We are looking forward to getting a couple of Nigerian Dwarf goats soon. I spent the first half of my life with full-size dairy goats as my mother kept a small herd of Alpine cross does and a Saanen buck, and I am looking forward to having goats of my own now that we have a place for them. A few years ago we visited a friend who has a large herd of Nigerians, fell in love with them, and decided that they were what we would like to have. We would love to hear from others with tips and hints for keeping these little guys. Are they easier/harder than full size goats? We'd like to know about any unique problems/quirks we should be aware of and plan for. Also, we now live in north Idaho and would like suggestions on caring for them during the winter. We can get anywhere from 1 to 3 feet of snow on the flat. I am assuming I need to adjust the height of the fencing accordingly. And regarding a buck, is it better to have our own or find one that's close that we can take the girls to visit? We are only planning on having 2-3 does. We would love to hear from folks from anywhere, but would like to know if there is anyone in our neck of the woods. Thank you!
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LOL! Oh My Gosh Deborah, your uncle must have been a cool DUDE. And I hadn't even thought of Pavlov. You are right. I don't really think about that stuff. It seems to come natural. As I have said before I kinda have a thing about animal psychology. I try to look at things from there view point as well as I can. And if I can train them to do something that easy, that can be that useful etc., then I am going to do that for their sake. Since we don't own a whole lot of land yet, and use smaller pens. We let them out everyday for almost all of the daylight hours, where they could cover about 4 acres (although they stay within the space of about 1 acre), therefore we need them to be cooperative about going in and out of pens when we choose, because we mostly let out all of the does. At times throughout the day we may put up everyone that should not be with bucks ( big prego Marley etc. stay out) and let them out for a while. With the training we have given them it is no problem getting them swapped around any way I want within a couple of minutes. When my hubby drove his peterbilt (sittin' in my backyard for years now), he would blow that horn at our kids off in the woods fishing! And WENDI, I love your description of your seasons. We have summer and 1 month of what we call winter LOL! Problem is it could be Jan. or Feb. or Mar. normally. But this year I think it was April. Weird!
We laugh that in our area we have two seasons- winter and August! :) It's not as bad as all that but it can freeze at night 6 months out of the year (it froze one night in July last year). January and February are the worst (can be 10-15 below zer0), so although some winters are milder than others we definitely are going to try avoiding births those months! Spring and summer would be best for sure! And they will be near enough to the house for close monitoring. And we have an animal friendly house if we need to bring any in. :)
Welcome, Wendi! You've already received a ton of great advice. The only thing I have to add is about kidding in winter. If you get the does pregnant for kidding in cold months, be sure you have a way of monitoring them constantly. The kids are 2-3 pounds when born, and when soaking wet, they can get hypothermia really fast if it's below 20 degrees or even at 40 degrees if they're outside and it's windy. If it's below 0, you're looking at frozen ears. I live in Illinois, and we've had two below 0 kiddings. Not fun! Some of these does give birth SO quickly, it is easy to miss it.
Oh, and NDs are definitely easier to handle than big goats. I am hoping to sell my last la mancha this year. A lot of people with small children or older people buy NDs from me, including older people who are downsizing from big goats as they get older and wants something smaller, easier to handle, and less likely to hurt them.
Margaret, I love the bell idea! It's Pavlov's dog! And it reminded me of when I was a little girl, I had an uncle with a ranch in Texas, and he'd honk the horn of his truck to call his cows.
I had so much fun with our goats growing up that I'm glad my husband is deciding to give it a whirl. :) Mom's dairy goats had a good sized field, partly wooded, that they were on, but they really liked to go across the creek via a big log and browse in the woods on the hill. It wasn't fenced and it never ceased to amaze my sister and I that they never ran off but right at milking time there they would come back across the log. :)
We've made sure that our barn will be within easy distance of the house because I don't want to go too far with a bucket of milk! And it will be much handier when the babies start coming. I also like the idea of looking out the kitchen window and seeing my little goats. :) And, yes, there is a HUGE difference between dog poo and goat poo. lol :) And thank goodness! My mom used to bring the babes into the house (we didn't have carpet) and I would much rather clean up after them!
