There is normally a lot of browse in Jane’s goat pasture, but when it dies back during the winter, she supplements with alfalfa pellets. “The ones that have never had a bit of grain in their lives thrive, and their production is above average. Ultrasounds at Oregon State Vet College show extremely healthy and well-developed rumens. The ultrasound pictures of my doe Rita’s rumen as a two-year-old are now used in classes there to show what a healthy well-developed rumen should look like.”
While it is almost impossible to find people raising dairy goats without grain, it is easier to find people raising meat goats on a forage-only diet. At Rush Creek Farms in Illinois, Andrew and Jennifer Miller started their herd 12 years ago with Kiko goats that had a history of doing well on forage, and they have been selecting for that trait ever since. Commercial meat goat breeders “need to balance the cost of inputs versus the amount of return on investment,” Jennifer says. “Is the cost of grain going to be covered by what you sell the animals for? We do our best to time the seasons so kids grow up when the grass is abundant, and we sell them before the summer slump of cool-season grasses.” The Millers also get their hay tested to make sure the pregnant does are receiving enough nutrition through the winter. They like to feed 12 percent crude protein, and sometimes must mix lower-quality grass hay with higher-quality alfalfa hay.
The term “grain” is often used interchangeably with “commercial goat feed.” It is uncommon to feed goats only one or two grains, such as corn or oats, because they don’t represent a balanced diet. For example, corn is very high in fat and low in protein. Although you would get a better nutritional balance by mixing different grains, this would still be deficient in trace minerals that are important to goats. Feeding a mix of grains in the form of a commercial ration is common, but not all commercial goat feeds are created equal. When we brought home our first goats, we bought the goat feed that was sold at the local feed store, assuming it would be just fine. It wasn’t. One of the biggest variables in commercial goat feeds is the amount of copper. It varies from zero to 80 parts per million (ppm) in the different brands I’ve checked, with many around 20 ppm. Unfortunately, the feed at our local store was ten ppm, and we wound up with copper-deficient goats. I now buy feed that is 35 to 40 ppm copper.
It is important to read the instructions on the bag of goat feed. Some of the feeds with extremely low levels of copper are meant to be a sole ration for goats because they are little more than hay pellets. Such feeds can wind up being costly because you have to feed far more of it than the more concentrated feeds, which instruct owners to feed a limited amount.
Minerals
When I have questions about how I should be caring for my animals, I often look to nature for the answers. When it comes to nutrition for goats, I’ve come to realize that few of us in North America can raise goats in a completely natural environment because quite simply we don’t have the right environment. Goats never lived in the wild here, which could explain why it has been such a challenge meeting their needs. The mountain goat is not genetically a goat at all. Historically, goats lived in mountains and deserts, rather than on grassy plains. They also traveled across many miles. Water pumped from deep wells, which has high levels of some minerals, is a factor in a goat’s diet. In a completely natural world, goats would not be drinking water that was pumped from a hundred feet below the surface of the ground.
Mineral supplements will make up for the mineral deficiencies that usually occur when domesticated goats live in a place where their wild cousins could never survive. It is important to buy minerals specifically for goats because other livestock have different nutritional needs. Unfortunately, you can still buy “goat and sheep” or all-stock minerals in spite of the fact that goats will wind up being deficient in copper when consuming minerals that are safe for sheep. Sheep can tolerate far less copper than goats, which means that sheep mineral mixes usually have no copper in them. Even those with copper have an extremely small amount that is not sufficient for goats. Some sheep minerals are also high in molybdenum specifically because it is a copper antagonist and reduces the amount of copper an animal will absorb, which would increase the chances for copper deficiency in a goat that is otherwise getting enough copper in its diet.
Although some people have had good luck with mineral blocks, if you live in an area where your goats need to consume a lot of supplemental minerals, they may have difficulty getting enough from a block because they have soft tongues. Goats also have been known to chip a tooth trying to bite off the minerals on a block. I tried using minerals in poured tubs. The minerals in this format are slightly less hard than blocks, but the entire surface was quickly covered with goat teeth marks as the goats were impatient about licking up the minerals and were trying to scrape the surface with their teeth. This is why loose minerals are often recommended as the preferred form for goats. To provide free-choice loose minerals, you need a mineral feeder. If you are not mindful of the height of a goat’s back end when deciding where to attach your mineral feeder, you will probably spend a lot of time picking goat berries out of it.
It is important that you never mix minerals with other supplements such as diatomaceous earth, kelp, baking soda, or salt. The minerals in a commercial blend are carefully balanced, and if you add something to them, it can cause a goat’s consumption to increase or decrease to levels that could result in deficiency or toxicity of certain minerals. For example, mixing salt or baking soda into a mineral supplement will reduce the goat’s consumption of the minerals because you have increased the sodium content. Baking soda can be provided as a rumen buffer, but it should be available free-choice in a separate dish so the goats can consume as much or as little as they need.
