How To Tell If Your Goat Is Healthy

This is a loaded question because if you are not completely aware of how goats act and behave, you may not know what is normal or healthy. Then again, you could have a goat that is totally healthy but doesn’t bounce around like you think they should. So here is my best tips for being able to tell if your goat is healthy.

First Step To Tell If Your Goat Is Healthy

First thing first, you need to have a routine of how you assess your goat. Now, I am a paramedic in real life, so I have a system of how I treat EVERY SINGLE patient, EVERY SINGLE time. It always starts with a scene size up. That means that as I am walking up to a car accident or into a home, I’m looking around. I want to make sure it’s safe, but also what do I see? Is the patient crushed inside a car? Is the patient gasping for air?

Next comes the ABC’s. Airway, Breathing, Circulation. Is the patient’s airway open? Are they breathing? Is their skin normal? Is there blood?

After those first two things, we start to treat based off our findings. If we didn’t find any life threats, we continue on with our assessment. These things are based on the problems we see or the complaint of the patient.

Goat Assessment

When it comes to goats, it’s really no different. Except that they can’t talk to you. You have to get all of this information based solely on what you see and find during your assessment. Which is why learning how to tell if your goat is healthy NOW, when they are healthy is SO important.

If you haven’t already, sign up above to receive our goat assessment worksheet. It is incredibly easy to use but as we go through the rest of this post, we will be using that sheet. I also use my Herd Check Sheet when I am doing my weekly herd checks to make sure I check EVERY goat. I also to write down any concerns or findings I may have on this Herd Check Sheet.

I’m not going to go super in depth about how to treat any illnesses here. The whole point around this blog post is for you to learn HOW to do an assessment. I want you to start getting into the routine of doing this assessment while your animals are healthy before we go down a rabbit hole of treatment.

Goat Size Up

The Goat Scene Size Up is very, very simple. As you walk up to your goat, do they look at you? Are their eyes bright and alert? Are their ears erect and moving? Do you see an injury? Do you see fluids around them? Are they jumping around like a jumping bean? Are they playing or fighting with other goats? Are they screaming at you to bring them food? What are they doing?

ABC’s

Human ABC’s are the same as Goat ABC’s. Is their airway open? Are they choking or not moving air well? Are they breathing normally? Does it seem fast or slow? Do they have a cough? Are they bleeding? What is their heart rate? Is it fast or slow?

The Head To Toe….Hooves

Once you are past the life threatening concerns like what would be seen on a scene size up or ABC’s, it’s time to move on to your head to hoof assessment. It is exactly what it sounds like, we are starting from the top and working down.

Head- Check eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and FAMACHA. We are always looking for something “off”. Blood, mucus, fluids, swelling, broken teeth, FAMACHA score.

Body- This is a large part of the animal but we are still looking for all the same things. Do you see blood? Is there an injury? Bodily fluids? Body condition? Fur and skin healthy and intact? Legs in good shape? Temperature? Are they chewing their cud? Do you hear rumen sounds? Does the left (THEIR left) side of their belly seem swollen or bloated?

Hooves- Are their hooves normal? Do the hooves stink? Do you see abscesses? Are their hooves sound? Are they limping? Do they need a hoof trim?

What To Do With The Information

Well, that all depends on what you found on your assessment. But I will tell you to head over to one of these 3 Facebook groups:

Goat Emergency Team

Successful Goating With Rosie

The Holistic Goat

These are the goat groups that I have been apart of for YEARS! They have pulled several of our goats through in those first couple years. Plus there is always a moderator that can help no matter if it’s day or night.

Treatment Protocols

Once you can do your assessments correctly and quickly, now we can start diving into treatment protocols. However, I do want to caution you. You need to have a vet or mentor on stand by. Even if it’s only a basic relationship. You never know when you are going to need help and it’s better to know where to find that help before you need it.

Treatment protocols are basically a set of things to do IF your goat meets these certain criteria. For example: I would only follow a worming protocol if I had a positive fecal because I don’t deworm preventively. Another example would be using antibiotics for a cough. I don’t believe in just giving antibiotics for any reason. That doesn’t meant I won’t give it, but it’s not my first line treatment.

If you look through those 3 pages, especially Goat Emergency Team and Successful Goating with Rosie, you will see the treatment protocols that they actually use. Those are very close to the protocols I use on my farm.

Remember To Be Kind

As you are on your goating journey, you need to remember one thing. Be kind to yourself. You are learning. Yes, you will have animals die on you. Yes, it will break your heart and you will want to give up. You will beat yourself up because you didn’t catch something.

But remember what the ole timers say, “If you haven’t lost a goat, you haven’t owned one long enough.”

It’s the truth. These are not extremely hearty creatures to start with. They can be indestructible like Bella or fragile like Champ. But at the end of the day, everything will die. We just don’t want that to happen too soon.

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