I also need to say that although we have over 70 acres of land our NDs are next to our garage just across the dooryard. I open the gate sometimes but they never wander off. Sometimes they come to the door and call but they seem to know where I feed them and easily go back to their pen and fenced area. All our bedding etc goes into our compost. Husband has a huge compost pile so no worries about what to do about that.
Thanks, it works well for us and I feel it is one of those things everyone should do. It is to easy and you never know when you may need to get everyone to move quickly. As long as people don't tease them by calling or should we just say "ringing" them in and not rewarding them then it will work great. After they are trained they should have their reward be various things, like maybe just fresh hay or petting perhaps branches. If you think about the possibility that almost anyone could have a goat escape and/or wander off and not know where to look for them, this can literally be a lifesaver. They can hear this a long way away and will always come to the sound. The kids will catch on extremely quickly. I feel that the little ones will learn to come to this sound before they will even eat a reward offered just by following the herd. Therefore if a kid were seperated from the herd for any reason it could help to locate them. We do not have a lot of land either and I did want to tell you that you should be fine on that. We were a little worried when we ordered our girls. We had 9 doelings arrive at once! Plus we have 5 others, bucks, non-NDs etc. We own a couple of acres and have several more that they would be allowed to browse on but they have never even seen all of our +/- 2 acres, because they will not go that far away from us. It kinda aggravates me because there is so much they could eat and they figure we give them enough to eat, so they just browse on what is right here close to us and lay around chewing there cuds and pooping everywhere. I know exactly what you mean about hubby! Me too! And guess what? He adores them, has spoiled them rotten and frequently says "my" instead of "our" when referring to them. He HATES stepping in dog poo or anything like that (not that anyone likes it), I mean goes crazy but I have seen him actually laugh about the little black dots on the bottom of his flip flops. And he spoiled them to coming on the porch (I tried to tell him and he wouldn't listen) so we have to keep a broom there and if they go he just sweeps it off on the ground. They have made a huge difference in our lives. ALL FOR THE GOOD!!!
That's a great idea training them to come to a bell! And training them to it sounds like something our children will have fun with. :) We do indeed plan to start small. We don't have a huge amount of space and I'm tying not to overwhelm my husband right off the bat. :) We are hoping to buy the place next to us which is over an acre of unimproved land and so I want to make sure that the goats we start off with will be able to work into a little bit larger herd. The plan is to get unrelated kids from my friend if we can get the the place ready and deposits down before reservations are closed. We'll see how it goes.
Hello, I am the BIG MOUTH of the group. First thing, I am going to tell you my FAVORITE TRICK. In case they get out, or for any reason you want them to COME quickly. Only problem, EVERYBODY comes. It makes catching, moving from pen to pen etc. much easier. Get a BELL. Yep, a bell, ours is an antique goat bell of my hubby'. If you ever intend to bell any of your herd, queen, babies etc. DO NOT USE the same type. They know the difference between different bell sounds. So this bell we use is diff. than any other around here. It hangs on my porch. And we started out by grabbing it and ringing it loud as we approached them at feeding time. We all know how smart they are. We spent a couple of days ringing the bell and handing out treats, like every few hours (all weekend would work for people who work all week) or so. Now any time we just can't spot someone up in the woody area, or they wander out the gate if I am unloading feed and stuff or I want to put them in their pen or any time I want to show them off to someone, I can ring that bell and they ALL come running, and almost knock me down. It makes life so easy. I can walk in a pen and ring the bell. They run in and I run out and shut the gate. No chasing or begging or pleading involved. It is the quickest way to handle moving a herd in an emergency, like a sudden storm hitting etc. I love the bell! Now, I fall in love with my babies and don't like getting rid of them, so you might want to plan for that and maybe only get two does to start so you can keep some doe babies. Your friend would be an ideal way to start out if possible. That could be a really big help for a starter. If you want a plan for the least money and effort put into the most return, for starting a herd, I would say the ideal would be 2 unrelated does bred to unrelated bucks also not related to your does. The possibilities are great. The best you could hope for from investing in a total of 2 goats. (Pay a little more if you have to, but get the best you can.) If you happened to get two sets of twins, both boy/girl sets. You could potentially keep and breed all of them, if you choose to do so, without having to worry about them being related. (Doe1 and her doeling can be bred back to doe2s buckling, and doe2 and her doeling can be bred back to doe1s buckling. You have 4 does, 2 bucks, a total of only 6 after a period of time, not to many with these little guys, each buck can be bred to 2 does without any in or line breeding.) Think that through and then make adjustments according to your needs and you should come up with a workable plan. Something close to that at least. You can also still stagger your kiddings and milk by purchasing two that are due to kid a few months apart. The next year you can spread the breedings a little more if you want.