Most goat mineral mixes already contain 10–40 percent salt, which meets a goat’s need for sodium, so you don’t need to provide more, especially if you also have baking soda available. Although you can provide separate feeders with additional supplements such as kelp and baking soda, you should not provide a separate source of salt. Salt is used in minerals to control excessive intake. So if you provide a separate source of salt, the goats may not consume enough of the mineral, resulting in deficiencies. There is no reason goats need to consume more sodium that what is available in mixed minerals.
Research has shown that goats can consume minerals to treat their own deficiencies, as long as they do not all use salt as the carrier. Goats use taste to identify the different minerals, so if you have additional individual minerals available for your goats to consume free-choice, such as selenium, it should use a different carrier, such as wheat middlings.7
In order to monitor the consumption of minerals, check the label to see how much each goat should consume per day. Multiply the number of goats times the amount recommended times 30 to figure out how much you should be using in a month. For example, one mineral says a goat should consume 0.3–0.5 ounces per day, so a herd of ten goats would consume 3–5 ounces per day, which equals 90–150 ounces or 5.6–9.4 pounds per month. If they are eating less and showing signs of being deficient in some minerals, you can increase intake by top-dressing their grain. On the other hand, if they are consuming more, you can cut back by not keeping the mineral feeders full all the time so that they consume only the maximum amount per month. But if the goats show signs of being deficient after cutting back the amount, you can assume that they really do need to be consuming more than the recommended amount, and you can gradually increase the amount of minerals available until the symptoms of deficiency disappear. Be aware that when goats are first introduced to mineral supplements or have not had minerals for a few weeks, they might consume more than the normal amount for a week or so.
Being faced with a dizzying array of feeds and supplements is confusing. Unfortunately, there is not a one-size-fits-all feed plan for goats because everything from water to hay varies from one farm to another. What works for one farm may not work for another. This is why it’s important to watch your goats. They will let you know if
your feeding program isn’t working. Goats that are well-fed will have a shiny coat with soft hair, their body condition will be excellent, fertility and milk production will be high, and kidding problems will be rare. If several of your goats have problems with any of these things, odds are good that there is a nutritional deficiency. In a perfect world, pasture and hay are tested and the results sent to a nutritionist, who will custom blend a ration for your goats. Unfortunately, this is usually prohibitively expensive, and there are often minimum amounts of feed that must be mixed by a feed mill for an order, which makes it impractical for those who have only a small number of goats. A simpler solution is to start with a feed plan similar to one followed by someone you know with a herd that is meeting the goals you want to achieve. Then pay attention to your goats and keep records to see if they have the health, fertility, and production that you seek.
Even if you have a good-quality mixed mineral available for your goats, it is possible that they will become deficient in one or more minerals. If the balance of a single mineral is off, your goats may not be able to get enough of it from a mixed mineral without overdosing on other minerals in the mix. Mineral deficiencies can be primary or secondary. A primary mineral deficiency means the goat is not consuming enough of a mineral. For example, if you don’t have a free-choice mixed mineral available for your goats, they probably won’t be consuming enough of some minerals. If you are feeding hay that has been in storage for many months, it may be deficient in vitamin E. However, when a goat has a secondary mineral deficiency, it means that they are consuming enough minerals, but they are also consuming an antagonist that is blocking the absorption of one or more minerals. For example, if you have well water that is high in sulfur, it can block absorption of copper, creating a deficiency. If bucks are being fed alfalfa, the excess calcium may block absorption of zinc, creating a deficiency.
It is impossible for an animal nutrition company to make a commercial mineral that will work perfectly on every farm. This is why you may need to provide additional supplementation of some minerals, even if you have provided an excellent mixed mineral. The most common deficiencies are copper, selenium, and zinc. Causes, symptoms, prevention, and treatment of mineral deficiencies are discussed more in Chapter Seven: Injury, Illnesses, and Diseases.
Baking Soda
When I got started with goats in 2002, it was common practice for goat owners to have baking soda available free-choice. The logic is that baking soda is a rumen buffer. If a goat’s rumen pH gets a little off, they can self-medicate by licking up a little baking soda. It would be like you taking an antacid if you got indigestion.
Recently, however, the practice of free-choice baking soda has been in decline as people have learned that goats produce their own bicarbonate. If they make their own, we don’t need to provide it for them — right? Not so fast! Like most things with goats, it’s not that simple. There is no one-size-fits-all answer for baking soda.
If your goats are on pasture and receive no grain, they probably don’t need baking soda. Goats produce their own bicarbonate when they’re chewing. Browse, weeds, and grass require a lot of chewing. So goats produce plenty of bicarbonate to help with digestion when they’re eating those foods. However, hay pellets and grain require very little chewing, which means goats will produce less bicarbonate when eating those foods. In fact, I’ve had a couple of grain hogs that seem to inhale grain with almost no chewing at all. Those goats would be most at risk for a rumen upset when baking soda is not available.
Too much grain will also upset the rumen and throw off the pH balance. If there is zero risk of your goats ever breaking into the chicken grain or other grain bin, then they are less likely to wind up needing baking soda. But this is not always an easy task for new goat owners — or even experienced ones. In our early years with goats, they figured out so many ways to get to the chicken grain. We kept thinking that we had goat-proofed it, but they proved us wrong more times than I can remember. Since we had free-choice baking soda available, they were always able to self-medicate, and the worst thing we ever had to deal with was a little diarrhea.
