internal parasites in goats. Although it should not be used for perimeter fencing, it is great for subdividing large pastures into smaller paddocks for grazing.
Given enough motivation, my bucks have jumped over the 35-inch-high temporary electric fencing. A manufacturer has now come out with a 42-inch fence. It is always a good idea to have two fences between bucks and does to avoid the possibility of unintended breedings, especially when you know a doe is in heat.
Livestock, Hog, and Cattle Panels
People often use the terms “hog panel” and “cattle panel” interchangeably, although they are two different things, and livestock panels are something else again. Hog panels are short and have closely spaced horizontal wires, whereas cattle panels are much taller and have more widely spaced horizontals. Hogs don’t jump, but goats do, making hog panels completely worthless for bucks and even some does. You can use them for kids until they get old enough or wise enough to realize they can jump over them.
Even though a pig panel is taller than a Nigerian Dwarf, I have a couple of talented does that can jump over them if they are motivated. My LaMancha does could clear a pig panel with ease.
Cattle panels are tall enough to keep does where you want them, but some standard-sized bucks can jump or climb over them. Many Nigerian Dwarf bucks can jump them until they are around a year old, when many of them become too heavy or lose enough spring in their hooves that they can no longer jump that high. The spacing between the horizontals is wide enough that kids can squeeze through if they are motivated.
Livestock panels, sometimes called combination panels, are as tall as cattle panels, but they have horizontals, similar to the pig panels, that are closer together near the ground, designed to keep babies from going through. All of my buck pens are made of combination livestock panels, which keep th
e bucks where I want them almost all the time and keep young doelings from going to visit the bucks when they are still too young. However, this type of fencing does not work for weaning Nigerian Dwarf bucklings. If their dam is on the other side of the fence, most will be motivated enough and smart enough to figure out how to get back to mom. To solve that problem, many people will cover the openings with chicken wire or welded wire.
Panels can be used in a variety of ways, depending upon how many goats you have, what breed, and how much land. We have plenty of land, so we’ve created square buck pens using a total of 16 livestock panels for each pen, which means there are four panels on each side, for a total of 64 feet. However, if you only have a couple of acres, and you only want three or four goats, you can create a moveable pen using only four panels to create a smaller square that is 16 feet by 16 feet. The four panels are rigid enough they can be joined together at the corners with wire or twine and will stand without posts. The pen can be moved every day or every few days, depending on how fast your goats can eat the grass.
Welded Wire
Although you can get welded wire tall enough to keep goats fenced in, it is one of the more expensive fencing options because the wire is very closely spaced, meaning it uses a lot of metal. You don’t need any special equipment to put up welded wire fencing, but the rolls can be heavy, making them a challenge to handle by yourself. The welds do not last a terribly long time, especially if goats rub against them, so welded wire fencing will need to be replaced sooner than other types of fencing.
Raising Goats Naturally Page 6