When raring goats for the purposes like milk, meat or hide there are some special husbandry techniques or the management practices that you should carry on your farms. These practices definitely help you to maintain your goat herd in better health conditions. As well this makes the management of the herd easy for you farmers. Some of the basic management practices includes housing, feeding, breeding, record keeping, disease management and etc. These are common topics we are talking under management practices when rearing animals for different purposes. But there are some other special management practices that you should undertake in a goat farm.
Here through this post, we are going discuss about some of the such management practices carrying out in a goat farm.
We can name these practices as:
- Disbudding
- Castration
- Hoof trimming
- Identification
Table of Contents
Disbudding or dehorning the kids
Kids are the smaller goats. Disbudding is usually do for the kids before their horns grow. Disbudding simply can identify as removing the horn from the goat when the horns are immature.
Why we need to disbud the kids?
When the goats are raring in our farms the farmers will face many difficulties due to these horns. If affects badly on the safety of the farmers or humans sometimes. When you are dealing with the scared goats, especially bucks there is a chance to get wounds by these horns. If the animals are not domestic or tame ones then having horns is actually a problem to proceed with the daily works in the farm.
Moreover, goats can wound other goats too using these horns. They sometime tend to fight with each other when they are inside the same house. This will cause sometimes wounds. They may attack on the udders too. This head butting using the horns cause bad effects on the goats and make it very difficult to manage the farm properly. The horned goats will show their superiority above other goats to take the best food and drinks also.
Sometimes the horns act as barriers for the goat free movements also. They might stick in the fence or somewhere in the pen or in food bucket or anywhere else. It will affect badly on the farm equipment too.
So, by considering the above facts we can see that we have to disbud the goat whenever it is necessary.
Disbudding is normally carrying out when the kids are about 3-7 days old. Or sometimes it could be 1-2 weeks. When the kids are born you should inspect or examine the kids every day for the horn bud’s development. Once the horn bud’s development begins the disbudding should be carry on.
This can do using three methods.
- Using a hot iron
- Using chemical paste on the horns
- Using mechanical dehorners (rare)
During this process you can keep the kid in a disbudding box and should do the procedure very carefully without causing any harm to the kid. Unless it will lead some infections to affect the kid through the wound.
Castration
Castration. This is normally carrying out in the goats raising for meat purpose. In here the testicles of the bucks or the male animals are removing using various methods to increase the carcass quality. Castration will lead to have mutton free from bad odor, flavor and also increase tenderness of the meat. This makes a higher demand for the mutton as consumer satisfaction increases. This is doing within 2 months after birth.
There are various methods which we can follow when castrating the animals.
- Non- surgical methods:
In here uses Burdizzo castrator or rubber rings –normally the blood supply for the testicles is prevent by clamping the blood vessels supplying blood to the testicles and scrotum. This decrease or cease the growth of the testicles. The testicles will shed off in few weeks.
- Surgical method
In here the testicles are removing completely by performing a surgery.
Hoof Trimming
Do in domesticated animals regularly as it provides comfort to the goats when moving. As well it helps to keep the animal healthy.
Identification techniques
This practice is also very important in farm to identify the animal properly. This proper identification helps a lot in vaccinating the goats, to know about the milk yield of each goat, to know the disease history and etc. As identification methods you can paint your goats in different ways. Or you can use ear tags or tattooing, branding or other names or marks can be used.