Is a Small Goat Herd Right for Your Holding?

Goats are charming, productive and utterly ruthless about escaping. Before you fall for a pair of kids at the local market, be honest about what you can offer. A goat needs roughly 1.2 to 1.5 square metres of covered floor space, a dry lying area, constant access to clean water and a fence it cannot defeat. On decent pasture, plan for two to four goats per acre as a rough starting point, and remember that most of their diet should still come from browsing and hay rather than lush grass alone.

They also need your time. Hooves want trimming every six to ten weeks, worming is a judgement call rather than a calendar job, and goats are adept at finding the one weak point in a fence on the day you are busiest. If you can only manage a quick visit at weekends, keep a pair of wethers as pets rather than starting a breeding herd.

Fencing: The Job You Must Do First

Goats are browsers with an unshakable belief that the grass is greener on the other side. They will lean, climb, push and rub, so anything flimsy will fail within a fortnight. Build your boundary before the animals arrive, not after.

• Height and mesh: aim for at least 1.2 metres of stock netting, with mesh small enough that a goat cannot push its head through.
• Electric offset: a single strand of electric fencing set about 30 to 45 centimetres inside the netting keeps goats from leaning and rubbing.
• No barbed wire. Goats have thin skin and no fleece to protect them; barbed wire causes nasty wounds and tangled horns.
• Gate latches: use proper throw-over or bolt latches. Goats learn to lift simple hooks with their lips and horns.
• No gaps underneath. If a kid can fit a hoof under a gate, it will eventually squeeze through.

Hedges are useful windbreaks but never a boundary on their own. Check for yew, laurel, rhododendron, laburnum and ragwort, all of which are seriously toxic to goats and far too easy for them to reach through a gap.

Housing and Dry Feet

Goats tolerate cold far better than wet. Their coats are not waterproof in the way a sheep's fleece is, so damp ground and draughty shelters lead quickly to coughing, foot problems and miserable animals. A simple field shelter with three solid sides and an open front is often enough for a small herd, provided it faces away from prevailing wind and rain.

• Raise the lying area or lay it with hardcore and a deep straw bed so goats are never standing in muck.
• Ventilate at high level, but keep draughts away from floor height.
• Provide separate feeding and hay racks off the ground to reduce waste and parasite pickup.
• Keep a small hardstanding area near the gate so you are not wading to do chores in February.

Clean water matters too. Goats are fussy drinkers and will refuse dirty troughs, which is a fast route to urinary problems in males.

Feeding and Browsing on Limited Ground

Goats are browsers, not grazers. They would rather strip a bramble hedge than eat ryegrass, which is one reason they suit rough, scrubby corners of a smallholding so well. Aim for a diet built on good-quality hay, hedgerow browse, and a measured ration of goat-specific compound or coarse mix.

• Hay: offer ad-lib, and expect to buy it in even during summer on small acreage.
• Browse: hawthorn, bramble, willow, hazel and rose are all welcome; avoid wilted leaves from stone fruit trees.
• Minerals: use a goat or goat-and-cattle mineral, never a sheep one. Goats need considerably more copper than sheep, but oversupply causes poisoning, so follow the label.
• Haylage and rich grass: introduce slowly, as sudden rich feed causes bloat and scouring.

Rotate grazing if you can, resting paddocks for three to four weeks to break the worm cycle. On very small plots, this may mean keeping fewer animals than you would like.

Health, Husbandry and the Routine

Register your holding and herd mark, record every movement, and find a vet who is comfortable with goats before you need one urgently. A few jobs come round with reassuring regularity:

• Trimming hooves and checking for foot rot or scald.
• Monitoring body condition, especially over winter and after kidding.
• Faecal egg counts rather than routine worming, to slow resistance.
• Vaccinating for clostridial diseases and treating for lice and mites when needed.
• Watching for bloat, which shows as a distended left flank, discomfort and teeth grinding.

Disbudding kids, castrating males not kept for breeding, and trimming back horns on adults are all tasks to discuss with your vet in advance.

Starting Small and Buying Well

Begin with two or three animals rather than a flock. Goats are herd animals and a single goat is a distressed goat, so always keep at least a pair. Wethers make excellent companions and easy first goats, while dairy breeds such as British Saanen or Toggenburg suit a milking routine and smaller, hardy types do well on rougher ground.

Buy from a breeder who will show you the parents, discuss their health history, and let you see the animals handled calmly. Ask about worming history, kidding records and any previous foot trouble. Take your time, walk your boundary once more, and the small herd you bring home will repay you with milk, grazing management and no end of character.