Yes, I have visions of the whole bunch stepping over the fence the first big snow fall. lol I would like to solve that problem before it pops up! :) Our goal is also to come as close as possible to milk year round, but since we only have room for a few goats I'm not sure if that's reasonable or not. I'm hoping we will be blessed with easy milkers, too! My friend raises award-winning milkers so even if I am unable to get any from her (she's in a nearby state and they reserve fast), I am thankful I have her to get advice from. We have 4 children and could certainly use the milk!
We live on the outskirts of an extremely rural town (I'm not sure you could call it that) and have about an acre and a half. We have a large garden with berries and fruit trees and we also keep chickens. The spot we have for set aside for goats is about 50' wide and 150' long plus the barn space. It is not flat pasture, but a woodsy slope with some brush. I do need to make sure there is nothing they shouldn't eat but it's the kind of spot the goats my mom had loved. We have no neighbors on either side of us and forest to the back. We do have a fairly busy road in front, so we are actually planning to double fence part of it. The rest of our property is getting fenced already, so they would have to go through a double fence at any point to get out-out. An ounce of prevention, right? We also plan on putting up a barn that can be securely shut at night, since we do have predators.
I am glad to hear they are so easy to manage. I grew up on a farm and my poor husband has had little to no exposure to farm life. We've been slowly trying to break him in. lol We will make sure to be extra cautious with babies. Our children are having trouble picturing little goats only 2 pounds. :) I probably should not plan to have babies coming in the winter months though? I think that would make me nervous. I will search to see if there is anyone near that has a buck see if that will work. If not, we'll get our own. It certainly would be more convenient!
First, WELCOME! :)
Are they easier/harder than full size goats? EASIER!! I've had larger breed goats, and NGD are much easier to manage. Especially on days when they decide they don't want to DO what you want... and you have to use YOUR strength to get it done. :)
We'd like to know about any unique problems/quirks we should be aware of and plan for. Kids are TINY!! They can slip through some VERY small places. I use cattle panels for fencing, and so I have to add bird netting along the bottom to keep kids in the fenced area.
Also, we now live in north Idaho and would like suggestions on caring for them during the winter. I don't live in cold COLD... do I don't have much to say about that, other than to be sure they have nice snug wind safe shelters to escape to. Also, be sure they have good places to get away from rain.
And regarding a buck, is it better to have our own or find one that's close that we can take the girls to visit? One isn't "better" than the other, but having bucks of your own is much more CONVENIENT when it comes to breeding if you have more than one or two does. You can always start by going on goat dates and then if you change your mind, add bucks. I personally had a hard time figuring out WHERE that teeny 24 hour window of standing heat time WAS with my does, so I ended up buying bucks this year. I did get one of my does pregnant by going on a goat date, but I had to leave her with my breeder until she hit the SECOND heat... because we JUST missed her standing on the first one.
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