Transcript
WEBVTT
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Oh, you think you want a goat.
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How cute.
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Bless your heart.
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And for those of you not from Texas, bless your heart is not a blessing, it's a Texan's nice way of saying you're an idiot Because you're picturing lazy afternoons with your little goat buddies frolicking in the yard, nibbling grass, like some Pinterest perfect farm fantasy.
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Well, buckle up, buttercup, because today we're going to smack that goat delusion right out of you like a 200-pound buck in full run.
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Goats are not dogs.
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They don't fetch, they don't cuddle and they sure as hell don't care about your feelings, unless you've got a pocket full of food.
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They scream like banshees, they annihilate all vegetation and other things in their path and they can escape from fences that could hold back SEAL Team 6.
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And yet people keep making horrible goat-related life choices.
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That's why today I am joined by Debra Neiman, homesteader, goat expert and host of the podcast For the Love of Goats.
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Debra has seen it all, from dreamers who think they're getting a backyard petting zoo to the poor souls who realize way too late that they've actually adopted hell on hooves.
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By the end of this episode, you're going to either be running for the hills or possibly doubling down on your goat chaos dreams, but at least you'll be fully prepared for the mayhem ahead.
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Either way, don't say we didn't warn you.
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So, debra, let's do this.
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Welcome to the show.
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Yes, oh, my gosh, I love that introduction.
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That's fabulous.
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Thank you.
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So, debra, let's do this.
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Welcome to the show.
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Yes, oh, my gosh, I love that introduction.
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That's fabulous.
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Thank you, I'm so happy to be here.
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I was sitting over here trying not to hurt myself laughing because everything you said was so true and so accurate.
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Yes, I've lived it personally, I've lived it vicariously through other people and obviously nobody knows this.
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But I met Debra very recently at a thing called PodFest and we were in the same session, kind of sitting across the room from each other, and there's not a ton of pet podcasters or animal related podcasters at PodFest.
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I know of one other other than myself and Debra and so when she asked a question and she's like I've got a goat podcast, I thought, ooh, I've got to grab that lady after this session and get her on my show, because I think people get themselves in over their heads because they've created this fantasy or they've watched a video on TikTok or something like that and they see people living with goats and other critters and they think that that's what life is like, just what they're seeing in that video, and they don't see all the other stuff that can make life relatively miserable if you're not prepared for it.
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Yeah, that is a fantastic summary of where a lot of people are coming from.
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A lot of times people ask me like, do you have goats?
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And it's like, well, yeah, of course I have goats, and so that means I have people calling me to buy goats and so many people who contact me.
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It is so, so, sadly obvious that the only thing that they know about goats is what they have seen on those entertainment videos.
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You know they don't know what they eat.
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They don't know what they need for housing or fencing.
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They think it can live in their house like a dog that they can house train it.
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It's going to sleep in their bed.
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You know they have completely unrealistic expectations.
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Yeah Well, and even when you know, obviously our goal with this episode is not to tell people that goats are horrible creatures.
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Well, maybe that's not Deborah's goal.
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My goal might be to tell you a little bit that there can be horrible creatures, but I think you can't stress enough with any type of an animal that it's a long-term commitment and you need to know what that commitment is going to entail.
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Because even with adopting out dogs and cats we've run into that in our rescue is that I can tell people over and over again, just as a quick example, a lady that recently adopted a kitten and I said when you get home, don't just open the carrier and let this cat out to run through your 3,000 foot house, because it'll quickly find the worst place, like under your bed, to decide that's where it's going to go potty.
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And you'll discover it in a couple of weeks, after it's become a great habit.
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And of course, that's exactly what she did.
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And then she's wanting to return the cat because it's pooping all over her house.
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Well, why is it all over your house?
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So we're hoping that you listen, listen to us, listen to me, linda.
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We're telling you the truth here.
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I'm trying to save you from a lot of pain.
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And the goat, you know, or whatever the animal is.
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Yeah, exactly, all right.
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So let's let's talk about some of the misconceptions, because you mentioned about living in the house being like a dog.
