10/14/2025
Moving fences makes for happy goats and keeps them healthy!
Goats are hard, but goats force you to learn unlike any other animal I’ve had. In an ideal environment I would rotationally graze my goats on “browse” on treelines, in the woods and not on straight grass, but I don’t have that here.
We use moveable electronet fencing so we can rotationally graze our goats and they have constant quality hay access, eat grain daily, and are f***led every 4-6 months for parasite management (mainly barber pole). So far this year I’ve only needed to worm 2 goats after f***l counts. Which tells me what we’re doing now is working.
Rotational grazing helps break parasite lifecycles and allows pasture to grow to healthy lengths.
Parasites can climb 3 inches up a blade of grass so moving them before it’s too short is key to reducing parasite load.
The more you can move them, the better. Ideally every 10 days, but that’s not sustainable for us, nor would it give enough rest time for the pasture we have. Our f***ls have shown me my goats can go much longer which means the parasite load in the ground is less because we’ve broken the cycle with moving the animals and not allowing pasture to be overgrazed.
Additionally we’ve had 2 years of significant droughts. This has helped break cycles because parasites need moisture to hatch and move. This changes the minerals stored in the grass also so I stay on top of free choice minerals and all goats get a copper bolus 2 times a year. We know we’re a copper deficient area though and not everywhere is.
This is a very small window into what goes in to base level goat care/management and it the reason when I hear people say “Oh I want to get goats next!” or “Goats are so cute I want one!”, my immediate response is to say “No you don’t”.
So why have them? Because I love them and love makes us do illogical things…most of the time.
