logging with goats

[sanhestar]

it’s fun but also useful help for this people

http://nationalsaanenbreeders.com/workingwethers.html

[amanda07]

I’m going to suggest a walk in the woods to my girls:)

[Robert MoonShadow]

*note to self*
Do not show this to the goats again… now they won’t come out of the barn. :rolleyes:

[manesntails]

🙂 Cool!

I have a Nanny who is part boer and part dairy goat and she’s bred to a half pygmy half Spanish. If I get a couple of male goats and make wethers out of them we would have to go “twiging” rather than loging.:p

[Robert MoonShadow]

Manes – Mine have everything yours does, ‘cept Pigmy… 4 types of dairy, boer & Spanish -> aahhh, goats… true believers in “interracial harmony”! 😀

[manesntails]

@Robert MoonShadow 5139 wrote:

Manes – Mine have everything yours does, ‘cept Pigmy… 4 types of dairy, boer & Spanish -> aahhh, goats… true believers in “interracial harmony”! 😀

:p I wish I could post some pics but it won’t let me yet. My pygmy Spanish cross Billy is solid black with a beard almost a foot long and a handfull wide. He has YELLOW eyes. One nanny, the boer/dairy cross, is dark red with a brown dun stripe, the other is smaller and is 4 different colors and has short swept back horns with horizontal ridges.

No tellin’ what I might get outta those crosses!

Goats are just SEXUAL creatures:D

[drafthossluvr]

Logging with goats!?

[sanhestar]

why not?

They are hard workers when trained well, sure footed, agile, easy to train, smart.

Granted, you have to make sure that they can handle the weight of the tree/log and they won’t be able to handle big trees.

I spoke with a man from Austria, years back at a Mule and Donkey Festival. He uses his wethers to bring down logs from mountain sides that are too steep/rugged for horses or machines – he runs a sawmill.

[drafthossluvr]

That is awesome, I guess I have underestimated goats… you have definetly sparked a new interest in me and I am planning on getting myself a wether a.s.a.p and a cart and harness to go with him!

[sanhestar]

Brooke,

check out http://www.harnessgoats.co.uk

The Canadian Pack and Harness Goat Association http://www.goatsacrosscanada.ca/pb/wp_32fd5159/wp_32fd5159.html

and Carole Contreras – American Harness Goat Association
http://www.goattracksmagazine.com/harness.html

but, please, goats are herd animals and you should get two (!) wethers – they work better and stay healthier that way.

[drafthossluvr]

ok, i will check those sites out, thank you. i was hoping to use one of them in a cart, single. would i be able to do that if i got a pair? or would he balk upp and not move if he was alone?

[sanhestar]

I’m quite sure that one of them would balk – the one in the cart or the one left alone (or he would jump fences and goat’s CAN jump….)

Again, they can pull more together, a second goat doesn’t eat that much more (8-10 goats equal 1 horse), you would also have the ability to switch between the two if you mainly want to drive single and you can take the other goat with you when driving without much problems (they bond almost as close as dogs).

[drafthossluvr]

ok. well two makes sense, i wouldn’t wnt to be completely alone either. i really want to bond with them though, and want to begin training them young (to lead) and would really like bottle babies, but is that to risky? what are the odds i would lose one or both of them? i have bottle fed lambs before. are weanlings better? thanks!

[sanhestar]

Hello,

well, this would depend on where you get them from and at what age and how you bottle feed.

A good breeder with healthy goats (mums and kids): CAE and CL tested, worming uptodate, if you prefer vaccinated animals, they should have Tetanus and enterotoxicaemia shots (CDT), enough colostrum for each kid.

They should be at least one week old and used to the bottle – if you get them as lambs you definetively need two!

Bottle feeding: 6 times a day during the first 4 weeks, 4 times a day the next 4 weeks, 3 times a day the next 8 weeks, 2 times a day up until age 5 months.

I’m sceptical about milk replacer, I raise my bottle kids either with milk from another goat or with raw whole cows milk (from my neighbors) – assuming you have a source where you can get milk from healthy (again CAE) goats or cows.

If you want to get weanlings, you have to make sure that they have been handled by people a lot and treated well – goat weanlings that have grown up “wild” with their mothers only take years to become tame. Again, choose the breeder well.

If you want to spend the money (and save you time and effort = your money) you can contact one of the packgoat breeders that you can find via the NAPGA (North American Packgoat Association). These goats are bred for years now for working and are raised and handled with this future use in mind (imprinting, basic training, etc.).

One more thing: if you decide to get your kids from a “normal” goat breeder, make sure that they are still intact (bucks) up to the age of 5-6 months. Early castration is a high risk factor in goats for developing problems from urinary calculy (and often the cause of an early, untimely death).

[drafthossluvr]

hi, i could get raw cows milk, there is a dairy farmer up the road and i am sure his milk is fine, he sells it. do you give your kids “probios”? i saw on a site that someone did, like very few weeks..?

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