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So let's dispel the myth that goats are like dogs, because I can see why people might get that idea.
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You know, the person on the video goes out, the goat comes running.
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It follows them around just like a dog.
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But what's the difference that people really need to understand?
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I mean, I know there's tons of them and we're going to get into some of those others separately, but just generally, in your experience, Well, goats are vegetarians, first of all, and contrary to the myth that they will eat anything, including 10 cans, oh yeah like the old cartoons.
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Yeah, they actually have a very sensitive digestive system and they have four stomachs, including a rumen, which is one of the big differences between them and us, and dogs and cats and monogastric animals you know, those of us with one stomach.
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So that rumen is a giant fermentation vat.
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It needs to be working 24-7.
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And so when a goat is out on pasture, where it belongs, it's going to spend a huge part of its stay eating.
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It's basically going to keep eating until its rumen is full.
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So that's why you'll see the left side will sometimes just be huge.
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And then, once their rumen is full, they go lay down somewhere, they burp up everything, they just ate.
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I know, I know, I'm like goats are so lucky they get to eat everything twice.
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Yeah, it's so special.
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Yeah.
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So they burp it all up, you know, one mouthful at a time.
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They chew it all again and then send it back down to their second stomach.
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So how are they going to do that in your house?
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Right.
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And how are they going to even eat all day?
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I mean, can you imagine your average person's yard?
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You know you're going to have to be providing a ton of not cheap food and varieties of things for them to eat.
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It can't just eat your lawn.
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And I think that's another huge thing that people don't understand.
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You're not going to mow your lawn for you.
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They're actually browsers, not grazers.
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And that does not mean they like to shop.
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It means browse is like bushes, and so if goats had their pick of anything in the world to eat, they would walk around eating bushes and baby trees and things like that.
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So you know, one man was just so shocked when I tried to explain to him.
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No, you cannot teach the goat to not eat your rose bushes.
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That would be like trying to teach a dog not to eat steak.
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You know, yeah, like that's just their nature.
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When people say goats will eat anything, they mean that they're going to eat the stuff in the pasture that nobody else is going to eat.
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They'll eat poison ivy and they're fine with it.
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Isn't that crazy, yeah?
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And so they're going to eat all the floribunda roses that cows completely ignore.
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This is why ranchers love to get them out there, because floribunda roses are so invasive and goats just love them, and so they eat all that stuff.
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So you've got to keep that in mind, the fact that a dog you can feed once or twice a day, and that's it, and that's not how it works with goats Like.
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I don't know anybody who wants to have a hay feeder in their house.
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Yeah, no kidding.
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And just the cost of hay if you haven't priced that out lately, check that out and then storing.
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And it's messy.
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And I didn't realize that because when I bought this house we have a little pasture out front and the size it was plenty big enough for the amount of goats that we had.
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But there's not really other than the stuff that kind of grows up alongside the fence which they made very quick work of.
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There's not a lot of stuff to eat out there for them.
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So we had to move them around and boy, any chance they could get into my expensive landscaping and decimate it.
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They did.
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Yeah, and the poison ivy thing learn that the hard way.
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Because as they're eating that poison ivy, guess where it's getting All over their faces, on their mouths, and guess what they do next.
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They rub it on your bare legs and guess what you have next A nice raging case of poison ivy.
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So yeah, that's fun, that's always fun.
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Yeah, so they have an urge to eat all day long.
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And just because you don't have appropriate goat food doesn't mean that they're not going to check it out and, in the wild, if they take one bite of a plant, that gives them a bellyache they just know.
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I'm never going to go back to that plant.
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Well, in your house, if they just take one bite of a plastic bag that can completely block up their rumen and kill them.
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On my website I have pictures that someone gave me because someone sold her a baby goat bottle fed, which they kept in their house for two months, no problem, thought, everything was just wonderful, and then one day they realized something was off and they took the goat to the vet and when the vet did surgery he removed four or five of the plastic pimples from the Mr Pimple Popper game.
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A plastic bag, hair ties, several balloons, all these things that this baby goat had been eating, that it should not have been eating because these things are not edible.
