Episode 1
For the Love of Goats
Join me as I tell you my goat story in the first episode of my new podcast. I also explain why I decided to start a podcast and what you can expect in the coming weeks. In addition to doing a few solo episodes like this one, I’ll also be interviewing a lot of other goat lovers and experts.
Today’s episode is sponsored by Premier 1 Supplies, which I discovered all the way back in 2002 when we bought our first goats. I’ve been using their products all these years and never been disappointed, which is why I offered them the opportunity to be the sponsor of this first episode. They are a huge part of my life with goats.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
And because their heat lamp is my absolute favorite — see my review here — I asked them if they’d give one to one of my podcast listeners to celebrate the launch of the new podcast, which they did. Sorry you missed it, but there will be more giveaways in the future.
You can also listen to and subscribe to my podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn (Alexa), iHeart, and lots of other podcast players.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
TRANSCRIPT – My Goat Story
Intro 0:03
For the love of goats, we are talking about everything goat, whether you’re a goat owner, a breeder, or just a fan of these wonderful creatures, we’ve got you covered. Today’s episode is brought to you by Premier 1 Supplies – sheep and goat equipment that works, folks use it every day. Now, here’s Deborah Niemann.
Deborah 0:29
Hello, everyone! And welcome to my very first podcast on For The Love Of Goats. The name of this seemed to be pretty obvious to me, because I really love goats. And it’s kind of crazy, because it all started back in 2002, when we moved to the country to start growing our own food organically, and I just thought the price of goat cheese was kind of ridiculous. And I thought I could get a couple of goats and make my own cheese. And we would all live happily ever after.
Deborah 1:00
And it started out simple enough, I got some goats and I started making goat cheese. And it seemed really easy. And I even started making goat milk soap. And then the goat started dying, and they weren’t getting pregnant. And we had all kinds of problems. And it was a huge challenge for several years to get it figured out. In fact, for the first five years that we own goats, we never had a buck live past the age of three.
Deborah 1:29
This does not sound like the beginning of a story of somebody who would ever write books about goats or speak in conferences across the United States and Canada about goats. And honestly, there were times that I wanted to give up. But these crazy creatures had completely stolen my heart. And giving up just wasn’t an option. I really wanted to make it work. And not just because I wanted the goat cheese. But because I really love the animals. And I wanted to figure it out.
Deborah 2:02
And so that’s what we did. And along the way, I wound up doing so much research to save my own goats that by the time I was done, it honestly felt like I could write a whole book about it. And ultimately, that is what happened. After I wrote Homegrown and Handmade, my publisher heard me talking about goats at a conference one day, and came up to me and said, “Hey, have you ever thought about writing a book about goats?” And I was ecstatic.
Deborah 2:30
I just jumped out of my skin, I was so excited about the idea of writing a book about goats. Because I had thought about it. And I was really excited about sharing all of my knowledge with other people. And that’s kind of the way that the whole thing started. If you’ve read my books or magazine articles that I’ve written or my website, or you’ve seen me speak at conferences, then you already know a couple things about me. One is I love research.
Deborah 2:57
Research is what saved my goats’ lives. And also listening to other breeders. But another big, big thing with me is, I do not believe that there is one right way to do it. You have to know the WHY behind what works. So sure, there are certain things that work on my farm. But I will be the first person to tell you that not everyone should do what we do. Because nobody else has the exact same mix that we do of genetics and forage, and really horrendous well water that’s full of sulfur and iron and has caused so many problems for us. It’s all different.
Deborah 3:38
When somebody tells you that they did something that solved all their problems, and now everything is great, there is so much information that you need to know about them and their farm and their water and their goats. All of that makes a difference.
Deborah 3:54
I have a friend four miles away from me who raised nubians for 15 years. And she never needed to supplement with copper the way that I did and it was because she didn’t have the same horrible well water that I have.Their well actually ran dry and so they had to haul water from the city, which sounds like a really horrible thing. And it was, it was a huge pain. It was expensive.
Deborah 4:18
But because their goats were getting city water it didn’t have all the sulfur and iron that was in our water. And all that sulfur and iron in our well water was binding with the copper and making our goats copper deficient. Her goats never had a problem with copper deficiency simply because her well water was different. So that’s the kind of thing that you really need to know.
