I grew up with milking goats.
Fantastic animals. If you get only one, be sure to spend time with it as they are very social animals. Get two if you can.
Anglo-Nubians give a lot of milk but are often fair pigs of animals to handle. I have never met a purebred Nubian I have liked.
British Alpine and Toggenburgs are both lovely animals and give good milk but probably not the highest volume.
My favourite variety is the Saanen. Beautiful nature ( although I have met cranky ones) and give a good dose of milk. We have probably had around 10 Saanens over the years.
We had a British Alpine-Saanen cross who was a lovely goat until she met a snake and lost the argument.
The best goat we ever owned though was a Saanen-Nubian cross who was the daughter of a 12th generation show champion. She was bloody expensive but gave over 3 litres of milk a day regular as clockwork and the best milk I have ever had. We were quite sad when she died.
get a young one if possible and get here used to being milked fairly early on. The worst goat we ever had to milk had been left running wild till her 3rd kid, and did NOT want to be milked. She had to be legroped on both legs or it was impossible to milk her.
Be sure they have a good supply of fresh water. They are quite fussy about clean water and if you want a lot of milk they need a lot of water.
When milking give them supplementary food. We used to give them a tub of horse feed called Completo which was a mixture of chaff and grain and some molasses. About one to one and a half quarts per milking session is good and they are happier being fed while milked.
Makes the milk sweeter and gives more of it.
They need shelter from rain and wind.
Goats are incredibly intelligent. We lived for some years on a 3 acre block surrounded by a sheep farm and the goats would go through every fence on our block but never once left the property. They can jump quite high fences and get through most wire fences except mesh.
If we wanted a certain area grazed we would drive a peg into the ground and tether the goat to it during the day.
Electric fences work well but they soon learn if you turn them off.
We had a collar on each goat and a rope to a car tyre so they could roam the paddock freely but if they jumped a fence they could not drag the tyre with them.
they learned quick, until they wore through the rope on the tyre and tehn got into the garden.....
Another thing that works well for controlled grazing is to get a large car tyre, put some plywood in the bottom and half fill with concrete, nice dry concrete so you can mold it. Fill the hollow of the tyre completely so you now have a big dish, then build up a pedestal in the dentre and set in a short peg, about 18 inches long.
You can tip it up on edge and roll it where you want it then fill the centre with water and slip the chain over the peg ( end of chain welded to a few inches of pipe) and clip the swivel on the other end to the goat's collar and you have a water dish they can't knock over and a tether they can't move but you can. Also when it is moved the water dish is emptied and clean for a refill.
Good luck with the goats, I would say go Saanen but I may be biased.
Enjoy!
Fantastic animals. If you get only one, be sure to spend time with it as they are very social animals. Get two if you can.
Anglo-Nubians give a lot of milk but are often fair pigs of animals to handle. I have never met a purebred Nubian I have liked.
British Alpine and Toggenburgs are both lovely animals and give good milk but probably not the highest volume.
My favourite variety is the Saanen. Beautiful nature ( although I have met cranky ones) and give a good dose of milk. We have probably had around 10 Saanens over the years.
We had a British Alpine-Saanen cross who was a lovely goat until she met a snake and lost the argument.
The best goat we ever owned though was a Saanen-Nubian cross who was the daughter of a 12th generation show champion. She was bloody expensive but gave over 3 litres of milk a day regular as clockwork and the best milk I have ever had. We were quite sad when she died.
get a young one if possible and get here used to being milked fairly early on. The worst goat we ever had to milk had been left running wild till her 3rd kid, and did NOT want to be milked. She had to be legroped on both legs or it was impossible to milk her.
Be sure they have a good supply of fresh water. They are quite fussy about clean water and if you want a lot of milk they need a lot of water.
When milking give them supplementary food. We used to give them a tub of horse feed called Completo which was a mixture of chaff and grain and some molasses. About one to one and a half quarts per milking session is good and they are happier being fed while milked.
Makes the milk sweeter and gives more of it.
They need shelter from rain and wind.
Goats are incredibly intelligent. We lived for some years on a 3 acre block surrounded by a sheep farm and the goats would go through every fence on our block but never once left the property. They can jump quite high fences and get through most wire fences except mesh.
If we wanted a certain area grazed we would drive a peg into the ground and tether the goat to it during the day.
Electric fences work well but they soon learn if you turn them off.
We had a collar on each goat and a rope to a car tyre so they could roam the paddock freely but if they jumped a fence they could not drag the tyre with them.
they learned quick, until they wore through the rope on the tyre and tehn got into the garden.....
Another thing that works well for controlled grazing is to get a large car tyre, put some plywood in the bottom and half fill with concrete, nice dry concrete so you can mold it. Fill the hollow of the tyre completely so you now have a big dish, then build up a pedestal in the dentre and set in a short peg, about 18 inches long.
You can tip it up on edge and roll it where you want it then fill the centre with water and slip the chain over the peg ( end of chain welded to a few inches of pipe) and clip the swivel on the other end to the goat's collar and you have a water dish they can't knock over and a tether they can't move but you can. Also when it is moved the water dish is emptied and clean for a refill.
Good luck with the goats, I would say go Saanen but I may be biased.
Enjoy!
