Are Goats Right for Your Holding?

Goats are not small sheep. A sheep grazes grass to the roots; a goat browses. Given the choice she will spend her day working along hedgerows, stripping willow, bramble and ivy, nibbling at low branches and only then turning to pasture. That is precisely why they suit a scrappy half-acre of rough ground that would be wasted on cattle — and why they will wreck a tidy garden in an afternoon.

Two goats is the practical minimum. Goats are intensely social, and a lone animal will be miserable, noisy and forever testing the fence in search of company. Before buying stock, sort your paperwork: you need a holding number and a County Parish Holding number from the rural payments body for your part of the UK, and goats are recorded and moved under the same general livestock rules as other farmed animals.

Fencing: The One Job You Cannot Rush

Budget for fencing first and goats second. A goat's purpose in life is to test boundaries, and she will use her hooves on the wire, her horns on the posts and her weight on the gate.

• Height and mesh: 1.2 m (4 ft) minimum, in woven stock netting with squares no larger than 15 cm. Horned kids trap their heads in wide mesh, so keep it tight.
• Strainers and posts: Braced timber strainers at every corner and change of direction, with intermediates every 3 m. A sagging fence is a failing fence.
• Electric offset: One strand of electric fencing set about 20 cm inside the netting at nose height is the best deterrent there is. Goats respect a shock far more than they respect steel.
• Gates: Hinged field gates with a reliable latch and a second catch. Goats learn latches with unnerving speed.
• Hedging: A thick boundary hedge is a fine windbreak, but never the only barrier.

Housing, Bedding and Drainage

Goats cope with British weather far better than they cope with wet feet. They come from dry, mountainous country and their coats are not waterproof; a soaked goat in a cold wind loses condition quickly and is a candidate for pneumonia. What they need is not a warm shed but a dry, well-ventilated shelter with a raised floor.

A field shelter with an open front, sited on the highest and best-drained corner of the plot and facing away from the prevailing south-westerlies, does most of the work. Allow 1.5 to 2 square metres per adult goat inside, plus a separate pen if you plan to milk or keep a buck.

Bed on deep barley straw or good shavings, topped up daily and mucked out regularly. Do not use hay as bedding: it is a feed, and putting it underfoot wastes money and encourages them to eat soiled material. Deep litter works well as long as it stays dry; the moment it turns damp it becomes a reservoir for foot rot and coughing.

Feeding: Browse First, Concentrates Second

A goat's digestive system is built for fibre, so forage must be the bulk of the diet. Ad-lib hay or haylage is the backbone, with fresh browse and pasture on top. A mature milking doe will work through 2 to 3 kg of hay a day, and more in hard weather.

• Browse: Willow, hazel, bramble, ash, hawthorn and ivy are all valuable. Yew, rhododendron, laurel, ragwort and acorns are toxic — know what is growing on your plot before stock arrives.
• Minerals: Offer a goat-specific mineral lick at all times. Sheep minerals are formulated without enough copper and are no substitute.
• Concentrates: Reserve for milking does, growing kids and thin animals — roughly 0.5 to 1 kg of a balanced goat ration a day for a doe in milk, split across two feeds.
• Water: Clean water always, in a bucket they cannot tip or foul.

Health, Hooves and Daily Routine

Goats are stoic and hide illness well, so your best tool is a routine that puts your hands on them every day. Run your hands down each animal, check the colour of the gums, and watch for changes in appetite or droppings.

• Hooves: Trim every six to eight weeks. Overgrown hooves cause most of the lameness you will see, and a goat that cannot walk will not browse.
• Worms: Use faecal egg counts rather than the calendar, and agree a targeted worming plan with your vet. Anthelmintic resistance is a real and growing problem.
• Buying in: Quarantine any new arrival for at least three weeks, and discuss clostridial vaccination and testing for CAE and Johne's disease before you buy.

Milk, Manure and Lively Company

Get the basics right and goats repay you handsomely. A decent dairy doe gives two to four litres a day across her lactation, and there is little to match the taste of fresh milk from your own shed. Even if you never milk, goat manure is one of the finest soil conditioners a smallholding can produce — dry, easy to handle and safe to add to the compost heap without the long wait that horse muck demands.

Then there is the company. Goats are curious, opinionated and affectionate, with a sense of mischief that keeps a place lively. They will follow you round the yard, investigate every bucket you carry and greet you at the gate each morning. Keep their fences tight, their feet dry and their bellies full of browse, and they will settle into the rhythm of the holding as though they had always been there.