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  Praise for Raising Goats Naturally—2nd Edition

  With endearing personal stories and layman’s scientific explanations, Raising Goats Naturally lays an enjoyable and empowering foundation for goat-rearing success on the self-reliant farmstead. Deborah Niemann exemplifies the best spirit and action in homestead animal care. What a great contribution to self-reliance.

  — Joel Salatin, Polyface Farm

  Now with even more detail and information, Raising Goats Naturally is a companion to anyone considering or keeping goats. Neimann is knowledgeable and her information complete, but she also brings a heartfelt love for her herd to her writing. Her passion for goats translates into excitement throughout the book, and will surely make readers eager for goats.

  — Kirsten Lie-Nielsen, author, The Modern Homesteader’s Guide

  to Keeping Geese, hostilevalleyliving.com

  Back in 2009, I wanted to start raising goats. I thought it would be fun to add a small herd to our small farm. My husband didn’t quite see eye to eye with me and long story short, we ended up raising chickens and ducks instead. But my dream of a herd of goats still lives on. Raising them naturally would of course be of utmost importance to me and after reading Deborah’s book, I feel confident about being able to do just that. From choosing a breed, birthing and raising babies, to feed, supplements, and health issues, Raising Goats Naturally is an easy to read, all-encompassing guide to getting started with goats. Now to convince my husband...

  — Lisa Steele, author,

  Fresh Eggs Daily: Raising Happy, Healthy Chickens Naturally

  and Duck Eggs Daily: Raising Happy, Healthy Ducks Naturally

  I’ve always been a fan of Deborah Niemann’s no-nonsense holistic approach to keeping goats. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of the species and this book is a direct reflection of that amazing expertise. Raising Goats Naturally is perfect for beginners as well as seasoned owners and a definite must for any goat keeper’s library.

  — Jeannette Beranger, Senior Program Manager,

  The Livestock Conservancy

  Raising Goats Naturally thoroughly covers all aspects of what goat owners need to know to succeed with their goats. We have owned goats on our homestead for many years and I was impressed with how much information is packed into this book. I would highly recommend it for those just starting out with goats, but it’s got enough detail for experienced goat keepers too!

  — Lesa Wilke, farmer and blogger,

  betterhensandgardens.com

  In Raising Goats Naturally, Deborah Neimann cuts through the formulaic and often inflexible so-called “expert advice” and encourages us to get to know our animals and listen to what they tell us. Drawing on vast experience, Neimann offers an upbeat, authentic glimpse of what life with dairy goats is really like. This book is important because it brings animal husbandry back to the fore and delivers the goods in a highly integrated manner that’s every bit as enjoyable to read as it is important for goatherds of all experience levels.

  — Oscar H. “Hank” Will III,

  Editor-in-Chief, GRIT Magazine

  and author, Plowing with Pigs

  Copyright © 2018 by Deborah Niemann-Boehle. All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Diane McIntosh.

  Cover images: milk and soup and center goat © Deborah Niemann-Boehle

  ©iStock—top, kids iStock-618961102, bottom right cheese 874839688;

  bottom left three images author-supplied.

  Interior images: p 9 © cs333, p 18 © Anna Velichkovsky,

  p 27 © coolplay, p 61 © cynoclub/Adobe Stock.

  Printed in Canada. First printing September, 2018

  This book is intended to be educational and informative.

  It is not intended to serve as a guide. The author and publisher disclaim

  all responsibility for any liability, loss or risk that may be associated

  with the application of any of the contents of this book.

  Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of

  Raising Goats Naturally—2nd Edition should be addressed to

  New Society Publishers at the address below.

  To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America)

  1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com

  Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:

  New Society Publishers

  P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada

  (250) 247-9737

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Niemann, Deborah, author

  Raising goats naturally : the complete guide to milk, meat and more

  / Deborah Niemann.—Revised second edition.

  Includes index.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-0-86571-847-0 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-55092-642-2 (PDF). —

  ISBN 978-1-77142-237-6 (EPUB)

  1. Goats. I. Title.

  SF383.N53 2018

  636.3’9

  C2018-902957-9

  C2018-902958-7

  New Society Publishers’ mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Preface to the Second Edition

  Introduction

  Part I: Planning, Purchasing, and Protecting

  1. Choosing Your Goats

  Breeds

  Does

  Bucks

  Registration

  Pedigree

  Purchasing

  2. Housing Your Goats

  Shelter

  Bedding

  3. Protecting Your Goats

  Fencing

  Livestock Guardians

  Part II: Raising, Remedies, and Reproduction

  4. Day-to-Day Life With Goats

  Behavior

  Anatomy

  Health

  Grooming

  First Aid Supplies

  Medicating the Sick Goat

  5. Feeding Your Goats

  Rotational Grazing

  Hay

  Grain

  Minerals

  Baking Soda

  6. Parasites

  Internal Parasites

  Controlling Internal Parasites

  Preventing Infection

  External Parasites

  Controlling External Parasites

  7. Injury, Illnesses, and Diseases

  Abortion and Stillbirth

  Abscesses

  Acidosis

  Bloat

  Brucellosis

  Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis

  Constipation

  Cryptosporidiosis

  Enterotoxemia

  Floppy Kid Syndrome

  Foot Rot

  Hardware Disease

  Hypocalcemia

  Infertility in Bucks

  Infertility in Does

  Johne’s Disease

  Ketosis

  Listeriosis

  Mastitis

  Nutritional Deficiencies

  Neonatal Mortality

  Pinkeye

  Polio (Polioencephalomalacia)