But some goats are far more troublesome than mine. In one published case study, 42 sheep and goats were treated with sodium bicarbonate after consuming large amounts of apples, cooked rice, turnips, and chapati (a type of bread). All of the animals except two recovered fully.8
In another study where researchers purposely fed goats enough grain to make them sick, there was a one hundred percent mortality rate in those that did not receive baking soda.9
If you have baking soda available free-choice, you may find that it disappears faster at some times than at others. You may go days or weeks with little to no baking soda disappearing, and that’s fine. It means that your goats haven’t needed any. There is no need to force baking soda on them, so don’t sprinkle it on their grain or anything like that. That would be like you taking an antacid after every meal. If you really need an antacid after every meal — and if your goats do go through baking soda really fast — it means some dietary changes would probably be beneficial. In fact, because they feed an unnaturally high level of grain in cattle feedlots, baking soda is delivered in semis to keep the cattle from suffering from chronic acidosis.
Because sodium bicarbonate is salty, some people worry that it will decrease their goats’ mineral consumption, resulting in a mineral deficiency. When searching for research on sodium bicarbonate and goats, I did not come across any controlled studies where they tested this theory. This theory doesn’t pan out in my own herd as my bucks get no baking soda, yet they’ve had more problems with mineral deficiencies than my does.
In studies that tested goats’ ability to differentiate between various supplements, they found that goats depend on taste to be able to tell the difference between different minerals.10 That’s why you should not have multiple minerals that have salt as a carrier. However, baking soda is not simply salt, and it does taste different than salt. That may explain why providing free-choice baking soda does not seem to affect mineral consumption in most herds.
In one study, they fed goats a diet supplemented with extruded soybeans and either zero or one percent sodium bicarbonate in the diet by weight. In the group that had the sodium bicarbonate added, milk fat content and fat yield were increased, as well as the rumen pH.11 This doesn’t necessarily mean that baking soda will increase butterfat in all diets, but it is interesting to note that result in this particular study.
Think about how all of the above information applies to your farm. The answer may vary even from one set of goats to another on the same farm. For example, our bucks get no grain, so they get no baking soda. On the rare occasion when we’ve fed them a little grain during breeding season because they were losing weight, we provided baking soda for them — especially because they’re not used to having grain at all. Our milkers have it available at all times because they eat grain on the milk stand twice a day. If you have a pasture-based meat goat operation, your decision will probably be different than someone who has dairy goats being fed concentrates for higher milk production. But by understanding the logic and the research behind the use of baking soda, as well as knowing your own goals and feeding regimen, you can find the baking soda solution(s) that works best for your herd.
CHAPTER 6
PARASITES
Goats are susceptible to both internal and external parasites, and parasite control is one of the most confusing subjects for new goat owners because so much of the information that is available is contradictory. Sorting out the difference between chemical and herbal products can get terribly confusing, and the widespread use of drugs and herbs that have never been scientifically tested on goats adds to the confusion for the novice goat owner. This chapter covers the most common parasites that goat owners in North America will face, although there are more.
Internal Parasites
Goats have worms. It is a simple fact that completely shocks and disgusts most new goat owners. Not only
do they have worms, but they have other internal parasites as well. The good news is that parasites are host specific, so they don’t normally infect people. Goats can and do infect each other, usually by depositing their poop on the pasture, which also happens to be their dinner table, which is why one vet professor said to me, “You will never get to zero parasites with goats.”
Although it has been the practice in the past to indiscriminately deworm goats, we have learned that it is smarter to use a dewormer only when the worms are negatively affecting the health and production of an individual goat. Experts used to put a lot of emphasis on doing a fecal flotation to get a diagnosis before using a dewormer, but ultimately there is no point in using a dewormer if the goat is in great shape and is able to tolerate its wormload. There is a lot of variability of parasite resistance and resilience between individual goats. A resilient goat may have a fecal egg count of 1,500 and appear to be fine, while one with poor resilience may have a fecal egg count of only 300 and be in very poor body condition with low production, diarrhea, and very pale eyelids, indicating severe anemia. Resistant goats are those in the herd that have the lowest egg counts.
Most people take a fecal sample to the vet for a diagnosis of intestinal parasites, but I learned to do fecals more than ten years ago because the cost of the microscope was about the same as seven fecals done by the vet, so I figured it would pay for itself quickly because of all the parasite problems we were having. Although I initially did fecals quite frequently, I almost never do them now. I discovered there was usually a good relationship between what I was seeing under the microscope and what I was seeing with the goat. If the goat was underweight, had clumpy poop or diarrhea, and had pale or white eyelids, the slide would be covered with eggs. In the rare situation where the slide was not covered in eggs but the goat had those symptoms, I still felt I needed to deworm the goat because the symptoms pointed so strongly towards a heavy worm load, and in every case, the goat’s symptoms went away after being dewormed. Although a fecal egg count can confirm a diagnosis of parasites, it cannot rule it out.
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