Deborah 4:40
I know two people who killed some of their goats accidentally, because they gave them multimin injections when they didn’t need them. And the reason they did that is because someone else told them that multimin injections had been a great thing for their herd, it helped them with so many different problems, because its got selenium in it and copper in it. So that helps with fertility and other things.
Deborah 5:10
And so these other people thought, “Oh, I want my herd to have more fertility and to have fewer health problems and stuff. So I am going to give my goats the same thing.” And they wound up having some goats die. And they actually got the liver and kidney tests that showed that their goats died from toxicity from too much copper and too much selenium because both the injection is very high in both of those.
Deborah 5:37
It’s a great thing for people who need it. But that’s why you have to know the why behind doing things. You can’t just do something because it worked for someone else. I feel like everybody has a valuable story to tell about their goats. And we can all learn a lot from listening to other people’s stories, from reading about them online from watching YouTube videos and things like that.
Deborah 6:00
But the lessons that we have to learn may not necessarily be that we need to do the same thing that person is doing. What they’ve learned about their goats may not actually be relevant to our goats. Maybe what we learned from someone else’s story is what not to do, like those people who gave their goats injectable minerals when they didn’t actually need them.
Deborah 6:25
So I guess what I’m telling you is, I’m not going to be telling you what to do. Basically, we all need to become our own personal expert on our own goat herd. And we do that by educating ourselves and learning as much as we can from a variety of people.
Deborah 6:42
And that’s one of the reasons that I decided to start this podcast because there are actually a lot of areas about goats that I don’t know anything about. And a long time ago, back in the 90s, I used to be a newspaper reporter, and I loved interviewing people. And that is what I’m going to be doing here.
Deborah 7:01
Some of my episodes are going to be solo, where I’m just going to talk about some basic things. But some of the episodes I’m going to be interviewing experts, and that will be people who started different goat businesses, or researchers or college professors, people like that, who can give you the information firsthand. So it’s not me reading the studies and digesting it and regurgitating it back to you.
Deborah 7:28
I am really excited about reaching out to people who are actually in the trenches doing these things. Some of the upcoming interviews are going to be more science related like ruminant nutrition, and using lespedeza for worm and coccidia control, as well as infectious causes of abortion. And those are going to be the expert interviews. And then on the more business side of things, I’m going to talk to people who have pack goats and who are making a business with goat milk soap and goat dairies, and things like that.
Deborah 8:05
I’m really excited about getting to talk about goats, with a lot of these people. But I want you to know that this show is totally for you. I’m not just doing this to listen to myself talk and have fun chatting about goats, although this is gonna be so much fun. If you have a suggestion for a topic that you want me to cover, then feel free to drop me a line by visiting my website at ForTheLoveOfGoats.com, and you can click on the contact button and send me a message there. Or through the Facebook page ForTheLoveOfGoats, which you can find at facebook.com/LoveGoatsPodcast.
Deborah 8:47
And now a word from our sponsor. Today’s episode is brought to you by Premier 1 Supplies. They make sheep and goat equipment that works from folks who use it every day. I specifically approached the wonderful people at Premier 1 and asked if they would sponsor my first podcast. I thought it was especially appropriate because I have been using Premiere 1 Supplies longer than any other company who makes anything for goats or sheep.
Deborah 9:19
We had only been here for a couple of months when some propane was delivered one day and the man delivering it said to me, “I see you got goats. Do you know about Premier 1?” And I said, “No…”. And he wrote down their name and their phone number for me because it was 2002 so the internet was there but it wasn’t really big yet. And so he let me know about it. And I contacted them and I got their old fashion catalog back then in 2002.
Deborah 9:54
And before you knew it, we were buying there. We bought heat lamp, we bought all sorts of stuff from them. Within a couple years, we bought our first rolls of electronet, which is actually it’s electric netting for sheep and goats. And it is absolutely wonderful. We bought a couple rolls of it. And we thought it was really super, and realized we needed more. So we bought a few more rolls of it, and realize that we needed more.