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But the baby goat was old enough now to be eating solid foods.
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It wasn't happy with just its bottle anymore and because these people were not providing it with hay all day, it went't happy with just its bottle anymore and because these people were not providing it with hay all day, it went looking for something else, and sadly, the baby goat died, and so that's why, when I heard about this, I said can I use these pictures?
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put them on my website so that people can see?
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This is what can happen if you try to keep a goat in the house.
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Yeah, and then, if you think about it, if you're a nice person which I know everybody listening to this podcast is a nice, animal loving person Imagine how you're going to feel when you realize that was 100% your fault.
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I mean, I'm sorry to say it, but that's what we do on Muddy Paws.
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We're telling the truth and it's like it's 100% preventable.
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Well, maybe not, because you can't maybe prevent a balloon that happens to blow into your appropriate outdoor enclosure.
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However, when you've got it in the house, it's just it's your fault, it's not the goat's fault.
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Let's talk about poop Cause.
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That's another thing that I think I didn't realize.
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Number one, how much they poop and how it just kind of comes on out when they're walking along, like it's not like a plan thing, it's not like a walking thing, or am I wrong?
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Did I interpret that incorrectly?
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No, they totally just let the poop fly when the urge hits them.
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You can teach a baby goat to pee on a towel, but you can't teach them the difference between a towel and a pair of blue jeans and an area rug.
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But with poop, no, the poop just flies.
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You know, like you said, they're just, they're walking along and just shooting out, yeah, yeah.
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And and what about emotionally?
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Like you know, you see these again, videos of people loving and cuddling and hugging the baby goats.
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But the goats do they enjoy human affection in the same way, or maybe not even the same?
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Do they enjoy it?
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And do they give it kind of in a similar way that dogs would, or are they just kind of like get off me?
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Yeah, they're not going to be exactly like dogs, and this is why a lot of people want to get bottle babies, because if you take a baby, that's a newborn and you feed it a bottle and you're the only living creature it knows it's going to bond to you.
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But the downside to that is that they are herd animals, so first of all, you should never have just one.
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Yeah, so that's going into our second myth is you can't just have one Otherwise you can have a miserable goat right.
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Yeah, and then if you are the herd mate, you have to be with it 24, seven, and that's what people don't get.
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You know, they're like so they get the bottle, so they get the bottle baby, and they've got it in their house.
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They're giving it a bottle.
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It gets bigger.
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They're like oh, this is not going to work anymore.
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I need to put you outside in the backyard and it starts screaming nonstop because it is now alone, like mama, just left, left, and it is going to scream nonstop.
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So again, these were some of the things.
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We've had goats since 2002.
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And we learned some of these things the hard way.
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Yeah, so we learned those things the tough way sometimes.
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So yeah, so you're, so you're in for all of the chaos that we talked about so far.
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You're in for the fact that you can't just have one, so you're going to have some kind of a chaos that we talked about so far.
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You're in for the fact that you can't just have one, so you're going to have some kind of a small herd.
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What about the myth that they're pretty easy to care for?
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Because, I mean, I found them relatively easy to care for only from the standpoint of having had horses before and knowing what goes into the hoof trimming and things like that.
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Not that that's easy to do, but where do people get into trouble there?
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You know it sounds easy and in fact the reality is again, because goats are browsers, they actually have really high mineral requirements.
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Their nutrient requirements are very strict and so if you just get a couple castrated males as pets, you might be able to just stick them in the pasture, make sure they've got pasture and hay and water and trim their hooves and stuff.
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But if you're going to have goats for milk, if you're going to have babies, then you're going to have a world of fertility problems if those goats are not getting the proper nutrients, Like goats are not going to come into heat, they're not going to get pregnant, they're not going to stay pregnant.
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That was a problem we had in the beginning.
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We had all kinds of problems and we didn't know that our goats were copper deficient and so many people are like oh, I'm just going to mix my own feed, I don't want to buy a commercial feed.
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And it's like you know what you could do that with cows and sheep because they're naturally grazers, and what you could do that with cows and sheep because they're naturally grazers and so their mineral needs are very different.
