Buying Goats With Unknown Backgrounds
Introducing goats with unknown health histories to your herd.
Reading Time: 4 minutes
In an ideal world, all new additions to your herd will be fully vaccinated, in good health, have complete health histories, and come from trustworthy sellers. Of course, we don’t live in an ideal world. At some point, you’ll probably end up with a goat, or buying goats with an unknown history. Many goat keepers make this work with adequate precautions and strategic management decisions.
Evaluating Health
Visually inspect animals before buying goats whenever possible. Remember, any time you acquire an animal without a reliable history, there’s a potential need for extra time and money if health conditions arise that need treatment. You may even experience the loss of the animal through death. With this in mind, be honest about what you’re willing to spend when buying goats. No deal is a good deal when the cost outweighs the value. Visual indicators of overall health include a shiny coat, clear eyes and nose, good hoof condition, and ideal body condition. Check the lower eyelid for anemia via the FAMACHA test. If you aren’t trained on this, I highly recommend using the online course from the University at Rhode Island to learn.
FAMACHA and body condition are arguably the most important checkpoints, especially when examining young animals. Animals that are severely anemic underweight won’t be cured by a simple deworming; they’ll need regular supervision and a wellmanaged feed regimen to regain condition.
On-Farm Arrival
Having protocols for bringing new animals to the farm is essential for preserving the health of your current herd. When introducing new animals to the farm, they should be isolated for at least 2 to 3 weeks. This is long enough to break the infectious period of most pathogens they may have brought with them. Preferably, isolation means separate housing for new arrivals. At the very least, they should be segregated to a location that doesn’t allow for nose-to-nose contact or shared feeding. They should also be fed and handled last to avoid contamination of the current herd. A separate pair of boots to wear when you care for the new animals in quarantine will also help prevent disease transmission.
New animals should be isolated for at least 2 to 3 weeks to break the infectious period of most pathogens.
As you get them settled in, you’ll want to start any at-risk animals on a treatment plan and begin routine vaccines once they’ve had a bit of time to recover from the initial stress of the move. If you couldn’t do a health check in person before purchase, now is the time. How you develop this uponarrival protocol will vary depending on your animals and the conditions of your farm. But there are some general bases you will want to have covered
Deworming
Before you begin deworming animals to reduce parasite loads. consider potential resistance to treatments.
As a rule of thumb, most people will automatically deworm anything that scores above a three on the FAMACHA scale. This is a safe bet for high-risk goats, including kids and pregnant does. But for animals outside those two groups, it’s good practice to consider details such as stage in life, weight, and other health indicators.
Dewormers fall into three main classes — macrocyclic lactones, benzimidazoles, and membrane depolarizers. The University of Arkansas has a nice dewormer class chart that lists the drugs and trade names associated with each. It’s available online and as a PDF for download.
A fecal exam will help pinpoint exactly what worms you’re targeting so you know which class of dewormer to use. Animals starting to show signs of anemia may need a second round of treatment in two weeks. Repeating the fecal will show what still needs to be treated and what’s been taken care of.
For kids, it’s advantageous to collect a fecal sample to check for coccidia. Older kids can be fed ionophores in their grain to prevent further spread.
Anemia Treatment
Goats with anemia should be put on an iron supplement as recommended by your veterinarian and fed rich, leafy green hay with alfalfa if possible. But make any changes to feed or hay gradually to avoid other health issues. It takes time to build up red blood cells again, and careful monitoring with weekly FAMACHA checks is a must.
Respiratory Infections
If you’re moving goats from a long distance or buying goats from a sale barn, you’ll almost certainly encounter some form of the shipping fever complex. “Shipping fever” covers a wide variety of upper respiratory tract infections caused by several pathogens.
Goats who show signs of coughing, runny noses, or watery eyes shortly after arrival should be promptly treated with a broad-spectrum antibiotic. Water-soluble antibiotics are also available for treating large groups of goats. Individuals who don’t respond may need more intensive treatment. Antibiotics are only available through veterinarians, so talk to yours if your goats display symptoms of respiratory infection.
Lice
If you’re buying goats from a sale, you’ll likely want to treat for lice with a topical liquid or powder treatment upon arrival. The stress of moving can suppress the immune response and help lice proliferate more quickly.
Preventatives
It never hurts to vaccinate when you question an animal’s history. At the very least, give the standard Clostridium perfringens types C and D, tetanus, and Mannheimia haemolytica and Pasteurella multocida vaccines for respiratory issues.
From a nutritional perspective, there are several things you can offer to help boost immunity. This includes offering vitamins, water-soluble probiotics, and free-choice minerals. While still in quarantine, you can offer free-choice sodium bicarbonate to help prevent bloat, although it may not be good to offer it long term.
One of the most important measures you can take is to have fresh, high-quality hay available immediately upon arrival. This will help goats get the necessary calories to stay healthy and reduce stress.
Even with the most thorough efforts, you can’t guarantee the soundness of every goat that arrives on your farm. Some health aspects are just out of your hands. Fortunately, you have options to establish a protocol when buying goats that gives them the best possible chance to get off on the right hoof once they’re in your care. With this in place, you can have peace of mind knowing you are doing your best to help them reach their full potential.
JACLYN DE CANDIO is a professional agriculture writer, communications specialist, and farmer. A member of the Ohio Farm Bureau and the Agriculture Communicators Network, she lives in southwest Ohio with her husband and children where they operate Latria Livestock Co., feeding out market kids and lambs.
Originally published in the 2024 Winter issue of Goat Journal and regularly vetted for accuracy.
