Raising Pygora Goats: Chapter 1, Food and Fencing
Since launching my website, I’ve had several questions from prospective Pygora owners considering adding goats to their farm. Those questions gave me the idea for this series of blog posts in which I’ll walk through the basic knowledge you will need to own Pygora goats. We’ll start with the most essential information: food and fencing.
When I was pregnant with my son, a friend of mine who was a nanny told me I only truly needed one thing to have a baby - a car seat. Beyond that, you could wrap them in a towel and let them sleep in a drawer and breastfeed. For prospective Pygora goat owners, food and fencing are essentially the car seat.
Let’s start with the latter. You may have heard of people who keep goats as yard pets. Trust me when I say that is not a lasting solution. Goats love to climb, so you’ll find them on your car, your porch railing, and if they can get to it, your roof. Plus, as “browsers” by nature, they will absolutely roam looking for tasty treats such as your neighbors young trees. To successfully own goats, you will need an area fenced with woven or welded wire with 4-inch squares or smaller. Kid Pygora goats can slide through a 6-inch square, so cattle panel won’t do the trick.
Your fenced area doesn’t have to be particularly large. Some say goats can be comfortable with 30-square feet per goat for exercise and another 15-feet per goat in covered area for resting and sleeping. (We’ll cover more about shelter in an upcoming post.) So, you could have 4 goats comfortably living in an 120 to 180 square-foot paddock. Add something safe to climb on in the fenced area and they’ll be pretty happy. That, however, leads us to our second topic: food.
We built this feeder for small round balls in our pasture, which provides covered, elevated hay during the winter.
Those same four goats living in that 180-foot enclosure will clear out any living food in that space (weeds, young trees, brush or grass) in, well, less than a week. I have a couple of large wethers who would be happy to do it in a day. As ruminants, goats need roughage daily. In fact, my goats have access to grazing or hay pretty much all the time. If you plan for your goats to graze on pasture or brush as their primary source of roughage, you need to plan on approximately 1/10 of an acre per goat. Any less and you will need to supplement with hay. And either way, you will have to provide hay during the winter months. If you don’t already know a hay supplier in your area, ask around with local farmers or check Facebook marketplace. You’ll need a hay supplier, and buying hay from feed stores is usually comparatively expensive. Note that goats, by nature, avoid eating off the ground. This helps protect them from parasites. So, you’ll need hay bags or racks for feeding. For ordering such supplies online, I recommend Valley Vet or Premier 1 Supplies.
For healthy goats with good fiber, you will also need to feed them goat feed once daily. They don’t need much, though, and overfeeding is one of the worst things you can do. I feed mine approximately 8 ounces per goat per day. I also mix my feed about 2:1 with black oil sunflower seed, which provides healthy oils for better coats. Make sure to read the label on your feed and only use feed blended for goats.
Last but not least, I recommend providing loose minerals daily, especially to growing kids and breeding animals.
Now you have the car seat knowledge, and you know just about everything you need to know to successfully own goats! Stay tuned, though, for more important information on shelter, parasite management, and sheering and fleece care.