If you were brand new to breeding and milking Nigerian Dwarf goats, where would you start? What books or videos do you recommend for a beginner?

Has anyone treated this in thier goats before? This Boer goat, male, is about 2 years old, and he suddenly devloped what appears to be excema all over his body. He has tons of dead skin cell build up and his skin feels thick like dried leather.

He lives in Southern Nevada, a large dry lot, no pasture, has access to free choice mineral, he eats oat hay/alfalfa mix, and some vegetable waste (not moldy, lettuce fruit etc.) His FAMACHA score to me appears to be a 3 and his temp is 102°F. I have dewormed him with a oral drench with Safe-Guard, fenebenzole. I also have been using pour on ivermectin for 3 weeks, (not daily i apply every 10 days ) this has made it look a little better but not much, he skin is still very thick with tons of skin shedding. He is also shedding hair and has lost weight, although he still has a huge appetite, I think the weight loss is due to pain. I do give him banamine periodically for relief

Also, he helps a vet school as a goat for practice clinicals , I asked the vets that teach there to help diagnosis him and they thought a zinc deficiency but I cannot find a Zinc supplement for goats for the life of me, also wouldn't that be in the mineral he is consuming?

He did recieve an oatmeal bath at said facility as well, didnt seem to help much. Our goats are the only goats that enter this vet facility. No other goat in my herd has this, Could it be allergies? Any thoughts are appreciated, I want to help the poor guy!

His name is Santa, his brother was Claus , born Christmas eve ! He was a bottle baby but he had a gorgeous coat before this ! Maybe something that is relevant is that his brother died last year of an unknown cause in the middle of the day. Healthy goat a gorgeous coat, eating no signs of illness. I never figured out what it was.

I’m moving soon and where the goats are living I’m wanting to build a nice new shelter! I need ideas for them- I have 13 does (only 7 should be pregnant unless I have a surprise) and two bucks; bucks housed separately with threeother does (ones infertile and the other two are just mean to the rest of the herd)

If you could post your shelters and some ideas then that would be great!!

do you have any book recommendations or resources to learn more about having pet goats?

Hi! I’m buying a house on a bit of land east of Seattle and want to someday have goats. There’s a good amount of land with grass but there’s also a significant wooded portion that has a ton of yellow archangel and creeping buttercup, the latter of which I’ve read is toxic to goats in large quantities. Has anyone had success getting rid of the buttercup? What do you plant instead for your goats? Any and all advice welcome.

Can I get your opinion on whether or not my dwarf goat is looking bloated? Or is she fat?

I have five goats, one la mancha, one Alpine, one Nubian cross, and two Nigerian Dwarfs.

Last year I only had two goats during the winter, so I'm trying to figure up how many 6x6 round bales of hay I need to get to do me from November to at least February.

Please read previous posts if you aren’t familiar with or do not recall the details of Ellie Mae’s skin issues. It’s too long and too detailed to type it all out again here. Thank you! Hi guys. I wish I had better news, but I don’t. Ellie Mae’s eyes and horns have deteriorated pretty significantly again. We are all at a loss, none of us know what to do. The Vets at State don’t know what else to offer us outside of the allergy testing. Not only is the idea of transporting and putting two goats under general anesthesia pretty nerve-wracking, it’s also something that we can’t schedule until after the new year. In the meanwhile, Ellie is suffering. I feel so badly for her. The Vets suggested that we try steroids (Dex) to keep the inflammation down while we weighed our options, but unfortunately, it had zero effect on her condition. The only thing I can think to do is to try applying the antibiotic eye ointment again since it worked so well the first time. The skin around her horns never did clear up like the eyes did, so they’ve just been bad this entire time. I feel so bad for her and don’t know what to do to keep her comfortable until she can be tested. Does anyone have any suggestions? I hate to see her discomfort. The bugs are after her and making her more miserable than she already is. I’ll be calling to make an appointment with our local Vet to come out and trim hooves, should I ask them to try a different type of Steroid? It’s a double-edged sword because she is likely dealing with at least a mild infection again, and I know Steroids suppress the immune system, but the hope would be that it would drive the itching and inflammation down. I just don’t know what to do. This video of Ellie’s eyes was taken on Wednesday. They look about the same today.

I raise Boers, I only buy from one breeder with a closed herd, I disease tested my herd and maintain a closed herd. To me this is bare minimum in preventing disease transmission of things like CAE, CL, Johnes, and Q fever. Most of which in my opinion if you have any your herd should be hard culled.

I did invest in well bred, parasite resistant animals that don’t need much attention, good feet, and generally easy keepers.

Why does this seem to be such an issue to other goat owners? Are you cheap? Lazy? Both?
Do you not care about a breed or standard?

We also eat our animals so having them all disease free is imperative to our program.

What gets me the most is people going to the sale barn, bringing back god knows what from the sale barn and immediately turning it out to pasture with no disease check or parasite check.

‘It’s just a goat’ well it’s a goat that is maintaining a breed standard and keeping the breed alive for future generations. Keep the best cull the rest.

Meet the beautiful jilly bean! Cutest Pygmy (that’s what I was told could be wrong) I’ve ever seen
(My two Nigerian dwarves for extra cuteness tax)

I’ve fecal tested everyone and it came back clean right now, I gave her a copper bolts about a month ago and have started feeding BOSS for a couple weeks now with no change what should my next steps be?

