Living With a Large Goat Herd
Reading Time: 6 minutes
On a picturesque rim in Troy, Idaho, with 320 degrees of canyon view, Karen and Dale Kopf, owners of Kopf Canyon Ranch, raise a large goat herd. The rugged property spans down into the canyon and up both sides. Their herd is primarily Kiko, which are well-suited to challenging environments, with a few unspoiled dairy goats living like Kikos.
“There are a lot of wildfires in Idaho,” Karen explains. “It’s one of the reasons why we run goats, since canyons are a huge fire risk. At the height of our fire season, all the crops are dry and ready for harvest, and if fire came through the canyon, it would destroy everything. To properly manage the land, we need to have something grazing it, and goats are ideal for this landscape.”
While the rim pastures can be secured for checkups and herd work, once the work is completed, the gates are open, and they can free-range the entire canyon most of the year.
“We try to stay under 200 head for our breeding stock,” Karen Kopf laughs. “I mean, 100 was the goal, but there’s a thing called goat math.” The Kopfs provide breeding stock for other ranches. To breed for improvements, they keep careful records of their animals, including as many as 250 kids their herd produces a year.
With their large herd growing exponentially during kidding season and their unique free-range setup, Karen was the perfect expert to ask about how to maintain a large, healthy goat herd.
Large Goat Herd Health Checks
“Raising a large goat herd takes a different mentality because you can’t scale up small herd management,” Kopf says. “There just isn’t enough time in the day. There aren’t enough resources to do that.”
In a small goat herd, you might check and know the body condition of all the animals monthly. For Kopf’s herd, the bucks go through a 5-point health check annually, right before breeding season. In addition to the 5-points (eye, jaw, back, tail, and nose), footwork, vaccinations, and a weight evaluation can be done. Other than that, the bucks aren’t touched for the rest of the year, unless Kopf sees something concerning. Does are checked three times annually, pre-breeding, pre-kidding, and post-weaning.
Kopf says it would be glorious to have one of those gorgeous sorting systems for goats with them standing in a single file waiting for their exam, but the infrastructure is expensive for a large herd.
“We cobble together a system of chutes, pens, and gates using livestock panels and carabiners just for the purpose of sorting. Eventually, we’d like to have something more permanent. We’d love a sponsor that wanted to demonstrate their equipment here.” The way the Kopf’s work the health checks currently is with a big sorting pen and a smaller catch pen inside that.
Up to 10 goats go into the smaller catch pen and then into the “goat spa” section, which resembles a shark cage.
“We use a stanchion to work our goats, with a platform scale as the base. The stanchion secures the goat, allowing us to do whatever needs to be done — blood draw, vaccination, check teeth, trim feet. At the same time, we’re getting weights.”
Goats that have completed their exam are marked with livestock marking paint because the Kopfs have learned the hard way that if there’s a will, there’s a way. After sorting and examining goats for 11 hours, they were separated for shipping and a vet check. The next morning, she went to check on them just before the veterinarian was to arrive, and no one was in the pen. They had all rejoined the main goat herd!
“Thankfully, all of them had blue stripes on their rear end. It was just a matter of catching them all again and pulling out the ones with blue stripes. It looks like a mosh pit of colors, especially when we’re sorting into multiple pens for breeding, or different shipments.”
The duration of a goat inspection depends on the condition of the goat. Individuals who need minimal work can be caught, worked, and released in five minutes. Goats that need footwork or a health intervention can take upwards of 20 minutes. Multiply that by 350+ goats, and you’re talking days and weeks.
“Goats that take 20 minutes are usually not going to make selection,” Kopf says. “They’re usually going for harvest. We provide foundation breeding stock, and we really can’t manage an operation with goats that need intensive management — and neither can our buyers. We don’t continue to breed those animals. We both have full-time day jobs on top of the ranch, which is why low-maintenance Kiko have been ideal for us.”
Large Herd Breeding
At Kopf Canyon Ranch, the goats are free-ranged for most of the year and only penned in for health inspections, evaluation, and breeding. They breed in November, and kids are usually born in April or May.
“There is no such thing as kidding pens or jugs or anything like that,” Kopf says. “We kid on open pasture, and most of the time we don’t witness a birth. Each year, I only see a handful of births. I try to find kids soon after birth, while they are still wet, to ear tag and weigh. I go out a few times a day.” If they witness a doe in labor, they’ll watch for a few minutes to make sure she’s making progress, and if she is, they walk away and let her finish.
Selecting breeding stock is also different in a large goat herd versus a small herd. “In a small herd, they might give more grace than we can,” Kopf explains. “In a large herd, you’re going to have some pretty tough goats that can self-manage. If you’re a large operation or want to go large-scale, you should source your stock from a large operation.” During breeding season, Kopf will pair some bucks with 20 does and others with up to 60 does, depending on the bloodline and what buyers from the previous year requested. Young or new bucks will only breed a small selection, as those kids will be retained for evaluating the line. Once they’re proven, then they can breed more.
Herd Nutrition
When the animals are on dry lot rim pasture for working or safety, the does get access to about 12 acres, and the bucks around 6 acres. But when it’s free range, they have hundreds of acres to graze. Kopf’s animals receive the same feed regardless of their age, pregnancy status, or sex.
“If the goats aren’t on the canyon foraging, we feed large bales with a skid steer in big bulk feeders. Our goats only get dry land alfalfa, which is 13 or 14% protein through the winter. Canyon forage and loose minerals are available year-round. The herd is grain-free. There are no feed supplements of any other kind. We don’t have a different nutritional profile for different ages or conditions.”
Difficulties of a Large Goat Herd
“The hardest part of large herd management is the work days. If you don’t have a team of people, it’s a lot of animals to go through,” Kopf says. “You have to be able to commit a good chunk of time a few times a year.”
It takes them 8 to 11 hours per day and over a week to get through the selection process, which includes recording data and taking individual photos of each goat.
Benefits of a Large Goat Herd
“When providing breeding stock for other herds,” Kopf says. “The cream of the crop of a large herd is probably a lot sweeter than that of a small herd. We can be a lot more selective because we have more choices and can cull harder.” Another advantage of their goat herd is that the goats are well-socialized despite being able to free-range on hundreds of acres for most of the year. This makes them easier to move and examine.
“When we yodel at the top of the rim, they come running. It’s something they learned when the herd was young. And the does teach the kids, and it just goes on for generations. I think that’s probably one of the key things about scaling up — your herd culture. If you have a bunch of slightly difficult-to-manage goats, that’s going to get worse exponentially. But if you have a good core culture, that’s going to spread throughout the larger herd.”
KENNY COOGAN lives on a permaculture landscape and runs a carnivorous plant nursery. His educational TV series “Florida’s Flora and Fauna with Conservationist Kenny Coogan” will come out summer of 2025. Listen to him co-host the “Mother Earth News and Friends” podcast at www.MotherEarthNews.com/podcast.
Originally published in the Winter 2024 issue of Goat Journal.
