New to Goats, New to farms... New to it all! From NC

Hey there,

My name is Ericka. My husband and I have 4 acres, mostly wooded. My husband and I have three kids, human babies! We also have 2 dogs, 8 chickens and some guinea pigs. We are now planning on getting nigerian dwarf goats, in just 3 weeks now! Eeek.

I basically know what the farmer has told us on his website, which isn't much at all. So I will now be a sponge and gather all the information I need to bring them home safe, what to feed, what to have on stock for meds, heck if you know a good vet I need that too

Thanks for the warm welcomes and can't wait to dive in to goat life.

Greetings Ericka & family from the front range in Colorado! ! Those are some cute kids! Gotta say you've started out right... providing eye candy (pics) for everyone to drool over! Lots of great goatie folks here that are active too, so you'll be hearing from them in no time I'm sure! So you say you want to learn? Well just pull up a chair and spend a week or two ! (or 3 or 4... you know). Glad you joined and look forward to hearing about your adventures in "farming"!

A big howdy and welcome from the Great Lone Star State, where the stars at night are big and bright! Sit a spell, grab yourself a beverage of choice from the table over there and soak up the goatness.

Your babies are darling little Nigerian Dwarfs and their antics will keep you in smiles for a long, long time. I will admit that they are addicting. I started with 2 and now have 21. Kind of like potato chips.

There are a bunch of goatie lovers here and I'm confident you can get your questions answered... the cost is pictures, love pictures, we live on pictures so if you have new pics of the kids we'd love to see them!

Glad to see you here!

Welcome to Backyard herds from a fellow goatie!

First you will need to have a fecal run within 5-7 days of getting the kids.
Cocci and parasites can "bloom" from the stress of the move and a new home.
Cocci is a big kid killer so it is very important for the fecal to be done.

They will need shelter, good fencing as little kids can get through very small spaces.

Hay. Hay should be available 24/7. As far as goat feed we start our dwarfs off with about 1/4 cup of Bartlett feed 1x day.
Bartlett is made here in NC. It is a great feed, not a sweet feed!
We don't do medicated feed but some do. You just have to be careful with medicated feed that dogs, and other animals don't get to it.

You will need to find out if they have been given their CD&T vaccines. Get the dates!

Hope those kids are disbudded because you do not want horns around little children. Not because goats are mean just because they move suddenly and oops the child gets it.

Welcome to the wonderful world of goats! They are addictive.

Welcome from Zebulon NC
Where abouts are you located

Thanks for the warm welcome! I am already absorbing so much. We are in Durham, closer to the Roxboro side of town.

Turns out NC has lots of mini farms with these sweet babies! Thank you facebook!

I was told that Orchid was naturally polled, but the others will probably have horns. He mentioned sanding the or something as to where he doesn't actually dehorn them...?

Will 6 weeks be too old to have disbudding done? We are learning as we go, but from what I understand, we don't want horns! So, where do I get that done, is there some horn place we can swing by on the way home with these gems?

I will pm you a list of vets.

Ericka said:

Thanks for the warm welcome! I am already absorbing so much. We are in Durham, closer to the Roxboro side of town.

Turns out NC has lots of mini farms with these sweet babies! Thank you facebook!

I was told that Orchid was naturally polled, but the others will probably have horns. He mentioned sanding the or something as to where he doesn't actually dehorn them...?

Will 6 weeks be too old to have disbudding done? We are learning as we go, but from what I understand, we don't want horns! So, where do I get that done, is there some horn place we can swing by on the way home with these gems?

Click to expand...

We have a farm FB page
You will need a vet to disbud at 6 weeks that's a bit late
We do ours at a week old
Maybe that's what he meant
What farm are you getting from?

6 weeks is generally going to be a dehorning and no you cannot just stop by a vets. You also would not want to do too many things at once due to the stress.

You need to ask him if they have actually been weaned... in other words have they been separate from mom and are eating drinking and thriving before you pick them up.