  Respiratory Conditions

  Ringworm

  Scours

  Scrapie

  Skin Cancer

  Sore Mouth

  Tetanus

  Tuberculosis

  Urinary Stones (Urinary Calculi)

  White Muscle Disease

  Vaccines

  8. Breeding

  Breeding Season

  Breeding Age

  Sig
ns of Estrus

  Breeding Methods

  Buck Behavior

  Successful Breeding

  Artificial Insemination

  Feeding for Fertility

  9. Pregnancy

  Gestation

  Signs of Pregnancy

  False Pregnancy

  Feeding During Pregnancy

  10. Birthing

  Getting Ready

  Signs of Labor

  Birth

  Feeding Post Birth

  Newborn Check

  Kid Complications

  11. Raising Kids

  Getting Started With Dam Raising

  Getting Started With Bottle-feeding

  Poop

  Feeding Grain and Forage

  Horns

  Castrating Males

  Tattooing and Ear Tags

  Weaning

  Barn Hygiene

  12. Milking

  Managing Milkers Naturally

  Teaching a Doe to Milk

  Milking Equipment

  Milking by Hand

  Milking With a Machine

  Handling Milk

  Storing Milk

  Part III: Milk, Meat, and More

  13. The Dairy Kitchen

  Equipment

  Ingredients

  14. Dairy Products

  Buttermilk and Sour Cream

  Yogurt

  Sweets

  15. Acid-ripened Cheeses

  Vinegar

  Citric Acid

  16. Culture-ripened Cheeses

  Choosing Cultures

  Flocculation

  Cutting Curds

  Semi-hard and Hard Cheeses

  17. Meat

  Meat Quality

  Butchering

  Cooking

  18. Soap

  Processes

  Safety

  Equipment

  Ingredients

  Step-by-Step Soap Making

  Final Thoughts

  Notes

  Glossary

  Suggested Reading

  Recipe Index

  Index

  About the Author

  About New Society Publishers

  Acknowledgments

  It takes a team to write a book, and I’m lucky to have a lot of wonderful people working with me on this one. Thanks again to everyone at New Society Publishers for understanding the need for a revised edition and then making it happen, with a special shout out to editor Murray Reiss for his hard work.

  Goat extension specialist Steve Hart, PhD, of Langston University deserves an extra special thank you for once again reviewing the parasite information in the book and for answering all of my parasite questions, whether for a magazine article, blog post, video, or whatever project I’m working on.

  I am also hugely appreciative of Julie Jarvis, who reviewed the illness chapter when I was having a perfectionist attack near my deadline. Her medical expertise as a physician assistant combined with her practical knowledge as a goat breeder is unique and invaluable.

  I could not have written this book were it not for the members of the NigerianDwarfGoats.ning.com community who have shared their challenges, frustrations, knowledge, and successes over the years. Reading their stories made me realize the variety of problems that goat owners face on a daily basis, as well as the diversity of solutions. I continue learning from them every day. Feedback from students in my online Raising Dairy Goats Sustainably class at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst have also provided me with additional insight that helped shape this revised edition. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to the goat owners who were willing to share their stories and passions specifically for this book. Since the first edition, I have learned a lot about the needs of new goat owners from those who have asked questions on the Thrifty Homesteader Facebook page, as well as all of the interns who have spent time on our farm.

  Of course, my family deserves the biggest thank you of all for their love and support. My husband, Mike, deserves a special thank you because he became a novice goat keeper around the time the first edition was published, which was also when our youngest daughter left for college. When our daughters were home, the goats were our project, and he helped out by building fences and shelters. He didn’t know the difference between a pastern and a pasture. Watching him start at ground zero five years ago gave me a front row seat to understanding what a new goat owner needs to know.

  Thank you to my son, Jonathan, for keeping me well fed with lots of homemade meals. Both of my daughters also deserve a special thank you for growing our herd beyond the two or three milkers I wanted for a little goat cheese. Because of their desire to show and be on milk test, we wound up with much better genetics than we otherwise would have, and I learned a lot about goat conformation and milk production. My daughters’ presence as co-owners of the goats helped reduce the learning curve for me considerably.