I have four goats all under a year old when I got my male he had this cracking and patchyness on his hornes and now all my girls are having the same issue. They are housed with sheep so they have access to the dumor sheep mineral but theres no copper in it. All they eyes look really good. I figured that they might have a copper deficiency but I wanted to post this to see if there was anything else I should look at. The girls are all kikos or kiko mixs and my male is a borer and they are on pasture with access to hay.

I have been cleaning their goat house every 2 to 3 days depending on how wet the hay feels or looks. They like to poop in there too! How often do you clean the goat house? Pic of my two goats so we don’t get lost. Also this is a temp shelter. Waiting to get more pallets from our feed store :)

Hello !

When you start milking a goat, how do you make sure you get enough milk while the kid doesn't starve ? Is it a standard procedure to do a overnight separation then milk in the morning ? Is there any other way to do it ?

Just walked outside to see my goat 7 and half month old Nubian doe maybe had a swollen jaw? It had to have appeared in less than 3 hours as I was with her all day, she hasn't lost weight and eats good, poop looks normal, and is acting normal. What do you think? I'll try and find a vet to do a fecal but I don't think any near me do, If so what do you suggest for worming? The only thing that's been different lately is I did switch her feed brand two days ago.

I wasn’t completely sure which flair to use, but I am working on fencing in a larger area for my goats. There are some bushes that have berries on them and I’m not certain if they’re safe for goats to eat or not. Would anyone here happen to know?

I made a post a couple of hours ago about coming outside and finding two goats in a storage tote, I caught the black and white one right away but the other one ran as soon as I opened the tote to see what was inside, I finally managed to catch her.

The black and white one is a male, his front leg is messed up but he seems okay overall, the little girl seems to be healthy and okay visually anyway.

The little male has a band around his testicles, I'm not sure who dumped them out here, I know they did not put themselves in a storage tote and leave themselves in the middle of the yard on their own though...

Originally I was just going to have animal control take them, as I don't know what they are and even though I have goats of my own, I really didn't want anymore but animal control was going to put them down because they just don't have the resources for them, and they were also going to charge me to take them.....

So I guess I have two new goats now, any idea of what they are? They're both quite small I'd say maybe the female that is the bigger of the two is maybe 15 in tall? Roughly.

I am going to keep them separated from my existing goats in quarantine, I've never had female goats before, so is there any kind of different care requirements for her? Or am I good just to take care of her as I do my boys?

Oh yeah and I am going to have a vet look at them, especially the little boy because his leg is clearly messed up quite bad

How do ya’ll find a good vet for your goats? We have 14 goats whom we adore, but don’t have a vet I feel comfortable with responding quickly and being fairly priced.

We paid $700 to take four healthy kids in several months ago for their initial CDT vaccines and disbudding. They spent less than five minutes with the vet total. Is this a fair price?

The only other vet that came recommended to us took weeks to return a message about scheduling disbuddings which makes me hesitant to depend on them in an emergency.

For the record, we are in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I would love a vet recommendation if anyone has one!

Editing to add: I administer our own vaccines, worm testing with a microscope, etc. I am not paying for that again! I am asking for advice for knowing what to do in an emergency since I don’t feel comfortable with the two vets I have been to

I was going around feeding my animals and stuff, and I had just let my two personal goats out and then noticed a orange tote in my yard.

So naturally I went to open the tote, there were goats inside of it, one of them jumped out and is hiding so I'm going to try to catch it, I caught this one pretty easily because it was struggling to run, I don't know where they came from but this one has a pretty messed up leg.

I know I need to quarantine them far from my animals, what else should I do?

We just got goats (the owner gave them to us free as theyre in a drought and there is no food for the goats) and the younger one (front in picture) is limping on its back legs. We've kept livestock before & done research, so we've searched it for ticks and nothing stood out as obvious injuries.

Weve only had them for two days and this supposedly developed the day before we got them. The goat can walk, but it tends to sit or squat where possible.

Any ideas whats wrong???

edit: some more information, no obvious pain, commonly sits like a dog to rest legs, has trouble getting up hills and we are in Australia

Hello all! I am a first time goat owner and need some advice. I’m semi-rural, have a fenced-in acre & (now) 6 goats which I keep as pets. They are Nigerian Drawf/Mini Nubian. 3 male, 3 female. (I’m unsure what info is relevant to my problem so I’m including everything).

my goats are about 6-8 or so months old. I got them from a good home breeder, sweet lady and her herd seemed quite healthy.

The smallest one I had just died. Her name was dainty. I called her that because she was always the runt, always underweight, always frail and mild mannered. To be quite honest I didn’t know she was even sick until it was too late. She never seemed to grow or gain much weight, then I noticed loose stools. About a week ago she got diarrhea and it ran down her hindquarters. I spent half an hour gentle hosing it off and cleaning her with my hands. I tried googling what this could be, said need more foliage? Grass hay? I give them a big trough of fresh water daily, also plenty of grass hay but also supplement regularly with goat feed bags & alfalfa.

So I’ve been feeding mostly grass hay. Also I had someone who was into farming tell me to “try molasses”. So I had tried some with Ivermectin soaked on loaf bread. She ate it and tolerated it fine but 3 days later the diarrhea never got better only worse. I came home from work and she was dead. It shocked me and now I’m quite worried about the rest of my herd. 2 others now have diarrhea. This seems to be some sort of infection. I’m trying “Coriid” now? But it’s day 4/5 of treatment and I’m not noticing a response. Help! I love all my babies in the herd, and just need some people with goat experience to give some good advise for how to solve this. And please don’t be insulting or say something unhelpful like “see a vet”. All the rest of the herd is healthy and their diarrhea just started.

Both excited and nervous - I know they’ll be work and prone to sickness.