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A Practical Guide to Goat Breeding and the Kidding Season

Breeding is where a goat herd either grows in quality or slowly drifts downhill. Every kidding is a chance to improve the herd, but it is also the moment of greatest risk to both the doe and her offspring. A farmer who plans matings deliberately, manages the pregnant doe well, and is ready and calm…
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Routine Hoof Care and Preventing Lameness in the Herd

Lameness is one of the most common and most underestimated problems in goat keeping. A limping goat eats less, moves less, breeds poorly, and loses condition quickly, yet the underlying cause is very often nothing more than neglected hooves. In the soft, wet ground of the Southeast Asian rainy season, horn grows fast and stays…
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Rotational Grazing and Getting the Most from Browse

Feed is the largest running cost in almost any goat operation, and pasture and browse are the cheapest feed there is. Yet a great deal of that free feed is wasted through careless grazing management. Goats turned loose on the same patch of ground day after day trample and foul more than they eat, the…
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Building a Healthy Goat Herd From the Ground Up

Starting a goat herd is one of the more rewarding entry points into livestock farming, but the decisions you make in the first few months tend to echo through the entire life of your operation. Goats are intelligent, social, and surprisingly hardy animals, yet they punish careless management more quickly than cattle or sheep. A…
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Understanding Goat Nutrition Through the Seasons

Feeding goats well is less about following a fixed recipe and more about reading the animal in front of you and adjusting to the calendar. A goat’s nutritional needs shift dramatically across the year, driven by pregnancy, lactation, growth, weather, and the changing quality of available forage. Farmers who feed the same ration in February…
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Recognizing and Managing Internal Parasites in Goats

Of all the health challenges facing goat farmers, internal parasites are arguably the most persistent and the most costly. Worm infections quietly drain animals of nutrients, suppress growth, reduce milk production, and in severe cases kill quickly. Compounding the problem, decades of routine deworming have produced parasite populations resistant to many available drugs. Successful parasite…




