My husband and I spent our entire early adult lives farming full-time, managing large acreage farms and ranches doing a significant amount of direct to consumer meat and egg sales. After close to two decades doing that, we decided to change course. We bought 15 acres, my husband started a construction business, and I went to work as a veterinary technician. We now have more homestead based goals while having a ton of experience raising and grazing animals. We provide for all classes of our animals an environment that allows them to thrive and be productive but we’re also not afraid to cull those that don’t meet those standards. That allows us to focus on positive engagement with our animals. Our knowledge is primarily in regenerative grazing and my husband is a master with anything electric fence (among many other things!)
I've raised animals my entire life but done large scale livestock production for most of my adult life always focused on high stock density rotational grazing for many classes of livestock including hogs, laying and broiler chickens, cattle, sheep, and goats. My husband started his farming career as a young adult with a 4 year internship on a biodynamic farm in Germany. Our continued farm practices are a result of many years of diversified experience now on much smaller acreage. We bought a severely overgrown property and the goats are an integral part of reclaiming that. We rotate across the property regularly. Some times of the year more forage/browse is available and other times of the year we rely more heavily on grass hay and alfalfa. Our Kikos never receive grain. We do milk some Nubians and they get grain while milking. We use high tensile electric on our perimeter fence, otherwise we use some electric netting from our poultry days but the goats respect 3 strands of polybraid otherwise. Keeping the goats on appropriate feed, keeping them moving, and not being afraid to cull are what have worked best for us.
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Parasite Protocol: We do not routinely deworm. We've never used dewormers (herbal or otherwise) for our Kiko goats. We do cull heavily. In the past we farmed full-time and raised goats on at least 500-2,000 acres. Now that we've bought our own property and just raise livestock on a more homestead scale we may choose to use herbal dewormers if needed in the future.
Vaccination Protocols: No Vaccinations
