The farm is full of baby goats! So we are going to continue with our baby goats facts!
Baby goats, kids, are standing and walking within minutes of their birth! They have long, lean legs and knobby knees. It so much fun watching as they fumble around trying to figure out how to get stable. It doesn’t take long though! Within an hour or two they are running and leaping like pros.
Today’s fun farm fact is about goat kids! Goats can have 1-6 kids per litter. Twins are the most common kidding, followed by singles and triples. Anything above three is considered to be very rare. Two of our does (Tina and Hilary) came from a kidding of six. This was considered one of the largest kiddings in Virginia. Because of this we ultrasound the girls with each pregnancy to make sure they are not carrying more than three… if they are we will need to be prepared!
We are now officially in Kidding Season! So it seemed fitting to have the facts over the next few weeks be kid and pregnancy related. Today’s fact is about goat gestation:
Goats have a gestation period (length of pregnancy) of 5 months. For standard breeds (like ours) it totals about 150 days and for the miniature breeds it’s slightly shorter at 145 days. While goats might “show” a little in the later months of pregnancy they don’t really start looking pregnant until their last month of pregnancy.
So far this year all of the fun farm facts have been goat related, so I thought it was time to do a fact about one of our other farm animals. Today’s fact is about chickens!
Chickens are born with all of the eggs they will lay in their lifetime. The rate in which they lay eggs depend on the time of year. Chickens need a minimum of 14 hours of sunlight to lay an egg, so during the shorter, colder days chickens lay less eggs. Some farmers will light their hen houses in order to encourage chickens to lay more during the winter months, however this does not cause them to lay more eggs in their lifetime, it will only cause them to go through their egg supply quicker. While there is nothing wrong with this practice, it is not something we choose to do. We like our girls to have a break over the winter months.
Today’s Fun Farm Fact is my favorite so far! Have you ever gotten a good look at a goat’s eye?
Their pupil is rectangular! This is the case with many pray animals. I have had so many people comment about how “freaky” it looks, but there is actually a reason for this. Round pupils, like the ones that humans have, allow for a panorama view of 160-210 degrees. Rectangular pupils however allow for a panorama view of 320-340 degrees! Meaning that goats can see almost all the way behind themselves without having to turn their heads. This helps protect them from predators. It is also believed that the rectangular pupils allow them to have better, more heightened night vision.
Most people, including myself, when talking about a group of goats call them a herd, but the correct term is actually a tribe or trip. Even knowing this I’m not sure I could break the habit of calling them a herd!
After this Friday’s Fun Farm Fact you might want to thank the next goat you see…
It is a popular Ethiopian legend that goats discovered coffee! A goat herder noticed that his goats were especially energetic after eating the red berries off of the coffee shrub. The goat herder decided to try the berry himself. He had a reaction very similar to one that the goats had and coffee was born!
Today’s Fun Farm Fact may shock you!… Goat meat is the most consumed meat per capita worldwide! It’s only in the United States that it is not regularly eaten, although it has been gaining in popularity in recent years. Maybe the rest of the world knows something we don’t!
Goat’s meat is considered to be very healthy. It’s is leaner than both beef and chicken. Goat meat is also considerably lower in saturated fats than beef and chicken. It is also low in cholesterol while maintaining it’s iron level.
So if you are looking for a leaner, healthier meat… consider goat meat.
Today’s Fun Farm Fact is important to dispel a fairly dangerous wives tale about goats… That goats eat anything and everything. They don’t. Goats cannot eat trash or tin cans… It will kill them, and while goats are known to clear brush and will happily clear your land for you there are plenty of plants out there that are toxic to goats. Here is a great list of plants that goats can and cannot eat.
Goats have very sensitive systems. Drastic changes to their type of feed or amount of feed can mess up their rumen. If we are increasing or decreasing our goats’ feed or changing the brand of feed we make the change slowly over the course of weeks or months. This way their system has time to adjust.
It’s important, when putting goats into a new pasture, to check and make sure there are not plants present that can hurt them. For us personally, we have had to fight black cherry trees. Most people would be thrilled to find black cherry trees on their property. Especially some that are as big as ours, since their timber is worth so much, but wilted black cherry leaves are toxic to goats. So throughout the spring and summer we have to search through our pastures to find any black cherry saplings and . Most of the time goats will not eat things that are toxic to them, but if the foods they do like to eat become sparse they will eat whatever they can find, toxic or not.
It Friday!! Which means it’s time for a Fun Farm Fact!
Capra, latin for goat, is the root of the word capricious. A word meaning to change often and quickly, quirky, and whimsical… Fitting