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But you can't do that with goats.
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I don't know anyone who's really had productive, healthy goats who didn't use a commercial feed for their milkers, and the pregnant goats.
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You know, for the males that's a whole different world, because an intact male is just producing sperm, so that's not very hard, but I mean they do still need the correct minerals, so they still have to have a goat specific mineral mix.
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So imagine that's like the difference between going to the local PetSmart and getting a good bag of dog food versus the people that go through the trouble of trying to make it from scratch and then having to get the supplemental minerals and mixing those in.
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And you've got to get it right, otherwise you're not going to have healthy animals.
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Yeah, in fact you know what one lady said to me.
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She's like I just don't buy this.
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I make my own dog food.
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I don't understand why I can't make my own goat food.
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And I said your dog is only trying to sustain itself.
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It is not trying to grow babies and make milk for your whole family.
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Like you're asking a lot, it is not trying to grow babies and make milk for your whole family.
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Good point You're asking a lot of these goats and if you're going to ask a lot of them, then you're going to have to give them the kind of nutrition that you can't just get from just mixing up a few grains and herbs and stuff.
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Like it really has to be concentrated minerals.
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Yeah, so you're talking about goats having babies, things like that, and I know this is probably shocking to somebody that keeps goats.
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But if you would explain to people, if people want goat milk and they've got this fantasy that they're going to have goat milk for their family and they're going to make cheese and they're going to make soap and whatever else, can they just get a couple of female goats and just milk them and that's how it works.
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No, you know what it's so funny the first time somebody called me.
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And she called me and said she wanted to buy a couple goats because she wanted to make cheese and stuff.
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And then she said so what do I do to get them to start making milk?
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And I did not even understand the question.
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I was like what?
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And she's like well, I'm going to, I want to make cheese, so what do I have to do to get them to start making milk?
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And then it finally clicked that she didn't know that they had to get pregnant and have babies and that they're actually making the milk for their babies.
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And then you could.
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You know, after the babies are big enough and you know eating enough other foods and stuff, you can start using some of the milk and how long does that last?
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At least a couple months.
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The babies need to be on mom full time for at least a couple months.
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I want my Nigerian dwarf babies to be 20 pounds before I start separating them overnight.
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I start separating them overnight Because by the time they're 20 pounds, they're big enough their tummy's big enough that they can actually consume a decent amount of solid food to help them keep growing.
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But until then, they really need to drink their calories, you know, and get all the protein and calcium that they're only going to get from milk in such a concentrated way, Right.
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So it's kind of like a window of opportunity.
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So basically, just so everybody's getting this right from milk in such a concentrated way, right?
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So it's kind of like a window of opportunity.
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So basically, just so everybody's getting this right.
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If you think you're going to get goat milk, you have to have a goat, you have to have some way to get that goat pregnant.
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Now you've got babies, so now you have multiple goats, which you probably started with.
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Your herd has grown.
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You've got to let them have their share of the milk.
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Then you're going to get a window of opportunity where you can get some milk and milk that goat.
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And then does that go on forever, deborah, or does that dry up, and now we have to start the whole thing over again.
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Yeah, so it does not go on forever.
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In the commercial world they usually rebreed cows and goats and sheep every year so that they get that high production that you get within the first year.
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Sometimes you know, if you've got some goats with good genetics you can milk them for a couple of years before you breed them again.
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But there is a limit, you know, and then you're going to have to breed them again and have more babies, and I always tell people that you've got to have a plan for those babies you know?
00:17:59.319 --> 00:18:00.282
Yeah, Because you're going to eat.
00:18:00.282 --> 00:18:13.240
You're either going to be keeping them and then it's a matter, are you?
00:18:13.260 --> 00:18:13.844
going to breed those as well.
00:18:13.844 --> 00:18:15.128
And now you've got exponential amount of animals, Are you going?
00:18:15.148 --> 00:18:15.490
to spay and spay.
00:18:15.490 --> 00:18:16.454
I know they use castrate for the males.
00:18:16.454 --> 00:18:17.579
What word do they use for the females Hysterectomy?
