GOATS ON SMALL HOLDINGS: A large part of the world's goats are owned and farmed in small units. Four or five goats can supply the needs of a family for milk, meat and skins. The goats relate to their owners on a very personal basis. The goats are usually kept in a small pen with a lounging shed and are almost entirely hand fed. In England, these goats are taken for walks daily to brouwse the hedgerows and gain much of their feed this way.

It is better to lead the goats out for half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening than to take them for a single two hour period. If goats are led back to their shed as soon as they start chewing their cud, they will soon learn to take as much as they can hold in one whack, and to save herding time.

Extensive Production Systems (free range on scrub and rough grazing): These systems aim primaritly to utilize whatever foodstuffs the environment makes available. It is importanto use goats which are genetically suited to this method of management. The aim is to make th most efficient use possible of the land, supplemanting the diet when necessary during the year. The stocking rate (the number of gats per unit of land) must not be allowed to become to great. The body condition of the gats should be checked regularly. Forage feeding (hay, silage or green forage) rather than concentrated feeding promotes butterfat production in the goat.

Discrimination in matters of diet is a dim instinct in goats; education on the subject is a main feature of their social life. If the social life is stunted, by lack of communal activity and separation of mother and kid, not only are the members of the herd particularly liable to poisoning, but they have a jittery approach to all food, wholesome or not. The only aid the goat farmer can lend to the natural discrimination of the herd is to himself draw attention to, spur and destroy any poisonous weed, which evades the notice of the foraging goat herd.

---See Natural Goat Care---