Deborah 10:28
And so for years, it seemed like every year, we would say we need two or three more rolls of this. And now we have, we’re not really sure, honestly, we think we have 15 or 16 rolls of it. And that’s just for the sheep and goat. We also have three rolls of the poultry netting that we use with our chickens and our hen mobile.
Deborah 10:52
So as with every single sponsor of every single podcast that you will hear from me, the products are ones that we have used and that we absolutely love, and that I have recommended for years long before I ever looked for a sponsor for anything. So Premiere 1 Supplies is a super awesome place to get all of your goat supplies. And you’ll find them at www.premier1supplies.com.
Deborah 11:24
And now, back to my story. If you think I left out a few details when I jumped from goats dying to writing books, you would be correct. There were a lot of tears for quite a few years before we got things figured out. Unfortunately, there was not much research done on goats prior to the 2000s. So there was not a lot known about nutrition or parasites. And those were our two biggest problems.
Deborah 11:50
Our goats became copper deficient for several reasons. First, our well water is very high in sulfur and iron. Sulfur and iron are copper antagonists – that means that they bind with the copper, which makes it unabsorbable by the body. Now it doesn’t mean they can’t absorb any copper, it just means they need a lot more.
Deborah 12:10
Now this was a problem because I didn’t really take their needs for minerals very seriously. So I did have a free choice mineral for them. But if it was full, it was full. And if I forgot it for a while, I forgot it for a while and so they were not reliably getting their regular minerals. Now, once I discovered that this was like really important, and I put the minerals out there that did not help a lot, we still needed to supplement more with just the copper.
Deborah 12:42
Another problem we had is that the goat feed that we were feeding only had 10 ppm copper in it, which is not nearly enough. We’ve learned a lot since then. And the goat feeds that you find in the store now are usually between 20 ppm, which is twice as much, or 40 ppm, which is four times as much. So you can see basically, our goats were suffering from primary and secondary copper deficiency, meaning they didn’t have enough copper in their diet.
Deborah 13:11
And what little copper they did have was binding with the sulfur and iron in our well water, causing them to be deficient. This resulted in them not getting pregnant, not staying pregnant, aborting at all different stages of pregnancy, which was probably the most heartbreaking thing to go out to the barn, thinking that you don’t have any goats do for another month. And then to find these tiny little toothpick goats that were born way too young and too small to ever survive. So that was very heartbreaking.
Deborah 13:44
The other problem that we had is that we wound up with total dewormer resistance, which means that none of the dewormers worked on the worms on our farm, because we had been using the dewormers incorrectly. But we didn’t know that. In fact, nobody knew that back in the early 2000s. After we had a goat die from parasites, the vet told me to deworm all of my bucks every month, and to rotate dewormer, which was very common advice back then that’s what people been doing for 10 or 20 years.
Deborah 14:19
Unfortunately, the practice was not based on research. It was just what people thought was common sense, well like that just makes sense. Right? If you switch around the dewormer they can’t become resistant to it. And if you use it every month, you know, then you’ll be killing them all. Well, that’s just all wrong, which we know now but we didn’t then.
Deborah 14:37
So anyway. The research on goat parasites was just getting started in the early 2000s. Another one of the old common sense ideas was that if one goat had worms, they all had them. So you needed to deworm everybody if one goat had worms. Well, we now know that that’s not right either. They’ve actually found vastly different worm loads in different goats in the same heard. And we’ve learned that if you rotate dewormers it actually causes dewormer resistance to happen faster than if you just kept using one until it no longer worked.
Deborah 15:11
We also know that you should never deworm your goats on a schedule of any sort, not monthly, not quarterly, not even annually. You only need to deworm your goats when they are being negatively affected by the worm load. Think of them like you think of antibiotics, you don’t need to give antibiotics to your goats, just because you think maybe there’s a possibility that they might get sick. Or if one goat in your herd has an infection, you’re not going to give antibiotics to all of them.
Deborah 15:42
We all understand that the issue with antibiotic resistance and the issue with dewormer resistance is similar. If we only had three different antibiotics, we would be really, really stingy with them. We wouldn’t use them unless we really really needed them. And that’s how we need to be thinking about dewormers.
