​Picking out your first few goats is a very exciting event. You’ve done your research, picked your breeder/mentor and now you are at the farm looking at all the adorable goats. How do you choose? It can be overwhelming and a little stressful. I could write a book on how to pick out the perfect goat for your goals, but I will keep it simple.
If you have followed the first few blogs post, you know when we picked out our first goats it was purely on how cute they were. While looks are very important, it should be the conformational look you focus on, not the flashy colors and blue eyes. Conformation is the key to success in every aspect of raising goats. Each body part has a role and the more correct the body part is the better it will serve the goat. For example, width between the hocks is a good thing. It allows the animal to track correctly and gives it room for a large udder with out having to walk around it. Wide hips and level rumps allow for easier births. Spring of rib allows for good lung capacity and room for the rumen. You get the idea. Know what good conformation looks like before you get to the farm.
Stand fast to the goals that you want to achieve. If you want to breed for milk production then you are going to have to learn how to look at the milk genetics of the animals. Visit registries website and find articles on how to read pedigrees that have milk data. You may have noticed letters and symbols such as * or + after an animal’s name. Those are milk production awards. If you breed Nigerian Dwarfs like we do, look at the American Nigerian Dwarf Dairy Goat Association. They have wonderful articles that explain how to read milk results.
If your focus is to show your goats make sure that they are registered with the association that you plan to show with. Also plan on learning what different awards there are for show performance and if the dam and sire have some of these awards. Letters before the name of the goat are show performance or genetic awards. The more awards the animal has the higher the odds that the offspring will also process those winning qualities. Show wins equal correct conformation, so if you are confused on what to look for you could start with kids out of finished champions.
If you are wanting just pets it is still important what breeder you purchase from. You will want them to be from a clean tested herd that takes pride in caring for their animals. The goats should have quality feed and up to date with vaccinations, worming, and hoof care. They should have good conformation to lead a long healthy life.
Look at the websites of the farms you will be visiting and pick out some of the does and bucks that you like. That way you will have several different options to research before you arrive at the farm. Email the breeder with any questions before you arrive. You will have plenty of new questions when you get there and see all the kids zooming around. While at the farm look at the dam and sire of the kids you are interested in. Do they match what you are looking for? Are they healthy and in good condition?
I am going to be honest with you. It is overwhelming for those new to goats to really know what to look for and what to pick. I get it. I was once you. If you found the right breeder, they are going to guide you and help you. My best customers are the ones that come to me and tell me their goals and then trust 

You have done your research, prepped your farm and combed the internet for the cutest goats to fill your barn. Now what? How do you determine who to buy from? There are so many breeders to choose from and when you are starting out it is all so overwhelming. When we ventured into goats in the early 2000’s Nigerian Dwarf Dairy goats were few and far between. Nothing like today. Now they are the number one registered dairy goat in the United States. Finding a breeder was tough. Finding a good reputable breeder to mentor us was even tougher. Let’s just say we didn’t choose wisely. We did what was typical. We fell in love with the first goats we saw. We did do one thing right and that was we only got 3, one for each of us. I got a bred 4-year-old named Bitsy. Emilie got a 6-month-old that had a big brown circle on her side.  She named her Dot.  Addie fell for the blue eyed 4-month-old and named her Lillie Belle.
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Now knowing so much more, I realize we could have done a lot worse starting our herd. They were all healthy and well cared for. They were supposed to be registered but they weren’t. Nor were they tattooed. They did come with an application of registration for American Goat Society and Nigerian Dairy Goat Association. We had a few glitches getting them registered with some information missing, but after a year we had them tattooed and registered and ready to hit the show ring.
We eagerly went to our first show and promptly took 8th and 9th out of 10 junior yearlings. The 10th place had a wound she received on the way to the show. We would have been last. Emilie and Addie didn’t care they had a ribbon and that was exciting. Thankfully, the wonderful lady penned next to us took me aside and asked if we intended to keep showing. I informed her that we did plan on continuing and she politely told us that we might look into getting show quality animals. Yes, Dot and Lillie Belle were that bad, but we loved them.

While at the show we met our mentors Dotty and Doug Clark. They helped the girls and I navigate the show world and helped the girls find two new show goats.  Apache Valley Chocolate Chip and Adam’s Funny Farm Amberlea became our foundation does. Dot became a beloved pet and Lillie was rehomed as a family milker. Bitsy and her kids went to a therapeutic camp for children. After a rocky start we were ready to begin again.

I share this story so that you can avoid some of the mistakes we made. Things have changed in the last 20+ years so there is no excuse not to find a reputable breeder near you. Before you go looking, take some time and look at what your goals are. Do you want just pets, or do you want to breed for future milking? How about showing? Registered or non-registered? These are all questions that I ask people when they come to me to get started building a herd.

