If you’ve landed here, you have either purchased a pet goat from us or someone else and are wondering how to care for your new pet so they stay healthy, happy, and thrive. Caring for pet goats is really easy and you’ll find that after knowing a few key things, they are really easy to maintain.
Let’s begin with how we feed our animals. If you are taking home one of ours, the primary diet for our pet goats is Bermuda grass. If they are under a year, we also supplement with a little bit of alfalfa so they have sufficient protein to continue growing at an optimal rate. After they turn a year old, Bermuda is their primary diet. Sometimes in summer the feed store will bring in summer grasses such as, orchard grass, timothy, tricale, barley/wheat/oat. Often we’ll buy a bale or two for a treat. The thing to know about goats is their rumen cannot handle drastic and sudden change in diet. If you purchase a summer treat hay, just introduce it to them slowly, starting at about 25% of their total ration and just keep it there if you plan on it being just a treat. Same goes with grazing. If you plan for your goat to start grazing your pasture over-growth, introduce them to it slowly, starting with an hour or so p/day and gradually increase their time out.
Winter feeding. In order to keep your goats warm in winter, you need to make their rumen (first stomach) work harder. We like feeding alfalfa hay at their evening feeding during cold weather because the stems in the alfalfa is harder for the rumen to break down. The rumen works harder and it generates heat. This is also a reason why we don’t like to feed the pets too much alfalfa in summer. We live in a warmer climate and typically nights get cold but days warm so we only feed alfalfa at night but it you live where it’s much colder, adjust your feeding accordingly. You might find that feeding alfalfa 100% in winter works best for your herd. They may need those extra calories to maintain weight. Always be accessing your goat’s body condition and adjust accordingly. If they are starting to get heavy, back off, thin add more. Remember to introduce slowly and you can work up to 50% of their evening ration being alfalfa. Just make sure that when it’s time to back it down you do it gradually, as well.
Graining goats. We do not grain our pet goats. The only time we grain any goat is to keep up body conditioning and most of the time it’s the dairy does at the beginning of their lactations. We will also give our bucks a little bit of grain during rut to help them maintain their body conditioning but we have never had the need to grain our pet goats. If you want to feed treats for training, Animal Crackers (just a few) are a big hit and if you have mesquite trees, mesquite pods are a favorite also. If you live in a colder area and find you need to add those calories, then make sure you find a goat feed that has amonium chloride in it. That ingredient will keep uninary stones from forming. Urinary stones in male goats can be caused by grain in the diet which is why we don’t use it. It can be fatal if not treated by a vet in time and it is also very painful.
Minerals are crucial for goat health. Loose minerals are best as it’s much easier for the goat to get the amount they need. We also keep a little baking soda on hand just in case they need to buffer their rumen during a diet change. So rule of thumb, if you don’t want to keep baking soda available at all times, give it to them when you are changing their diet. They will eat it when they need it.
If you’re interested in reading about how we manage deworming our herd, see our post on Deworming Goats.