Deborah 16:01
So what happens when you wind up with dewormer resistance? To all the dewormers it means that you just sit there and you watch your goats die when they get a heavy load of worms. Yes, there were a lot of tears. It was horrible. And I was willing to try everything that anyone said might kill worms. I tried multiple herbal dewormer combinations that I found online. I tried individual herbs like wormwood and mugwort. I tried fresh herbs and dried herbs and herbal tinctures. I tried apple cider vinegar, and I even paid an astronomical amount of money for a garlic concoction. That didn’t work either. Nothing helped. The goats still died.
Deborah 16:49
But then I started reading a research, it was just starting to surface back then. And that was when I learned about the importance of pasture rotation and how to do that correctly. And then doing everything possible to keep your goats worm loads low enough that they won’t get sick, and that it won’t kill them. And so this meant something new craziness.
Deborah 17:12
If you live in Illinois, that meant we were going to be kidding in the middle of January. And that’s because goats can get a really high load of worms after they kid. If we kid in January, that was less likely because all the worms on the pasture were frozen. So all we saw there was no issues with reinfection whatsoever. The only worms those goats had to deal with are the ones that were inside their body. And most of my goats actually did really well with that.
Deborah 17:42
When you don’t have a dewormer that works, this also means that you lose the least resistant goats because they die. And the goats that survived had a fairly high natural resistance to worms, or they were at least resilient, meaning that their worm load would get high, but they could handle it. I don’t want to get too far into the details because we will definitely be discussing parasites in future episodes with some of the experts in this field.
Deborah 18:12
Ultimately, we overcame both of these problems, the problem with copper deficiency, and the problem with dewormer resistance. Today, we have a thriving healthy herd. Many of my goats today have never had a dewormer in their lives, we no longer have problems with fertility, or miscarriages. In fact, we’ve had five sets of quintuplets and more quadruplets than I can count. I’m actively working to retire a lot of the does that have a tendency to throw so many kids, because I just don’t like having multiples because it means you have to bottle feed two or three of them. I just like most of mine to be raised by mom, so they know they were goat.
Deborah 19:03
Even though we went through a ton of heartache in the early years, it’s how I learned so much about goats. And I love sharing that information with people. So that hopefully we can shorten the learning curve for everyone else. Even though we also have cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, I don’t know nearly as much about them because they didn’t have any problems. So I didn’t have to learn that much to be able to keep them alive.
Deborah 19:21
So that’s my goat story. Of course, it doesn’t end there. We’re still raising goats. And in fact, they’re due to start kidding at the end of March this year, which I am so excited about. And I’m looking forward to getting to know all of you better and I want to hear your goat stories. Be sure to share them on the Facebook page. That’s facebook.com/Love GoatsPodcast. And you can find show notes for today’s show at ForTheLoveOfGoats.com including a link to Premier1Supplies.com which is today’s show sponsor.
Deborah 19:54
I hope you’ll join us for our next episode, where I’m talking to a ruminant nutritionist about the difference between alfalfa and timothy hay and hay pellets and when your goats may or may not need free choice baking soda, and we’re getting all nerdy about stuff like monogastric and ruminants and what all those stomachs do. So it’s really exciting.
Deborah 20:15
Be sure to hit the subscribe button so that you’ll hear about future episodes. And please be sure to tell your goat friends about the show. Bye for now, and I’ll see you all next week.
I would like to learn how to train goats to stay inside an electric fence – can that be explained in a podcast? Also, just out of curiosity, have you ever done “obedience” type training with a clicker? I’m wondering what goats can be trained to do.
I am hoping to get their heat lamps for my barn. Maybe I will win!
I would like to see a podcast about postnatal care of mom and baby. I have missed every single birth we’ve had on the farm. But my son has done a great job taking care of them.
I am very excited about your new podcast! I follow you diligently! You have helped me sooo much in establishing good herd management practices and inspiring me in the endeavor to set up a working homestead.
I will be excited to hear EVERTHING you have to offer on the podcast!
Great podcast and product
I would like to see a fact-based podcast on wethering. Ages, methods, effect on likelyhood of UC.
So excited about the podcasts. I listened to 1 and 2 last night before going to bed. Even though I have heard you talk about these topics before, I still learned some new and very helpful information. I am interested in hearing more on different ways to supplement (especially zinc and selenium) – possibly with crushed tablets (made for humans).
