Husbandry
 
Nutrition
• Goats are browsers (unlike cattle or sheep, which are grazers). If they have a choice between grass and shrubs, they will always take the shrubs (or your roses!) first. They can easily live on grass, or even on grain, but they always also need a certain amount of “roughage” (branches and leaves of trees, hay etc.) for their digestive system to work. 
 
• The digestive system of all ruminants is a very delicate, fragile system that needs to adapt to different types of feed. NEVER change from one feed to another rapidly (e.g. from hay to green grass), or you might kill your goat! As a general rule, allow approximately 7 days to gradually change from one feed to another or to introduce a new feed (e.g. grain).
 
• Goats should always have access to fresh water. 
 
• To make sure your goats get all minerals and trace elements they need, they should always have access to a “mineral lick block” or loose lick.
 
Feeding Garden Plants
 
Health
• Goats are quite susceptible for internal parasites “stomach worms”, particularly during wet periods, when they have to live on short grass. Loss of weight/condition, rough coat, scour, and anaemia (e.g. white instead of pink eye lids) are indicators of a heavy worm burden.
 
• “Rotational grazing” and avoiding paddocks with short grass can help to control the worms. However, regular de-worming (2-4x per year) with an oral sheep drench (e.g. Abamectin) is strongly recommended. Goats need to be drenched at 1.5x the dose recommended for sheep. Never underdose!
 
• We recommend to vaccinate your goats against Tetanus, “Cheesy Gland” (CL), and “Pulpy Kidney” (“overeating disease”) every 6 months (e.g. “Glanvac 3” from Pfizer Animal Health). Kids should be vaccinated at the age of 4 and 8 weeks, pregnant does approximately 4 weeks before kidding.
 
• Goats tend to get overgrown hoofs if they live on soft ground. Hoofs should be checked regularly and trimmed back (parallel to the hairline), if required. This can be done with a tin snip of with a strong knife. However, we recommend to use special hoof shears (e.g. FELCO 50 or FELCO 51).
 
Fencing
If your goats feel comfortable at your place, they won’t run away. However, goats are very inquisitive and will always test your fences and gates (“the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence!”).
Goat fences should be 110-115cm high to discourage goats from jumping. Normal 7/90/30 sheep mesh with an additional wire at 110-115cm works fine. Mesh with 10 to 25 c, distance between the vertical wires (e.g. 8/90/15) MUST NOT BE USED, because young goats will get stuck with their horns and can be killed (e.g. break their neck).
Alternatively to mesh fence, plain wire electric fences also work well (except for very young kids).

 
All our fences, with few exceptions (e.g. kidding paddocks), are high tensile plain wire electric fences of approx. 115cm height. We use 8 wires on the boundary fences, and 7 wires on all internal fences, with 4 wires being electrified (“hot”). Spacing between wires increases from 12cm at the bottom to 20cm at the top. Spacing between posts is 10m, with one “dropper” between each post.
We are very satisfied with our fences. They effectively keep goats in and wild animals, like kangaroos, emus and foxes, out. Furthermore, because they are very elastic, damage by falling branches is usually minimal, and animals which try to push through the fence in a panic normally don’t get hurt and don’t damage the fence. 
 

Goats should have access to shelter to protect them against wet, cold, windy weather.
 

Kids are very playful and will enjoy rocks, logs, etc. to climb on and to play around.