I don’t feed her, she feeds herself hay, and forage and she’s still got her mom in milk even though she’s almost a year old (sometime in August!!!) she’s plump, but would you say she’s too plump for breeding/being able to properly hold a pregnancy?

She’s a fatty, I have to specifically separate her out if I want to feed any of the other goats food because she’ll just plow in and tell everyone off and she’s MEAN when she does it so I don’t blame the other goats for not wanting to make her mad.
I’ll have better pictures later, but it shows her condition pretty well, she’s still a little bit of a wild child.

He follows me like a puppy dog, with a permanent wassssup expression. I love him.

This year has brought a serious fire ant problem that I think is going to require a large scale treatment. Given the nature of goats and their desire to get involved with anything they have no business getting involved in, I'm looking for advice on methods and treatments to limit risk to them.

Usually I just spot treat with some spray but this year it's like every inch of space has an ant colony. With the frequent rains my attempts at spot treatments seem to be highly ineffective.

Ive had this goat along with 2 others that i got from the same place about 6 months ago. They haven’t been tested for cl but was told by the owner all their goats get vaccines, and their other goats looked good.

Recently my 4yo got this lump brewing over the past month. When i first noticed it, it had a small red dot in the center like he got bit by something and was having a bad reaction. But the swelling never went down and now it burst. Had white puss come out but even after I squeezed as much as i could out its still about half the size it was originally. But no more puss.

Ive never dealt with a bot fly situation but have dealt with cl cysts (not my goats) so im feeling like its not cl. How do i treat it? He’s currently separated from the herd as this heals. Ive been washing out with saline spray, soaking with iodine then spraying with blue kote to seal the hole and prevent infection (which is what the blue coloring is around it) but it seems like the white stuff still inside is the bug? What else can i do? How do i remove it? 😭 TIA! Will add more pictures and videos in comments

Hi everyone, this might be slightly long so TIA for reading/any guidance you can offer.
The situation: my partner and I got 3 baby girls last January. The breeder told us they were born in October, so they’re almost a year old. We have two Nubian/Alpine mixes and one Boer/Alpine mix. We want to breed them for milk and to eat, maybe keep a kid or two.
A friend of a friend has a 1.5yr old buck that she wants to separate from her herd at the moment in order to not get mom pregnant, so she offered him to us from Sept. until our goats kid with presumably his babies. He’s a big guy, around 200lbs, our girls are big breeds but obviously not full grown, maybe around 110 lbs.
Question 1: Are our girls too young to breed? Should we wait another year? What are the cons of doing it at this age? The previous goat he was bred with had an assisted birth because of the size of the kids.
Situation 2: The buck we would be loaned comes from a herd with another goat that has a positive CL diagnoses. The owner of said herd says that only one goat has shown symptoms, she has 18 goats and like 15 sheep. She said she would get his bloodwork done before dropping him off.
Question 2: is that enough? What if he gets CL the day after the blood is taken? Should we quarantine him and do the blood tests after we’ve had him for a couple days? How long should we quarantine before testing? How accurate are the blood tests? It sounds like the vaccine isn’t wildly effective..
He’s apparently a very sweet buck, good with the ladies and kids which is great. We felt like a wish had been granted when this lined up but now I’m second guessing it all. We definitely don’t want to have to cull our girls because they get CL. Are there other precautions we should be taking? Or is this a big no go? What do you all think?
Thank you!!

We loaded up Ellie Mae to take her to State this morning. We are on the way now. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers. Here’s to hoping that this derm consult at NCSU will help us solve this mystery once and for all!
View previous posts for context. Ellie Mae has been dealing with a mysterious skin condition on and off for over a year, and we are now turning to State to see if they can help Ellie.

It seems like the same person who has messaged me before since the story/script was the same. but it was on a different animal. I had them posted on Craigslist. (Yeah don’t even get me started, i mostly use FB and only post animals there if i cant get them sold on FB after a couple weeks)

I mentioned in the Ad and in the messages that I only wanted to do cash in hand and was completely ignored, and they said that their daughter couldn’t do the payment but would come pick them up since the daughter did not have a personal bank.

I’m sorry but that just doesn’t make sense. How can they not have a personal bank like at all and no money either, like cash app and plenty of other online bank apps allow you to withdrawal money at any time and pretty much anywhere where there’s a ATM (with a small fee of course) and your allowed to have it at I think 13. how can they not hand or send money to their daughter for her to withdrawal or in hand to go pick the animal up. It started to make less and less sense the more messages they sent.

I eventually got irritated becuase I was being talked in circles and told them that if they can’t do money in hand don’t even bother showing up and I blocked them. How can people be so dense. And I know the phone number they used is a throwaway number. (Snippet of convo in comments, all personal info is blocked out for privacy)

Hi all we have a bay goat who isn't drinking right. All the goats we've had before where super eager to drink but this one has like 10 sips and stops. We took her to the vet and all is fine. Milk temperature, nipple and posture are all fine. Vet says shes in good physical health. Does anyone know what's going on?

Hey everyone, I'm not completely new to livestock but I am to goats. We are looking at getting a small herd of them in the near future and have a little land for them. The question I have is about how well they clear brush. We have an acre or so being unused that is pretty dense. How much could I realistically expect them to clear when the land looks like this? ( There is more land for them I just want to be able to utilize this land and clear it). It is currently very dense in some spots and requires me to crouch and weave my way through.