I’d love to win the heat lamps! No one in Canada carries them, which is sad 🙁
I could use a Premier heat lamp, had a different type catch my barn on fire!
I’m so sorry to hear that! If you read my review (linked above) you’ll see that we almost had a barn fire, as well as one in our basement because of the cheap metal heat lamps.
I’d also love to hear more about electric fencing. We have used electric goat fencing from Premier1 but we’ve had a couple goats gets tangled in the netting. I’d also love to hear some tips for training does on the milk stand.
I would love to learn more about confirmation and improving breed standards. My long term goat (goal lol) is to improve my herd and find ways to generate income to support my hobby.
I would also like to learn about training goats to electric net. Thank you so much for what you do.
I would love to a podcast about hay feeders for various goat breeds but especially horned goats. We recently had an incicdent where a young horned goat got her horns stuck and we almost lost her. She is fine but we now are trying to camp up our feeders to accommodate the growing horns and eliminate risks.
Good luck with this new endeavour!
I would really like to hear about general health and maintenance of goats.
Thank you for what you do!
I am so interested in just learning some days I feel like I know nothing about goats. also how you deal with different information
This is fabulous. We have learnt so much from you and your courses! Don’t know how we would have done our first birthing season without you.
I would like a podcast about disbudding goats.
Keep up the great work!
So excited for your new podcast! I would also like to hear more about how you use rotational grazing on your farm, and as kidding season draws near would love to hear what your kidding season looks like!
I’d like to know more about hoof trimming an signs of a bad foot. Tools that are safe, what to use on feed. Just feet in general. Especially since the grounds soft for everyone right now
Always love listening to anything to do with kidding and assisting in deliveries.
I would like to hear about, what age do kid’s need minerals accessible to them, milk testing, how to introduce goats to LGD’s when they are scared of dogs and what is the best way to move with your goats to a new homestead, that is out of state.
I’m always interested in anything and everything available to learn about goats. I would mostly enjoy anything pertaining to health for goats and how best to go about advertising when you’re selling.
I would love if you do a podcast on selling babies to good homes and ways to advertise.
I’d love to hear how you market and sell your dairy goats. To keep our does in milk, we must breed them, which necessitates finding homes for their kids. Do you register all of the doelings with ADGA? How do you decide whether to keep a buckling intact? How do you set a price for them?
I would love to hear a podcast on goat color genetics including eye color. There is so much misinformation out there on this and many insisting that must use certain terminology on registration papers, etc. Esp. in Nigerian Dwarf. Also getting the word out that goats don’t “carry” recessive blue eyes, gold, or polled genes.
Hi Deborah! I am really enjoying the podcasts! Very first for me 🙂
I would love a segment on new born assessment, things that may go wrong with them and how to treat, nutrition and supplement requirement, If bottle feeding how and when to wean. Thanks!
Can you teach us different methods to give medications and drench that doesnt waste so much? Maybe it’s just my monsters LOL.
Would love to learn more on how to make and market goat products like milk and soap.
Also how you would market the selling of your babies… lambs and kids?
Tips on keeping bucks. Feed etc.
How is it different from does for you?
This is so exciting!!! I love listening to podcasts on my 1/2 hour country drive to work. I have followed you for years, and I am so thankful for all the research you have done. Even though you had a lot of loss in the beginning, I feel my goats are alive and well because of the trials and tribulations in your goat journey. I commend someone who doesn’t give up, but turns negative into positive and learns from the tragedy. It gives meaning to the lives lost along the way. I would love to hear about caring for older goats. My oldest is 11 now, doing very well, but I worry. Thank you!!!
I would like to learn about how much grain they should be getting and how to get the goats to be more active.
Love the podcast Deborah and your guest was very interesting. Learn something all the time from you and was interesting to to here about the horns and castration. Wished he would have said how he does the castration at eight and nine months old. Also, I am new to Podcasts so for some reason I thought it was a video and it is not. I would like to hear about assisting a doe when you have to go in and help her deliver more than twins. More so when you have to make sure to find the right legs of the baby you are trying to get out.
Always interested in hearing about roughage feed, and less-waste hay feeder plans.
Episode 2 is all about forage. I interview a ruminant nutritionist!
