Goat Keeping Course

This Saturday sees the first of our goat keeping courses. I'm busy finalising my notes and handouts, which is quite a pleasurable activity as I revisit my scribbles and find lovely nuggets of goaty information that I'd forgotten (short term memory non existent!). I love reading about the natural behaviour of feral goats, it really helps to understand where some of my girls behaviour stems from, and can assist me in how I approach keeping my own goats bearing these things in mind. For example a wild herd will have a dominant male king billy, but did you know theres also a queen? Infact, she is very important, and often takes decisions on when and where to forage, and urges the king to act on her que ... he invariably does, and the herd follow his command. Even if you only have two goats, it helps to observe them, and before long you'll figure out which is your queen. Treat her with the according respect and your girls will be happier! Give her a feed ration first, take her for milking first ... taking a goat from further down the pecking order will cause disgruntlement and a little argy bargy amongst the ladies will ensue, just so queen can reiterate her importance. Goat Husbandry, by David MacKenzie has a great chapter on goat behaviour.

I like to keep the courses small, informal and personal. Theres a maximum of four participants, and I will gladly run the course for just two. That way I can talk to each person beforehand and find out just what aspects they are most interested in, and I will tailor the course to suit them. So if you wanted to attend this course, and couldn't make the date, please do drop me an email and we can sort out a date to suit you.

Comments

[Vallen Queen]

Treating the Queen with respect and giving her first dibs on everything is indeed the way to a peaceful harmonic life. It shouldn't be any other way.

[hedgewizard]

Most interesting. Thank you!

[Amanda]

Wow - Goat Queens - I can see a story emerging out of this ;o)

Good Luck for the workshop - I'm sure it will be a great success! I'm storing all these nuggets of information somewhere in my memory for if I ever get goats, or chickens, or pigs, or a polytunnel, or... lol

[Amanda]

I hope it went well and look forward to hearing about it! x

[kaat]

I wish I could be there!

Thank you, first of all, for your feedback to my question (in a comment a while ago), about whether to keep a cow or goats.

I did decide on goats, and it's a relief to have made a decision, but we are at such an early stage in The Plan - i.e., all planning, dreaming, wishful thinking, nothing anywhere near execution yet - that sometimes I get quite demoralized...

Going to a goat workshop like yours, seeing (up close and personal) someone actually DOING it, would dearly help.

Can you let us know how it went? What was learned?

Thank you for sharing all this with us, hopefulls,

Katrien