Tails from the Trails: Training Baby Pack Goats
Reading Time: 5 minutes
Training baby pack goats starts at the very beginning, first by being present for their birth, then through play, and finally hiking.
I wake up to the tiny sounds of suckling as a dam nurses her triplets, born late last evening with a small doeling delivered nearly an hour later than her brothers. She is a fighter, though, and bumps her brother away from the teat for a warm draught of mom’s milk. The air is heavy, and my mustache has a thick layer of condensation. I glance over at my thermometer. It reads 32 degrees Fahrenheit, but I’m thankful because it’s much colder outside. Early-season kiddings are tough here in Idaho, but I remind myself that cold weather produces strong pack babies.
Another doe is grumbling as she tells me she’s about to go into labor. She’s one of our best breeders, and we’ve been anxiously waiting for this moment since last September. I crawl out of my sleeping bag, pull on the well-worn set of farm clothes that’s lying beside my makeshift bunk, and throw another log in the cast iron wood stove that provides warmth and comfort to the barn, which is now my home for the next few weeks.
Training Baby Pack Goats Starts with Play
Fast forward a month, and we have 22 bouncing babies in our pasture, taking breaks from crawling on us to lounge in the sun’s warmth on a rare windless day. We have a log pile for them to play on, and a game of King of the Mountain has started to see who can claim the highest position. Our backs and shoulders become part of the game as we sit on the logs with them, and they playfully paw at us, nibble on our clothes, and try to get to my wife’s hair. We explore where each likes to be touched and given affection, adjusting our technique to each goat’s unique personality. No two are alike, but an experienced baby wrangler knows all the familiar places to start, and I soon find myself with one cradled in the warmth of my lap, relishing in the moment of being given my full attention.
One rambunctious buckling gets a little too rough and pushes his head into my leg, so I brush him off and give him a very stern “No!” He will eventually understand that there are correct and incorrect ways to seek out our affection. Socializing with them in these playful settings and establishing boundaries is the earliest part of their training.
Big Enough to Hike
The days become longer and warmer. Spring is here, and everything has begun to dry out, which presents the perfect opportunity to start hiking with this new batch of babies. I find it’s easiest to begin training baby pack goats at 2 to 3 months old and focus on short hikes with many things to play on. Conditioning isn’t important at this age. Instead, it’s about getting them familiar with the process and reinforcing our relationship with them on the trail in a foreign setting. The strong trail bond that we develop allows us to go through hell and back with our animals in the rugged Idaho wilderness.
We load a group of them into the back of a pickup along with a few of our gentler, more experienced boys. The truck has a contractor shell with swing-open rear doors and a fresh layer of straw. This will be their first time away from their moms, so everything we do is designed to build trust, carefully loading each baby and gently encouraging them as if they are our most prized possessions. Eventually, we’ll begin to take note of the string’s pecking order; loading least to most dominant allows for a smoother process and prevents any bullies from antagonizing the next to be loaded. The truck is packed, and we head down the road. The bumping and shifting will help settle any grudges they may have with one another during the trip.
Winding down a dusty dirt road, we reach a cattle guard and turn onto the ruts of an old wagon trail. Our hike today is along the Snake River in an out-of-the-way spot. When training baby pack goats, I prefer secluded spots for moments like these because it takes the stress out of on-trail encounters with other hikers and their pets and allows us to give our full attention to managing the chaos of hiking with a fresh group of babies.
As we begin our hike, they are timid at first — they’ve never been outside the pasture and didn’t realize the world was so big. We continue down the trail with gentle reassurances, and the urge to explore overtakes them. Every boulder is a new challenge for them, and there is a frenzy among the babies to conquer each new obstacle. Our older goats plod along behind us. They’ve been this way many times before but are grateful to stretch their legs after a long winter.
Once the initial excitement is over, the babies fall into line, jostling for position in the string and occasionally stopping to taste a new delicacy. Foraging is their specialty, and the world is their buffet, where they sample from the whole menu. We’ve hit the turning point of our hike; the ruins of an old stone hut sit at the end of our trail, forgotten by time. It’s a reminder of Idaho’s rich homesteading history and the hardships settlers had to face carving out a meager existence in the canyon surrounded by sheer cliffs of black basalt.
A steep incline meets us at the end of our hike out of the canyon — an old wagon ramp used by these early settlers and many others since. Heavy breathing and the occasional call from the back of the string tell me this group has reached its limit for the day, but the truck is soon in sight. Even the older goats breathe heavily; they’re not used to such exertions with their winter coats. We gently load them into the old pickup for our return journey home, the first of many trips for these tiny adventurers on their journey to becoming pack goats.
NATHAN PUTNAM is a board member of the North American Packgoat Association. He and his wife, Jackie, own Putnam Pack Goats in Mountain Home, Idaho, where they breed SaberPine crosses and build pack goat equipment. They enjoy hiking and hunting in the Idaho backcountry with their goats. You can learn more about them at putnampackgoats.com or on Instagram @putnampackgoats
Originally published in the March/April 2025 digital issue of Goat Journal