I’d like to know what process you went through to pick the breed you did. I’m torn between Kinders and a true dairy goat…
I would like to hear a detailed talk about feeding all ages off goats… prenatal and post natal. When do baby kids start eating grains? What exactly to feed everybody and how much. Which grains are best? How much hay? What kind of hay? They always act like they are STARVING and haven’t eaten in a week or something. :).
Be sure to catch episode 2, which is a conversation with a ruminant nutritionist. We cover all of the hay info. And the show notes has links to a lot of additional info on what goats eat.
Hi Deborah,
Excellent job on the podcast, just proves that we can always learn new skills. My grandmother called me the perpetual student (it wasn’t meant as a compliment, but I took it as one )
I would like more information on dealing with those extra bucklings.
There’s not much demand for bucks here in Sicily and any that we sell would probably fetch a poor price and they’d be for butchering. If someone’s going to eat them, I’d rather it was us. At least then I know that they’ve been dealt with humanely.
So my main questions are what do you feed meat bucks, what age to despatch them and do you wether them?
Not sure if this will make good podcast material, some might not enjoy the topic, I’d be grateful if any info anyway.
Thanks, you’re doing a great job!
I totally agree about being sure that they have a great life and are dealt with humanely when butchered. I have a meat goat breeder on my “to interview” list a month or two down the road.
Hey! I’m excited for your podcast! I would really like to learn more about the marketing aspect of goats. Different avenues you can sell them in and ways to help marker those. Thanks!
I follow you and love the info you provide already, the podcast is a great idea! I would love to learn more about hoof trimming, overgrown hooves, proper hoof care, kidding, and also more about nutrition and grain. I love premiere one lamps also, although at this time I only have one, I could really use another one.
I know you have discussed copper and dosing before but I have a particular goat (Black) that seems to need more copper than any of my other goats. I usually give 4 grams of copper bolus every six months to all my goats but if I do not give this one particular goat, Gussy who is my only Pygmy goat, the rest are ND’s, approx 4 grams every three months his coat starts turning rust red. This is what leads me to believe he needs more that the others. My real question is “How much is too much and have you seen where some goats need more copper than others and what may cause him needing more”
It is possible that some goats need more copper than others. One possibility would be a goat that had a bad case of coccidios as a kid. It can cause permanent scarring of the digestive tract, which means they never absorb nutrients like they should. Last year we butchered such a kid, and I sent in his liver for testing. He was copper deficient, even though we had just given him copper oxide a month earlier! That kind of blew my mind!
I would like to read about normal level of trace mineral in goats. I’ve had my goats tested and vet said Zinc deficiency but nowhere can I find what a normal level should be!
You should ask to see the lab report. It will tell you what your goat’s level was, and then it will have a “reference range” that tells you where it should be.
Thank you so much for your wealth of information.. it helps me confirm I’m going in the right direction with our herd!
How fun! I have been waiting for another goat podcast since finding goat talk with the goat doc over a year ago. Some ideas for you that are always great to hear for me would be parasite management, forage options, and nutrition. Can’t wait to listen to the 3 you have now!
I’m so excited about this! I’d love to hear personal stories about goat issues, especially when things so not go to plan. Kidding emergencies, mastitis, weather, parasites, managing problem goats (escapists, handling issues), etc etc. Also humor!! Thanks for doing this!
I learn so much from you and your books. I would like to know more about when to leave a goat alone to kid on her own and when to assist. How long you have before assisting when the water bag bust before the kid is out. I assist with most kidding here because it seems like they need help but it could just be me.
My new book, Goats Giving Birth, will be out in May, and you might find that helpful. I also have a video birthing class at Thrifty Homesteader Academy.
According to Goat Medicine by Smith and Sherman, 95% of goats can give birth unassisted, and the longer I do this, the more I believe they are correct.
And if you consider the fact that if two goats get loose on an island, they turn into thousands, it’s obvious that these animals are very good at reproducing. There have been goat extermination programs in the Galapagos, the Mediterranean, and New Zealand, to name a few.
Thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge and taking the time to answer so many questions!
I’d like to hear about training goats for carting – along with hiking and packing with them, carting is something I want to learn to do with them.
