Greetings,
Dear friends I discovered this wonderful place to share, congratulations for this community, I have always had in mind the homestading as well as a life with organic and healthy food.
About five years ago maybe a little more I started a project of raising dairy goats at home, there have been many moments that I can relate that have made me gain knowledge and I can share with you.
Goats are very docile and rewarding animals, raising them from scratch makes you feel like their mother, they don't leave your lap, they are with you in all the activities you do around them.
At the beginning I had them in a stall, but some time later I discovered that with four or five hours a day of free grazing they classify what they are going to eat according to their needs, besides having them free grazing allowed me to work less hours cleaning them and the yard of my house.
To raise these animals you have to study a lot like everyone else because their life depends on having their comfort and sanitary control conditions and this last one much more if we are going to consume their derivatives.
For the breeding of goats we must keep in mind that in the sanitary control we must deworm every 90 days and that the products we use for this we must rotate them so that they do not make resistance.
Many people say that goats eat everything, but in practice you realize that it is the opposite, they are very selective with what they eat and sometimes even delicate, recently a goat died because we are in times of the fruit of the Saman tree, this fruit is a very sweet pod and they like it very much but if they eat too much it generates something called tympanism and they die because their stomach fills with gas.
Today I have 8 animals, my growth has been slow or not as I expected, especially this year I lost four animals and one that gave birth to two unborn calves, these losses were for different reasons but all have left a great learning.
The breeding of goats at least in Venezuela is growing for many factors, one of them is that where a cow is raised 8 goats are raised, secondly the goats browse so it is not necessary to deforest to generate spaces for them to eat and finally their milk has many advantages compared to cow's milk especially for babies and older adults not to mention that it has no lactose.
I hope soon to be able to talk to you more about this subject being more specific in each of the topics that I can share from my time raising them.
I hope this publication is agreed with the community to continue being part of your feed.
Thank you for reading my lines and may God bless you greatly.