  Preface to the Second Edition

  The day after the first edition went to press, I saw a study about the profitability of does raising their own kids in a commercial dairy. How I wished I could have included it in the book, but it was too late. As the last five years have ticked past, however, more studies have been published, and I realized it was time for a revised edition.

  I have also been receiving questions, comments, and other feedback from people who read the first edition, and I realized that some sections of the book needed to be expanded. A few new topics needed to be added, such as floppy kid syndrome and skin cancer, which had completely slipped under my radar before the first edition was published.

  If you read the first edition, you won’t see any new chapters in this one. I’ve simply incorporated a lot of new information throughout the book. Regardless of whether you read the first edition, I hope this book will help you worry less and enjoy your goats more.

  INTRODUCTION

  It was love at first bite when I tasted goat cheese at a party in Vermont when I was 19 years old. More than a decade passed before I saw goat cheese in a grocery store and immediately snatched it up. But at a dollar an ounce, it was a rare treat. When my husband and I started talking about moving to the country to grow our own food organically, goats were one of the three species of livestock I wanted, and I wanted them simply for that delicious cheese. I wanted chickens for eggs and cows for milk and butter.

  While the chickens and goats proved to be easy for a city slicker to learn to raise, the cows were a different story. I had purchased Irish Dexters, which are the smallest breed of cattle, but I quickly learned that it really didn’t matter whether a cow weighed 800 pounds or 1,500 pounds—if she wanted to do something, she could easily get her way because she outweighed me by so much that it was hopeless.

  In purchasing both the cows and goats, I made similar mistakes. I bought animals that had no experience with milking, and I didn’t even buy animals whose mothers had been milked, so the genetic potential as milkers was a mystery. I made the novice mistake of assuming that because every female mammal makes milk, they would all make good milkers. I knew nothing about udder texture, teat size, orifice size—I didn’t even know what an orifice was! And it never occurred to me that a cow or goat might not be terribly excited at the prospect of being milked.

  Learning to milk the goats was not the easiest thing I ever did, but it wasn’t terribly difficult either. It was Mother’s Day 2002 when I brought home my first two goats, a two-month-old doeling and an unrelated three-year-old doe that had been nursing triplets. My husband had built a milk stand based on pictures we found on the Internet. I arrived home with the goats shortly before sundown and attempted to milk Star, the three-year-old. We put her on the milk stand and filled up the feed bowl. She took a couple of bites, but as soon as I touched her udder, she kicked the bucket, turned her head around, and glared at me. She continued to give me this look that I translated as, “What are you doing back there?” There were ultimately four of us working toward the single goal of extracting milk from this goat. My husba
nd held her back legs so she couldn’t kick over the bucket. My two daughters scooped up the grain in their hands and sweet-talked her, saying, “Here, Star, don’t you want some yummy grain?” Star continued to glare at me. Then I remembered reading somewhere that music relaxes animals and that some people play music in their milking parlors, so I suggested that we sing. “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” seemed appropriate given the goat’s name, but she was not impressed. However, within a few days I was able to milk Star by myself with no one holding her legs or sweet-talking her or even singing. It was my first lesson in the importance of the three Ps: practice, persistence, and patience.

  The cows were a completely different story, though. I was never able to even touch their udders. Despite the fact the seller had said they would be very easy to train—“Just tie ’em up for a couple of days, and they’ll be following you around like a dog”—they were range cows, never handled during their first year of life before I purchased them. Although livestock are domesticated, they have to be handled from the time they’re born, or they can easily return to a feral state of mind. We wound up selling our first two cows after a couple of years, but I also came to the realization that we didn’t need cows. The goats could meet all of our dairy needs—and more.

  That soft creamy cheese that so many people call “goat cheese” is more correctly called chèvre (pronounced like “shev”), and it is possible to make many types of cheese and other dairy products from goat milk. The first cheese I made was queso blanco, and it was quickly followed by chèvre, yogurt, kefir, and queso fresco. A few months after starting to make cheese, I began to make goat milk soap. Then we started making aged cheeses. Eventually we learned to make 100 percent of the cheese that our family uses, including cheddar, mozzarella, Parmesan, Gouda, Havarti, and more. Although we were vegetarians when we started our homesteading adventure, today we also eat goat meat and use goat leather. Even our goats’ manure contributes to our homestead, as it is the only fertilizer we use in our garden.

  It makes a lot of sense to raise goats for milk production for your family because goats are smaller than cows, eat less, poop less, are easier to handle, and produce a more manageable amount of milk. A potential buyer called me a few years ago because after a couple of years with a cow, her family realized that they didn’t need the amount of milk a cow produced. They were not interested in making cheese, so it made no sense for them to have an animal that was producing five gallons of milk a day. Because dairy animals are all herd animals, you always need to have at least two, and with goats it is easy to add to your herd, especially when that special kid is born that you just can’t bring yourself to sell. “Just one more goat” doesn’t eat nearly as much as “just one more cow.”