Caring for Your New Green Gables Addition

General goat care at Green Gables:

Our goats are on pasture and fresh browse with access to high quality alfalfa/grass/clover hay. They also have free-choice minerals - Bio-Blue & MRX from RestoraLife minerals (see Wisconsin Mineral Solutions on FB for more info) & Redmond salt. I also like the Hi-Copper mineral from Wick's Livestock and Crafts-Min from GrassFarmerSupply.com. Hooves are trimmed as needed. Some need it as often as every 6-8 weeks while others only need it about twice a year. Keeping fresh water available at all times is important for any animal but especially for one that is lactating.  I like to add apple cider vinegar (ACV) to the water and the goats enjoy it as well.  About 1oz per gallon of water. All goat kids are disbudded around at 4-14 days old (unless they are naturally polled of course!) 

Kid care at Green Gables:

The kids are fed 2 cups of warm milk morning and evening with a bottle (or the Lam-Bar, which feeds multiple kids at once). If you do not have access to a clean source of goats milk (Johnes, CAE, CL free) I recommend using whole cows milk (Vit D milk from the store). You can feed them kid milk replacer, but I have not seen very good results with milk replacers. We use lamb nipples or Lam-Bar nipples on pop bottles to feed the kids when we aren’t using the Lam-Bar bucket. You can find the lambar nipples in the Jeffers Livestock Supply catalog, Caprine Supply catalog, or the lamb nipples at your local farm supply store. Our kids are used to the lambar nipples, but they will usually drink from the regular lamb nipples as well. The kids are given an herbal wormer 1x/week or more often if needed. We use either Molly's herbals, Fir Meadow, or Land of Havilah. Our kids are not fed any grain. We only feed grain to the milking does, and the occasional goat that needs to put on more weight.

Milking doe care and milk handling at Green Gables:

Our milking does get grain (2 parts oats, 2 parts barley, 1 part corn – all whole and organic) while they are being milked, but the wethers, bucks and dry does are not fed grain on a regular basis. When milking for our family, we wash and dry the udder before milking. Then we milk the first few squirts into a strip cup to check for lumps or other issues. After milking we bring the milk to the house, strain it through a milk filter and get it into the freezer to cool quickly. We leave the milk in the freezer for around 2 hours ,or overnight. The key to good tasting goats milk is to keep everything very clean and get the milk cold as quickly as possible.

Registration Information:

Our goats are registered with MDGA. When you buy a goat from us, we will supply all the papers for that goat. If you are buying an adult animal that has already been registered, we will give you the animals papers signed for you to transfer into your name. If purchasing a kid or other goat that has not been registered yet, we will supply the applications with all the information you will need to register them. At this time the registration costs are very low. They can also be registered with TMGR by sending in a copy of the MDGA papers.

Other Information About Your New Goat:

After you get your new goat home, I always recommend worming them as the stress of travel can let parasites get a foothold. I would use Molly's #1 or Fir Meadow's GI Soother and DWorm formula for 3 days in a row. OR, we have also found great success with worming with essential oils: 1 drop Oregano, 1 drop clove, 1 drop digestzen & 3 drops wild orange in 5cc carrier oil/goat/dose.

For information on transporting click here.