Your Guide To Goat Farming
Article by Morgan Hamilton
The goats produce two very important products in goat farming – the milk and the meat. In most of the large goat farms the goats are treated much like dairy cows as their accommodations are indoors and they are milked twice a day. Large farmers have more than 400-500 goats in their farms.
The breeding season for goats in farms is from August to March. The goat’s pregnancy lasts for four months and they are generally bred once a year, so their kids are born between January and August. The female goats give birth to one to five kids and twins are to be expected.
A female goat in a farm can start mating after the age of seven to nine months while it can be milked when the goat reaches a year. Goats give birth easily, so no special help is needed. However, the farmers need to make sure that the kids nurse from their mother, if they don’t, they should be fed from a bottle. This should be done right after the kid is born as this is when it receives the critical first milk which is called colostrum. After it is fed with colostrum containing minerals, vitamins and antibodies for a few days, the kid could be fed with milk formula or could nurse from its mother.
Breeding goats in a farm is quite similar to breeding cows. The kids of goats should be given a milk formula until they can be weaned; this is after they reach five to seven weeks of age. This is the time when the goats are then milked.
In a goat farm the females are given a two month period before giving birth, they need this time so that they could give nutrition to their kids after birth. As far as milking goats in diary farms is concerned, goats are milked twice a day, usually in intervals of 12 hours. The milk can be extracted by machine or by hand depending on the kind of techniques and work force the goat farm has. Another thing which makes breeding goats and cows similar is that the both use up to date diary production which should meet certain hygienic requirements.
If the farmer is interested more in meat production, then the kids of the goats should be nursed from eight to ten weeks. After that they are to be fed hay, grain and pasture until they gain enough weight, which can vary from 35 to 90 pounds.
When a farmer is breeding goats for their meat, he should consider the goats’ breed and then decide what optimal weight the goats should reach. Different breeds of goat reach different weight. Goat farming might not be the first thing you considered when talking about farming, but it is a profitable and enjoyable business activity.
