Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting More on the packgoats

Sorta, I use the term wean to take them off milk. They were all born last week and are all off mom already. So they have been hand raised from birth if that’s what you mean.

Yep, thanks. Cool animals.

Alright, so we ended up with 4 prospects for the year

Olaf is a huge Saanen (all white).



Sven is our special needs kid. He’s a Sable/Alpine cross. Sables are colored saanens so basically look like Alpines from Saanen lines. Think palomino in horses. Sven is struggling to take a bottle right now and is the youngest and smallest kid. Got a good frame but literally weighs less than half of the other boys.



Gustav is what’s called a chamoisee but he’s a full Alpine. If you’ve seen a Chamois you can kinda see why they call this color pattern that. Think buckskin in horses.

Don’t really have a great picture of Gustav yet


Then we have Magnus, he’s all alpine. This color is called cou blanc for white neck. White in front black rear.

If goats didn't hate me...I'd be in...cool thread and thanks!

Enjoy seeing the new ones.

We've had a couple of kids we had to bottle feed either because the nanny rejected them or died. Ends up with a goat that's much easier to handle than the completely hands off herd we keep.

I think we've got around 50 kids on the ground right now. There is one we're having to bottle feed. If at all possible, we try to avoid it, as it's a lot of "extra" for us over momma taking care of it. A bottle fed buck, left intact, can end up a real problem when he gets older. Bottle fed nannies have never been a problem for us. I'm assuming all of yours are wethers?

Dang I can’t imagine the headache 50 kids would be. Yeah they will be wethers, but not until at least 4 months. I’ll wait until they think about Bucky behaviors before banding them. I’ve had good luck by not having any urinary calculi that way plus good size. The big three are all on the nipple bucket already, the little guys Sven is nursing but only in very brief little stints, hoping he figures it out soon.

The higher the number of kids the better for us. Kids really aren't a headache as long as the nanny takes care of them. The rare one we bottle feed is a headache though. If we had to bottle feed all of them I'd never raise one and I'd sell the entire herd! At ~4 months all the bucks will be sold. We've never banded as some buyers prefer intact. Enjoy seeing the updates you give and the very different purpose/perspective is interesting for me to see. Thanks for sharing!

RIP Nigel. I put him down today. Had lost over 50 pounds, I couldn’t get any weight on him, had developed a weird stiff legged gait, then got some huge abcess on his chest, which I drained but couldn’t get to heal and his gait got worse. I felt terrible for the little guy when giving penicillin as his muscle mass was totally down to nothing. Poor guy was a shadow of his self.

Too bad as I’ve just drawn a sweet tag and will need him

Sorry to hear that.

When we first started raising goats, an old man who'd done it for years told me to expect a 10% death rate if we were doing everything right. I thought he was off his rocker at the time...but time has proven to me he was correct. Some years more, some less. Of course we're doing it hands off, raised on pasture/forage, and for production with a herd rather than limited numbers with more oversight like you. With breeding, birthing, age, herd competition, predation (mainly dogs), parasites, and any type of sickness all in the mix, the 10% is really close.

Back when I had breeding animals, I probably did tuna close to 10% loss also. Babies and pregnant dams especially.

So quick update at almost 3 months old. Gustav and Olaf are 60 pounds (Olaf is the tallest though). Sven now outweighs those two after a rough start and a bout with bloat at 64 pounds. Magnus is 70 pounds. Sven and Magnus are more belly heavy than the other two.

Got them out with some water training. They’ve met the big boys but haven’t hiked both of them together yet as I’m trying to make sure they follow me not the big boys. I’m gonna castrate in the next few days as they are starting to stink already, which seems early to me.

Cool stuff ,, thanks for sharing.

New to the forum but glad I found this one! I currently have Nigerian dwarf goats but have been interested in selling them to get some pack goats. I live in Pennsylvania and have started hunting Idaho and hopefully Montana this year. This seems like the most feasible way for me to have pack animals with the long drive. With the long wait until they are old enough to pack hopefully I'll figure out the elk hunting thing a little better lol. Goats are an amazing animal looking forward to the adventure of training them. Our mountains aren't nearly as big but I have some very steep rugged spots that will hopefully be enough to get them the training they need.