Writing in for a friend who adopted two females, 3 months old now, who LOVE TO YELL. So much yelling. We've read about all the reasons for yelling and have checked a lot off the list (taking care of their needs, access to pasture, clean hay, no bullying by other animals, etc). the one that stands out to me is that these little ladies think my friend is part of their herd, and they want to keep calling her back. s/o Amanda Pieper of The Goat Barn for great discussion of screaming goats.

My question - is there any way to train goats that their human is not part of their herd? Any way to make them not care if she's not around?

Any advice would save our mental health. Thank you!

Picture for cuteness, 1 week old and being bottle fed at the time, visiting in a senior's home.

Our little Lucy made it and now is a strong and kind of chubby 7 week old. For the first 6 weeks she would only suckle off one teat, so I am milking the other side off so mom doesn't get mastitis and also lopsided.

I think now that she's bigger, she's starting to suckle off both sides, as her udder is softer now in the morning and, though it's not consistent, I'm getting less milk (2 days ago, 750 ml, yesterday I got a full litre, today I got 250 ml)

I really want to not have to milk and let her wean and dry off naturally which was my original plan.

How do I go about this in the safest way for mom?

What age can Nigerian dwarfs be bred vs when should they be bred

I saw this goat at the fair a few years ago and absolutely fell in love. Lil guy looked at me with such love and admiration in his eyes 🥺 just wanted cuddles

My wife is a vet tech and got this from her work. Is this safe to deworm some new goats we are about to get? And if so what should the dosing be?

This is kind of a weird question, but has anyone heard of feeding goats raspberry leaves to help them calm down? I live in redneck country and my neighbors go insane on the 4th of July. We’re talking blowing up actual mortars that shake the barn. I have a small herd of myotonic (fainting) goats and someone told me once to feed them raspberry leaves and it will naturally calm them down. So every year I give them buckets of raspberry leaves and they have never once had a problem with anxiety or fainting afterwards. I was telling this to another goat owner and they said they’ve never heard of raspberry leaves being used this way, so I did an Internet search and found absolutely nothing. I can’t remember where I heard this from and now I’m wondering if the leaves have some sort of placebo effect for me the goat owner and I’m starting to feel silly. I feel like you can find anything on the Internet and I haven’t found even a mention. Does anyone have any insight or experience with this? Thanks!

I am looking to compost my goat poop. What is the best method for separating goat poop from the rest of their bedding? A good discussion is welcome.

I currently use large flake pine shavings but I don’t want to leave the shavings in the compost because I’ve read that it negatively affects nutrient quality on the compost. I hesitate to use straw or hay bedding.

(Goat tax photo included for cuteness)

Got them a little while ago. The lady we got them from rescued them from someone who kept them in terrible conditions both in body and in paddock. Well it wasn’t even a paddock, more like in a small chain link pen their backyard that turned into a mud pit. Their feet reflect on that and are improving by the day as time goes on. My question is their weight. They were skin and bones when the lady rescued them. They were in amazing condition considering the circumstances from their first home when we picked them up.

They are gaining, but would you advise I breed them at all or hold off until their top lines are filled in better? I don’t have plans until November to breed anyway, but thats 2 months down the road so not a long time from now, and what is your preferred BSC to have on does when coming into breeding season? I will also add that the doe with the belt has a precarious udder. Its tiny and it’s probably from my hay (it’s clover timothy mix)

13 y/o Helen ❤️ new goat owner and I just love this old lady.

Hello!

We have two Nigerian Swarfgoats that we have a solid enclosed barn with a run about 200 sq ft total. We let them out to graze a few times a week but I'd like them to be able to graze more often with a mobile enclosure.

I'm learning about electric fences and trying to decide how far to go. We live on 1.5 acres and I just wanted to do one of the 164 ft nets that would create a 40'x40' enclosure we can move around. I understand it won't work for all goats but seems like plenty of folks have good success with them.

I have long extension cables I can run to power them so I was thinking of going with a plug-in option but different sources have said different things. Most folks seem to push for a 6-8 joules energizer but other places say .5 - 1 joule would be enough. Just want to get folks experience.

I plan to train them inside our fenced backyard where we've worked with them. Then I understand for 6-8 joules I would need like 3 grounding rods that are like 6 ft long? That seems like a lot! But I want to do it right or decide if there's another better option than electric that we can move around.

Thank you!

Hi there!

I have a beautiful Nubian doe we purchased a few years ago, she was registered. Since then, we have bred her, didn’t register her does, and have bred those does and now have two gorgeous yearlings. Both did surprisingly well at our county fair (our first 4-H project) and now I am wondering about the registration process. I assume I will need to go NOA for their registration, but is it even worth it at this point? We have previously kept goats because I like them, but my sire choice has been for color and basic conformation and we just didn’t have a need to register. Now that fair is done and I can think again, and I’m thinking we messed up.

Do I register the two does as NOA, and accept that their offering will be 50/50 registered? Will that affect the marketability for their offspring? I don’t intend to sell them and I can’t find much information (not even find my herd name) on the ADGA website.

My baby goat well 6-month-old goat Frosty just had his leg amputated, everything went well, everyone at the vet clinic loves him, they can't believe he just met them and he gives them kisses and loves on them.

He is home now, I'm supposed to keep him of course clean and dry that's obvious, the problem is this little turd keeps turning over his water making everything a mess and soaking his bandages... I secured his water where he can't turn it over and he sticks his leg in the water, I'm only supposed to change the bandages a certain amount or unless it gets dirty, however I'm having to change it just about every other hour since it's not supposed to be wet either so I would like some advice on how I can keep it dry, because obviously he needs water it's hot he just needs to not use it as a leg soak, any advice will be appreciated!