Goat production guide Part 5
Turn your goat farming into a commercial business T
ransforming from a subsistence or emerging farmer into a commercial farmer does not only mean that you will be working with higher volumes, but it also requires you to adapt your management practices to enable you to stay in control of your growing flock. Some general management practices will be discussed here, namely condition scoring, ear tagging and record keeping. This will ease your way in expanding to become a commercial farmer.
Ewes should neither be allowed to become too thin nor too fat. Failure in reproduction, low twinning rates and low weaning rates will result if ewes are too thin. Overly fat ewes can suffer pregnancy toxaemia, but fat ewes are rarely a problem. This is a standard way of assessing the condition of individual goats on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is very thin and 5 is obese. It is a way of telling whether your goats are getting too little feed or too much.
Condition scoring Farmers should be concerned with the body condition of their breeding animals. The term body condition refers to the body fat content of an animal.
You assess three different things: • Backbone • Rib cage • Loin eye area (either side of the backbone above the tail).
A condition score of 3 is ideal for weaning, breeding, and kidding. 4
An ear tag applicator such as this one can be used to tag each goat so that all the relevant information can be displayed. Ear tagging A simple system for giving your goats ear tag numbers: • Decide on a letter for each year. For example: 2014 is A, 2015 is B, 2016 is C • Then give each kid born that year a number – so A1, A2, A3, A4, et cetera. It is easy to sort goats when ewes and rams are given different coloured tags. Record keeping To be able to manage your goats, you need some basic system of record keeping. Your system should be able to give you the following information: • The exact number of goats that you have (broken down into different age categories) • The dates when your ewes gave birth and the number of kids born • The number of goats that die (and the age when they die and cause of death)
ProAgri BNZ 17
