Getting Started With the Goats and Dogs on Pasture


Happy goats in a fresh paddock. Dogs go explore, goats find nearest rose bush and devour it

Over the past week we finally worked it out to where the goats can be out on pasture nearly 100% of the time. Day and night, night and day. Goats like to graze and browse at night and we want them to be able to. We've read that they can spend up to 6 hours per night grazing. Talk about party animals. I guess when you nap and chew cud throughout the day you don't need a sound night of sleep. Besides, it's a lot cooler at night and the dogs are awake then too. Who can sleep with all that barking?

That wasn't the situation for the first few weeks though. When we originally started with the goats we only had Sophie, and while she has proven to be a great guard dog at a young age (at least so far), we couldn't trust only one dog (and a puppy at that) to defend the goats. She wouldn't stand a chance against a pack of dogs or coyotes. So we had to wait for the big girls before we could leave the goats far away from home all day and all night. Once we got the big girls, however, we needed to acquaint them with the goats and our farm. We didn't want to put them out alone with the goats in the middle of the field right away. We couldn't trust them yet and they weren't accustomed to us and their new home. So we had to wait longer. 

 

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Goat Bloat - Treating One of Our Milking Does

Each day we learn many new things. Some out of necessity, some from mistakes. Today we had our first run-in with bloat. 

Mayday's Got the Bloat

This morning Sweetbreads noticed that Mayday looked a little misshapen. I thought she looked a little more rotund than usual, but typically that’s just a sign of healthiness for goats. Mayday has two kids nursing on her and is a couple weeks away from weaning the little tykes so I thought maybe she was starting to get her body condition back.

Sweetbreads, on the other hand, spent a little more time with the goats and had a suspicion that this might be bloat. We had read about it before we ever owned a goat - dreaded encountering it, and now, here it was. You can see in the photo that her left side was much larger than her right. We learned that this is one of the symptoms of bloat. The rumen is bigger on the left side and that’s the part of the stomach where the bloating occurs.

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Portable Goat Shelter and Shade Shack: Attempt #1


It looks so nice when it's standing upright and providing shade and shelter

Now that we have the goats out in electrically fenced paddocks each day we want to provide them a little area to get out of the hot sun, or cold rain. Goats are susceptible to pneumonia and dairy animals in particular can be adversely affected by extreme heat (lower milk production, etc). So on Sunday we took a couple hours and built them a little shelter/shade shack.
 

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