Maintaining a healthy goat herd is important for animal welfare, profitability. And—yes—it’s important even for our sanity as livestock breeders. Preventative actions like proper nutrition, cleaning and sanitation, disease testing, and vaccinations are key to a healthy goat herd. A solid commitment to proactiveness results in fewer disease and illness interventions that can be costly and time consuming.
These tasks can be daunting. But finding routines to incorporate in daily and weekly chores makes the mission easier. Further, breaking out less routine tasks by season and stage also helps keep your heard healthy.
Nutrition
Maintaining a healthy goat herd starts with proper nutrition. Feeding a complete ration with sufficient macro-nutrients, micro-nutrients, and roughages will set any herd up for success.
- Water: Fresh, clean water is potentially the most important part of a goat herd’s nutrition. Water should be free of fecal matter and other contaminants. It should also be readily accessible to all animals.
- Hay: Goats are ruminants, which means forages are vital to the performance of their digestive system and, thus, their performance in all other capacities. While the quality of hay is important for nutrient denseness, goats do not need the leafiest, greenest hay out there. In fact, some stemminess in the hay is preferred to provide the proper scratch factor for goats’ rumen performance. Grass and leguminous hay (like alfalfa) are both great options for forage feeding. It’s vital to ease the animals into leguminous hay or pasture as legumes can cause bloat or scours if your herd is not accustomed.
- Grain/Supplements: Grain, protein tubs, and loose mineral can all supplement a goat herd’s nutrition. That’s especially true when they don’t have access to good, quality hay. Grain and sweet feeds offer more control over nutrient intake and ensure your herd is getting a balanced ration. It is worth noting that mineral supplements can greatly impact conception rates, lactation, weaning weights and more. Ensuring your herd is getting those micro-nutrients will set your breeding program up for success.
It’s important to keep a close eye on your herd and adjust nutrition as needed. Equally important is adjusting feed intake with temperature, like we covered in one of our previous blogs.
To maintain weight in optimal temperatures, goats must consume 2-3% of their body weight on a dry matter basis with 7-8% protein daily. To achieve weight gains, total dry matter consumption must surpass the 2-3% range.
Cleaning & Sanitation
One of the best ways to keep a healthy goat herd is keeping facilities and equipment as clean and tidy as possible. Yeah, we know—it’s easier said than done, but it is the first line of defense against negative health impacts.
Sanitizing water tanks, bottles, milking equipment, and even individual pens (before each kidding season) helps keep harmful bacteria and viruses at bay. We keep bleach, iodine, and TekTrol on-hand for our go-to disinfectants. Bleach is an effective, cheap broad-spectrum disinfectant for surfaces; however, its efficacy is rapidly reduced with organic matter. Therefore, we turn to TekTrol when disinfecting barns or pens when the presence of organic matter is more likely. Iodine is our preferred solution for any disinfectant needs on the animals themselves, such as teats or wounds. You can find more in-depth information on disinfectant efficacy with the University of Iowa’s handy chart of disinfectant characteristics.
Keeping farm facilities clean goes far beyond just sanitizing, though. Sweeping, tidying, and closing barns will help keep out rodents that carry diseases that can negatively impact livestock. Replacing bedding often and ensuring feeders and waters are clean of fecal matter is also vital. These steps will limit a herd’s exposure to fecal matter from other animals that can carry harmful bacteria, including the mycobacterium that causes Johne’s disease. Replacing bedding also helps keep a dry environment, which keeps respiratory illnesses to a minimum, and it ensures pens are free of foreign objects (e.g., wire, twine) that may cause hardware disease if swallowed by the goats.
So how often should we do all of this?
Action | Item | How Often? |
---|---|---|
Sanitize | Bottles/milking equipment | Every use |
Drench guns | Every use | |
Water tanks/buckets | 2-4 weeks | |
Individual indoor pens | 1-2 times/year | |
Teats | Every milking | |
Clean/Tidy-up | Indoor bedding areas | Once/1-2 weeks |
Feed sheds | Once/week | |
Outdoor pens | Once/year |
Vaccinations
Vaccinations are vital to a healthy goat herd. We get it, though—it can be difficult to keep track of who needs what between the different life stages within our herds. We’ve found the easiest way to stay on track with vaccines and whole-herd interventions is to break it down by life stage and knock out other welfare management tasks at the same time.
For example, when we are completing our pre-breeding vaccinations, we’ll also trim hooves and evaluate the animals for any injuries or conditions that may need interventions (e.g., loose stool, respiratory issues, etc.).
Life Stage | Timing | Vaccines/Disease Control | Dosage | Use |
---|---|---|---|---|
Brood Does | 4-8 weeks before breeding | Chlamydia Abortus Bacterin | 2 mL/doe, subcutaneous | Chlamydia (late-term abortions) |
Clostridial 8-way | 2.5 mL/doe, subcutaneous | Eight clostridialbacterial diseases | ||
Doramectin (Dectomax) | 1 mL/100 lbs, subcutaneous | Internal parasites | ||
Pregnant Does | 2-4 weeks before kidding | Clostridium perfringens types C & D – Tetanus Toxoid (CD/T) | 2 mL/doe, subcutaneous | Enterotoxemia and Tetanus |
Pour-on external insecticide (permethrin) | 1.5 mL/50 lbs, topical | Lice, mosquitoes, flies, and ticks | ||
Kids | 30 days old | Clostridium perfringens C & D Antitoxin | 5 mL/kid | Enterotoxemia |
45 days old | Clostridium perfringens C & D Antitoxin | 5 mL/kid | Enterotoxemia | |
Bucks | 4-8 weeks before breeding | Clostridial 8-way | 2.5 mL/buck, subcutaneous | Eight clostridialbacterial diseases |
Doramectin (Dectomax) | 1 mL/100 lbs, subcutaneous | Internal parasites | ||
Pour-on external insecticide (permethrin) | 1.5 mL/50 lbs, topical | Lice, mosquitoes, flies, and ticks |
Diseases Testing
Another important line of defense for livestock producers is disease testing. Disease testing helps us make culling decisions and ensure we’re keeping our herd free of diseases—specifically Johne’s diseases—that do not have interventions. Once a year, we complete whole-herd blood testing for Johne’s disease and Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis (CAE). At the same time, we’ll often complete pregnancy testing on brood does. Additional testing can be completed, like for Caseous lymphadenitis (CL).
Producers and breeders will need to decide what diseases they want to test for based on their own herds’ needs. We encourage everyone to talk with their veterinarian(s) to plan for disease testing for their specific needs.
*The content within this blog is not meant to be a replacement for advice from professionals like veterinarians and feed specialists. Every livestock producer must evaluate their specific needs to maintain a healthy herd. The content here within are procedures that have worked for our specific needs but may not work for your specific needs.