Nowadays, most goat breeders have chosen this career path as a side source of income and adopts a traditional system in maintaining the business. However, people seem to overlook the huge market potential of this “side business”. In fact, if more time is dedicated in this field, breeders could gain more profit from raising a healthy cattle. In retrospect, the process of maintaining a healthy farm is a small price to pay for the efficiency in terms of costs, time, energy, and business management afterwards.
Wether your farm is small, medium, or even mass, breeding your own healthy goat farm takes on heavy responsibilities. However, extra care might be needed to raise milk goats than any other ordinary goat. Nevertheless, with the current technological advancements, breeding a healthy milk goat farm is not as complicated as it seems.
So, without further ado, here are 11 ways to prevent your milk goat from catching diseases.
1. Construct a Healthy Living Space
It is no brainer that a healthy living space plays an important role in an animal’s wellbeing. When designating an adequate living space for your milk goats, there are numerous things to consider – amongst the following includes:
- Build it on an elevated area that is away from harsh-flowed bodies of water
- Designate the locations away from your house or wells
- Provide adequate access to morning sunlight
- Should protect your farm from harsh winds (especially at night)
Commonly, the type of cages most breeders would invest on are what is mostly known as “kandang panggung”. As the name suggests, the cage is built on an elevated surface that allows the milk goats’ waste to fall off, protect them from small parasites on the ground, and does not retent moisture from grounded bodies of water. Otherwise, other designated living spaces should be fine.
2. The Size of Their Living Spaces
Your farm’s living space should allow enough area for your milk goats to move around and get some exercise. However, do take your budget and other factors into consideration – as their living spaces shouldn’t be too big nor too small for your farm.
Though varies for different needs, most breeders would designate around 3 x 1.5m of living space for 10 milk goats. It may seem like a tight-spaced area at first, but smaller living spaces tends to be easier to monitor and cleanse from harmful bacterias and illnesses. If you’re still in doubt, do consult other professionals for more advices.
3. Living Space Maintenance
Maintenance on the milk goat’s living space is crucial to keep a healthy environment. This includes deep cleansing from dirt and other bacteria infested materials. Cleaning and other fixings should be done regularly to prevent further damage.
4. Infant Goats Care
Most breeders start of their breeding business by investing on an infant goat first. This grants the breeders full control to shape their animal’s personality to be friendly. Though it may vary for every kind of breeder, generally beginners will look for infant goats with the following traits:
- Older than 6 months
- Has a healthy tail (does not frays in the end).
- Long exterior, preferably male
- Generally healthy and strong.
The reason why breeders choose infant goats that are aged at least 6 months is because their anatomy has fully developed then. More so, 6 months older infant goats are less proned to catching diseases.
5. Grooming Your Farm
Aesthetic reasons aside, there are proven benefits of regularly grooming your animal. By clipping their nail and shaving problematic areas, you would – literally – disinfect the diseases. Furthermore, the market value for healthy and clean looking cattle is much more beneficial their unkept counterparts. Therefore, considering its benefits, it is wise to groom your farm routinely.
6. Showering The Goats
A part of the grooming process often requires breeders to shower their farm every now and then. Milk goats in particular would only require 2 baths per year. This is an ideal frequency that allows breeders to wash off any harmful bacterias and fungi that may grow on their exterior.
7. Managing Your Goat’s diet
Monitoring the frequency of your goat’s feeding could prevent you from overfeeding or not feeding your goats enough. Regardless of the physical amount consumed, what matters is that they receive the right amount of their daily nutrients to combat dangerous bacterias.
8. A Healthy Diet
Perhaps one of the most important thing to maintain in order to keep a healthy animal is adopting them into a healthy diet. Milk goats have a complex digestive system (Poligastrik) that allows them to transform high fibered substances (e.g. grass and wheat) into their main source of energy; and produce nitrogen instead of protein.
On that note, its best that you employ a high fibered diet that makes up of greens and additional fermented food source. It helps that you combine the two for maximum results.
9. Fermented Sustenance
Getting your milk goats into a fermented based diet grants them their protein and fiber needs. A fermented diet would also balance their digestive system that doesn’t allow an overwhelming amount of concentrated diets (such as commercial food pellets). More so, fermented diets are relatively more budget friendly and efficient than concentrated diets.
10. Balancing Nutrients
The main key of every practice is to keep a balance – after all, too much of a good thing is never wise. Monitor the ratio of the amount of daily nutrients your goat is getting, without having to be financial and time straining. Choose their diets wisely, taking “small” factors such as accessibility to products and efficiency into account.
Additionally, smart breeders should always keep on a look out for high quality materials. It’s best that you do not feed your animals bad materials, as it may mess with their immune system and destroy their immune system.
11. Extra Supplements
A wise investment to maintain an animal’s health is extra nutritional supplements. Consult medical professionals to get your ideal dose of vitamins that would help strengthen your animal’s immune system to protect them from bacterias, virus, and harmful fungi.
Some extra supplements – which differs for every breeder’s needs – could help their livestock reproduce better offsprings. Healthier children are often marketed higher than those who were unkept.
So there you have it – 11 ways to prevent your milk goat from catching diseases! Be sure, however, to consult medical professionals if you catch on unusual behaviours from your farm. We would also recommend that you do further prior research on what’s best for your milk goats, seeing that every goat have their different needs.