Preparing Goats for Cold Weather
When Fall kicks off, it's inevitable that people start worrying about their goats and how they'll battle the cold. Living in Maine, we know cold winters. We know negative temperatures, and feet worth of snow dumping on us at any given time. But our goats always make it through, little worse for the wear.
Key Ways to Prepare Your Goats for Winter
Body and Coat Condition
One of the best was the make sure your goats are prepared for the cold weather is to ensure their body weight and coat condition are in healthy shape. An underweight goat won't be able to maintain their internal temperature as easily as a well conditioned goat. If a goat has a coarse coat with lots of breakage, they will most likely have a hard time growing out the nice undercoat they rely on for warmth. Make sure your goat is up to date with any copper and selenium they may need, as well as zinc. Be sure feed is adequate to keep them at a healthy weight going into the colder months.
Housing
Make sure your goats have draft free housing. Ventilation is important, but you want to make sure your goats aren't getting constantly assaulted with cold drafts, especially while sleeping. We provide our goats with dog igloos, and they love to sleep in these when it's cold.
Goat Bedding
Dry bedding is essential to keeping your goats warm and protecting against respiratory infections in the winter months. We do a bottom layer of pine shavings, with piles of straw for the goats to "nest" in. Straw makes for the best goat bedding in the cold, as it's hollow and will help to retain body heat. If your winters get as brutal as ours, you know it's often challenging to get to wet goat bedding before it freezes. Because of this, many people employ the deep litter method, allowing the bedding to be layered with dry shavings and straw so that it composts over the winter. This can help to generate natural heat from the composting materials, but can be a chore to clean up in the spring.
Hot Water Buckets
In my barn we’ve made sure to be set up for heated water buckets. These buckets don’t keep water very warm, but do keep it from freezing in the coldest temperatures. During the cold months, our goats always get plenty of hot water in addition to their heated buckets. We call this "Goat Tea" and they adore it! First thing in the morning, a nice bucket of hot water gets everyone up and moving, and happily keeping hydrated. If it's an especially cold day, we'll also add electrolytes to help maintain hydration. If you nestle a bucket without the heater into nice dry bedding such as hay or straw, it will help to insulate the bucket and keep it warm longer.
Extra Calories
Sometimes, despite all the preparation in the world, the cold can hit you fast and hard and leave you with some goats that are struggling. When this happens, we try to give those goats an extra boost. Nutri-Drench for goats is our go to for a quick pick-me-up for goats that are shivering and mopey from the cold. We usually chase that with a dose of probiotics, as an active rumen produces needed warmth. As a feed additive during brutally cold temps, we will add shredded beet pulp. This is a high calorie supplement that can be used for weight gain, or extra energy. A lot of goats don't care for the beet pulp, so you can try soaking it in hot water to make it a bit more palatable.
While battling particularly brutal record temps in past years, I’ve also added a bit of steamed, flaked corn to everybody's grain ration. I have always stayed away from corn - it's incredibly rich and can easily cause bloat or scours. However, corn is a good source of fast, hot, energy, and we regularly give it to the chickens during the cold. We have given limited amounts of steamed, flaked corn as a top dress during the worst cold days, and it does seem to help. Once again, be cautious and slow when offering corn, and make sure its steamed and flaked, not whole or cracked.
Dyne is another supplement I’ve used with great successes when I’ve needed to put extra weight on a goat. This does need to be drenched daily to the goat that needs it, which can be tricky - some goats love the stuff and some can’t stand it.
Baby goats sometimes need a little help with the cold
No-No's for Goats
Goat Coats
Goat don't need coats. They don't need sweaters. They don't need blankets. Putting any kind of coat on a goat will inhibit the growth of their natural winter coat. It will also keep them from being able to puff out their coat to trap body heat, and this is one of their best defenses again the cold. A little shivering is also nothing to panic about - it's another natural body response that helps to produce body heat. If the shivering is severe or persistent however, do give their temp a check. Unless the goat has some kind of special condition (illness, recently clipped, newborn) that interferes with maintaining body temperature, keep the coat off your goat.
Heat Lamps
I understand this is a heated topic. Many people provide their goats, chickens, etc., with supplemental heat via heat lamps. This is also the leading cause of devastating barn fires. Livestock have survived for hundreds of years without heat lamps. If your power goes out during a winter storm, your animals will be ill prepared to handle the cold if their heat lamps suddenly stop working for a day or two. Heat lamps keep your animals from adjusting gradually and naturally to the cold temperatures. To me, heat lamps are never worth the risk, and my animals have always done very well without them.
I do recognize that there are some circumstances where heat lamps may be a necessary evil. In this case, make sure you use a heat lamp that is is built to be secure around livestock. The only one of these I can “recommend” is the Prima Heat Lamp through Premier1. This should still be cleaned regularly, secured against swinging around, and out of reach of any animals.