00:18:18.940 --> 00:18:20.000
no-transcript.
00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:20.748
No, you just fix the boys.
00:18:20.748 --> 00:18:38.978
A hysterectomy in a goat is such a big deal that a lot of times they just do an ovorectomy, and they usually only do that if the goat has some kind of a medical problem where the ovaries have to be removed because they're just cycling nonstop.
00:18:38.978 --> 00:18:40.506
That's a problem too.
00:18:40.506 --> 00:18:49.299
I always tell people if you're just going to have pets, get a couple of castrated males, and a reputable breeder is going to castrate them for you.
00:18:49.299 --> 00:18:51.417
They're not going to give you an intact male.
00:18:52.469 --> 00:18:57.836
Let's talk about that intact male though, because that's the other thing if you want to have babies or whatever.
00:18:57.836 --> 00:19:03.137
So when you don't castrate a goat, what's the fun of that other than the fact that they can reproduce?
00:19:08.704 --> 00:19:10.390
So this is one of the things that really turns people off from goats.
00:19:10.390 --> 00:19:11.311
This is the goat version of like cologne.
00:19:11.311 --> 00:19:19.034
I guess that turns on the ladies, because male goats will pee on themselves, and when I first heard that I thought, oh, I guess they're just messy.
00:19:19.034 --> 00:19:24.477
But no, it actually it's not like your husband missing the toilet or your son or whoever else.
00:19:24.477 --> 00:19:37.516
Yeah, no no, they have directional control and it is completely mind blowing to most people when they first see it, because he can basically turn around and pee on his face.
00:19:38.176 --> 00:19:38.637
And they do.
00:19:38.637 --> 00:19:41.530
And it's very funny to watch, but not great to smell.
00:19:41.791 --> 00:19:43.174
Right, yeah, exactly.
00:19:43.174 --> 00:19:48.405
And this is why, like I really, really, you know, people are like oh, I want all my goats to be bottle fed, so they're friendly.
00:19:48.405 --> 00:19:54.666
I'm like I don't want any of my bucks to be bottle fed, because then they think I'm their girlfriend.
00:19:54.666 --> 00:20:13.397
And so, when you know, I have literally like put a buck in with a doe in a stall in the barn and gone over there to check on him and he comes and jumps up on the door and starts blubbering in my face and I'm just like, ew, get away from me.
00:20:13.498 --> 00:20:14.500
Yeah, it's nasty.
00:20:15.326 --> 00:20:24.934
It is so nasty and it's like it's really the bottle baby, the bottle bucks that do that because they don't have that separation.
00:20:24.934 --> 00:20:27.394
They're like, oh, you're one of me, I'm one of you.
00:20:27.945 --> 00:20:30.664
I'm going to get my stink all over you, yeah, yeah.
00:20:31.626 --> 00:20:37.538
And they'll pee on your does as they're dancing around doing their little pre-mating dance.
00:20:37.538 --> 00:20:46.065
They might pee on her, they might pee on her udder, and so that's where goat milk has a reputation for tasting nasty.
00:20:46.065 --> 00:20:53.605
Because if you let a buck run with your does, that's what they do they pee on them, they rub on them.
00:20:53.605 --> 00:20:58.738
The bucks need to be kept separate from the does to avoid unwanted breedings number one.
00:20:58.738 --> 00:21:06.538
But also, if you're milking your does, the milk is going to be nasty if the bucks are rubbing on them and peeing on them and all this kind of stuff.
00:21:06.898 --> 00:21:11.040
Yeah, so you have to basically set dates and appointments to make that happen, right?
00:21:11.303 --> 00:21:13.150
Exactly If you want to keep everybody separate.
00:21:14.012 --> 00:21:14.093
Yep.
00:21:14.093 --> 00:21:20.576
Well, I don't know about you, debra, but this sounds all like an awesome opportunity.
00:21:20.576 --> 00:21:26.807
Not really an awesome opportunity, not really.
00:21:26.807 --> 00:21:30.057
But you know another thing even if people have gotten to this point and they're like, I still think I want to do this.