You could interview the county extension agent!
I’d like to learn more about correcting poor hoof trimming and anything about goat kidding.
Loved all the podcasts so far…
I would love to hear what/how people feed bucks differently during rut season – what is a “safe” amount of grain to feed a Nigerian Dwarf Goat (65-75lbs)
Also – a good topic at this time would be feeding your does for kidding season and what supplements or types of feed do people like to use for their does
I would love to hear about all sorts of “natural” remedies such as herbs, tinctures, homeopathics, et cetera. and their application to specific ailments or to promote health for specific circumstances like fertility, kidding, milk production, etc.
I would love to hear a podcast about the different vaccinations and deworming schedules that you follow from birth on up.
That’s a great question about deworming. You should only use a dewormer when a goat is being negatively affected by the worms, such as anemia, diarrhea, poor body condition, etc. — not on any schedule. Here’s an excerpt from my book about old deworming practices that cause dewormer resistance.
https://thriftyhomesteader.com/dewormer-resistance-in-goats/
I’m definitely planning to have a guest who is a parasite researcher to discuss this in more detail.
Greetings, I am not able to locate the podcast? Please advise. Thank you!
If you scroll up to the top of this page, there is a red arrow next to the logo for “For the Love of Goats.” Click on the red arrow and listen — or go to iTunes (Apple), Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart, or TuneIn (Alexa) and search for “For the Love of Goats” and listen and subscribe. If you are having trouble with these, please give me details on what’s happening, so I can help you troubleshoot.
Enjoyed the first 3 podcasts!!
You could do a podcast on every topic in your books and courses. Some of them topics could be broken into multiple podcasts. 🙂
Deborah, thank you for being so willing to share your knowledge! It’s a comfort to know that the information you provide is accurate and backed with evidence! I would love to learn how to disbud kids (cause I am afraid I don’t know enough to try this on them!) and how to draw blood and what to feed does during various parts of the year depending on whether they are pregnant, not pregnant or going to become pregnant . I think I had issues with settling because my does were too fat. I’ve learned so much from you so far and eager to learn more!
Keep them as they are. They are always great..
I am just lately thinking of raising Goats so any info is a great help .
Hi Deborah –
I would love to learn more about selective breeding for herd improvement and longevity. Is there a best practice for the selection of buck/doe pairing. Also, I see many breeders that provide grain all year long while others do not. What are the pros and cons of both practices. Every day my little herd teaches me something new.
Looking forward to hearing all of your pod casts!
Really only does in milk need grain and maybe some bucks during breeding season if they are losing weight. Otherwise, ruminants tend to do best without grain. If you have trouble keeping weight on your goats without grain, there’s quite a bit of troubleshooting you’d need to go through to figure out what to do.
I would like to hear about fences as well but something other then electric maybe some that use sound to keep the animals back.
Unfortunately invisible fences don’t work for goats. Fences for goats are there to protect the goats from predators as much as it is to keep the goats in a certain place. So even if an invisible fence did keep goats in, it would not keep the coyotes or mountain lions or alligators out.
I currently don’t have goats, but I would love to!! We use aluminum pie pans to keep deer out of the garden, don’t know if it would detour goats but worth a shot!!
no suggestion i could think of
I like the podcast.
Would love to hear opinions on the various “mini” breeds, such as mini nubian. I have heard they tend to be small like the nigis, but have almost as much milk as the numbers. What do you think?
That’s a great idea for a podcast. I raised mini LaManchas for about 10 years. They are NOT as small as Nigerians, nor do they make as much as big goats. They are pretty much between the two both in size and in production and in butterfat. I have already scheduled an interview with someone who raises Kinders, which is a Nubian-pygmy hybrid, and they also fall in the middle between the two.
Great that you have started a podcast! I’ve followed you since your early days and I am impressed with your skills as you’ve tackled each of the social media areas and presented education, Videos, books, and now podcasts. A topic I’d like to hear on the podcast is about your well water components and how it’s affected your goats minerals deficiencies . I know you’ve written about it on your blog and I’d like to hear about it on your podcast, too. Congrats on venturing into podcast world!
Thank you Deborah
Thank you so much for sharing this information with us. I really enjoy reading this post.