Once you have your goals for your herd you can start looking for breeders near you. I suggest that you find a herd that does disease testing and is able to show you the results not just tell you. Most herds test for CAE and Johnes. Some also do CL and Brucellosis. If they don’t test keep looking. Ask if you can visit the farm. A red flag would be if they don’t let you visit and see the animals. Some breeders prefer you to not come in the barn or pasture area for biosecurity reasons and that is fine and should be respected. If you are not welcomed there to see your potential animal, or its home, it could be a scam or a place you don’t want to purchase from.

Find breeders that meet your goals. Most of us have a little something for everyone. If you are buying registered stock make sure you have registration papers or an application of registration before you leave. Look at breeders that are truthful. If every animal they own and bred are “Stellar, Amazing and Outstanding” they might just want to make a quick sale to someone that doesn’t know better. Beware of websites and Facebook pages that go on and on about how wonderful they are as breeders too. Listing your animals wins and accomplishments is important, but there is a lot more to it.
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Don’t be in a rush. You will find the right breeder or breeders for you to start your herd. I am guessing they will become lifelong mentors and friends. I know for us we have met wonderful people in the dairy goat world. They have affectionately become known as my goat family. It is a wonderful community of love, prayer and support that make my life so full. I hope you find the same in your journey into goats. 

​Getting started with a small herd of goats is the easy part of raising goats. Sticking with it is the hard part. Did you know that most new herds last about 3 to 5 years? There are various reasons that make people throw in the towel. I know for me when we hit the 3-year mark I was ready to call it quits. At the time I was a single mother of two young girls, working two jobs and I had limited experience in raising livestock. It would have been easy to say I can’t do it anymore, certainly a lot easier than sticking it out for the long haul.

That 3-year mark was in 2005. I am certainly glad I hung in there. What made me stick it out was my daughters Emilie and Adelaide. They LOVED the goats and while their lives were ever changing the one thing, they always could turn to was their goats. I couldn’t take that away from them. Once I changed my mind set about our small herd, I was able to work through the various issues that came with raising livestock.

As many of you know I mentor a lot of people new to dairy goats.  I will be honest; a lot more give up then stick it out. Let’s look at 3 of the main reasons that people aren’t successful at raising goats. One of the first things that set you up for failure is growing too fast with out a good foundation of knowledge. I am not talking about books, YouTube or Facebook knowledge. I am talking about good old fashion hands on experience. You can read books, watch videos and learn a ton that way. I suggest you do, however realize that the more YOU experience the more You will learn.

Start out small with a couple does or maybe a doe kid and a wether or two. It seems everyone wants to get into hobby farming and sustainable living. They jump in with a doe in milk and dream of making cheese in a week. Yes, you can do that, but don’t start that way. Make that a someday-in- the future goal. Get those first few animals and learn everything you can with them. Once you kept them alive and thriving for a year or two then you can branch out more and start breeding them. Having kids is a whole other learning curve which can take years to master.

The second mistake people make is not having the right mentor. Not every breeder is a mentor. I know breeders that want nothing to do with teaching others, which is fine. It is their right to choose to mentor or not, so don’t assume just because you purchased from a reputable breeder that they will mentor you. Ask don’t assume. Second make sure the mentor you do find is someone that has similar beliefs in raising livestock. For example, I believe God gifted me these animals and it is my job to do everything reasonable in my power to save them. Ask my vet or my husband. I am positive they will tell you I love them too much. Lastly, make sure your mentor knows what they are doing. I chuckle a lot at post from experts that have been breeding goats a whopping 4 years. They are great about promoting how smart they are. I have been raising goats for 22 years and still learn stuff all the time. When someone comes to me with a problem I haven’t encountered before I tell them to let me know what they did so I can learn too.
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This brings us to the third thing that burns people out fast. It is one simple thing. Failure. Failure picking out the right breeder to purchase from, failure in the show ring, failure that ends in death of an animal, or failure in breeding a better animal. It will happen. Ask any experienced breeder that has been raising goats for at least 10 years and I am pretty sure they have experienced all those failures.  Once you grasp that there will be failures the better you will be. I have cried buckets of tears and prayed thousands of prayers over failures, but every failure is a learning experience. The more I fail the more I learn and the better I do. It is a hard life lesson, but it makes me better and the herd better and over time your failures will lessen and you will find more and more blessings in your herd and in your work. So, get started, get those cute little goats, find a great mentor and know that the journey is going to be hard, but boy what a journey it will be!