Care of your dairy goats

Taking care of your dairy goats

Poor management of dairy goats is one of the main problems facing the dairy goat sub-sector in Kenya. Although farmers spend a lot of money buying dairy goats, it is a pity when one visits their homesteads and sees the condition of the goats, including the goat sheds. Selective breeding is important, but farmers should know that breeding alone cannot give a good quality dairy goat.

To explain it in an easier way: Breeding accounts for only 33 per cent of a goat’s productiveness. Nutrition and management accounts for 66 per cent, while a farmer’s entrepreneurship accounts for only 10 per cent. This clearly shows that proper feeding and general care of a dairy goat are the most important areas in dairy goat production. That is why it is important that farmers know how to feed a goat and the best way to house it.

Feeding a dairy goat

To produce adequate milk, a dairy goat requires a well-balanced diet for both self-maintenance and production of milk. A dairy goat is very selective in what it eats. To encourage it to eat, farmers need to provide it with very high quality fodder. If the fodder is of low quality, the goat will refuse to eat it leading to wastage. A female goat that is being milked requires at least 1.25 kg of good quality dried grass or Lucerne in a day.

Need for balanced diet

Goats tend to eat more if they are zero-grazed than when on free range. The farmer should chop the green fodder such as Napier grass to make it easier for the goat to chew; this reduces wastage. If more than one type of forage is available, goats tend to eat more. The fodder may include potato vines, maize stalks, sorghum or waste vegetables. Legumes such as Lucerne, green beans, purple vetch, acacia, leucaena, cotton seed cake, sunflower cake, and soybean cake are a good source of proteins. Salt licks are needed to provide minerals.

Proper feeding increases a dairy goat's milk production and improves its health

It is important to know how a dairy goat’s digestion works. The main difference between a goat and a cow or a sheep is that the goat has a much bigger stomach in comparison to its body size compared to the other two animals. The stomach of the goat can be as much as 1/3 of the total body volume. This makes the goat a very efficient converter of rough feeds or browse, but the process uses up a lot of energy and there is also a need for minerals especially phosphorous. One reason goats prefer browse bushes and trees is that these plants are deep -rooted and bring up many more essential minerals from deep inside the soil that the goat needs.

A large proportion of the feed it eats is converted into milk. A goat can convert more dry roughage into milk compared to a dairy cow, but the forage must be clean and dry all the time. The amount of feed a goat eats depends on its body size and also on the quality of the feed. From the different types of feed given, a farmer can tell which type of feed it likes most. Remove waste feed at least twice a day. If there is a lot of waste, this should tell you the goat is either being given too much feed than it can eat or it does not like type of feed. A 45 kg goat that is being milked should be consuming up to 7 per cent of her body weight (about 3.4 kg) of dry matter and can drink 4 to 5 litres of clean water daily.

Give concentrates

As in the case of dairy cows, the roughage part of the ration is rarely good enough to provide maintenance for the animal, let alone milk production. It is important to add the concentrate to the ration. Avoid giving barley as it can cause bloat or poisoning if fed in large quantities.

The more the amount of milk a goat produces, the more the amount of concentrate it should be given (table below). A small quantity of concentrate should be fed even when the goat is not being milked in order to help it in body maintenance and also in the development of her unborn kid when pregnant. A goat will normally go though a daily process of eat-rest-ruminate-eat-rest-ruminate and so on.

Hygiene and housing of dairy goats

Maintaining hygiene and keeping goats in proper housing is still a big problem with most dairy goat farmers. Unlike other domestic animals, a dairy goat prefers to live in a dry and clean place. A simple way to do this is to build a house with a raised floor. A floor made of timber pieces with spaces between (slatted floor) allows the urine and droppings to pass through the spaces and leaves the floor clean and dry. The water and feeding trough should be placed outside the house (sketch). Goats should be protected from windy conditions especially during the cold season when they easily contract pneumonia.

Most farmers keep their goats indoors throughout the day. Most of the time, the goats can hardly move due to the small size of the house. All animals should be allowed to go out into open space where they can graze, exercise and get adequate light. Organic farming standards stipulate that all animals should be allowed free movement to reduce stress and allow them to express normal behaviour.