Can I Still Register My Goats?

Episode 70
For the Dearest of Goats

How do you avoid scams when buying goats? Should y'all buy registered goats? How practise you lot know you're buying healthy goats?

If you are getting started with goats or still edifice your herd, you probably have a few questions. In this episode, I'm answering all of the above questions and more.

I besides talk about why you lot should not buy goats from the sale barn, and what questions to ask a breeder when goat shopping.

Since I teach college, I tin spot plagiarism a mile abroad. I share some of my secrets with you, and then you can effigy out if a website is legitimate or if it's a bunch of photos stolen from Instagram and Facebook along with paragraphs of text that have been copied from the websites of legitimate goat breeders.

If you are not certain if you want to buy goats, bank check out episode 11, Thinking About Getting Goats.

And if you want to sell goats, bank check out episode 69, Tips on Selling Goats.

If y'all raise Nigerian Dwarf goats or are considering them, bank check out my online forum at nigeriandwarfgoats.ning.com

Listen right here…

…or on your favorite platform:

Transcript

Introduction 0:03
For the love of goats! Nosotros are talking about everything goat. Whether you lot're a goat owner, a breeder, or just a fan of these wonderful creatures, nosotros've got you covered. And at present, here is Deborah Niemann.

Deborah Niemann 0:19
Hello, everyone, and welcome. Today'south episode is brought to yous by Goats 365, my online membership for people living with, learning about, and loving goats365 days a year. For more information, visit Goats365.com. And of course, we'll also put a link in the evidence notes for you lot.

Deborah Niemann 0:39
If y'all are thinking about buying goats, today'south episode is for you lot. I of the questions that I've been getting a lot more lately is, "How do I avert scams when ownership goats?" And so, I'm definitely going to be roofing that. In fact, that was the thing that actually pushed me over the edge. I've been thinking about doing this episode for near a twelvemonth, and just the fact that I'yard getting more questions near this, I realized I actually have to practise information technology now. So, if you're on the selling side, I did that episode last week, and this week, I'm talking about buying goats.

Deborah Niemann 1:14
If you're still just thinking about getting goats, be sure to cheque out Episode eleven, which is "Thinking of Getting Goats?" And it includes a lot of things that you should consider before you do bring goats into your life.

Deborah Niemann 1:26
Now, the kickoff matter that a lot of people wonder about when they're going to get goats is whether or not they should get goats that are registered. And, unless you're merely getting pets, my respond to that question would be, "Yes." If you have a goal for your goats, particularly if you desire goats for milk production, that'due south a actually hard "Yep." Behind every unregistered goat is a goat that a reputable breeder decided non to register. In my herd, I am not going to register a goat if information technology has got a super disappointing milk production, for case. I've been raising goats for 20 years, and so we don't see that very much anymore. Just, for the offset five years, I sold quite a lot of goats without papers, because I did not desire my herd proper noun associated with them. And so, ordinarily the story behind unregistered goats is that you can become lucky, sure, but your odds are going to be much amend if you get a registered goat.

Deborah Niemann two:32
And also, if you're going to be milking them, buy from somebody who milks them. You tin't buy from somebody who but says, you know, "Oh, I'm sure she would exist a practiced milk goat." Unfortunately—specially Nigerian Dwarfs. They take become so popular in the last v to 10 years that there'southward a lot of crap being sold as "family milkers." And that's really lamentable, because when these goats are well-bred, they're excellent piddling milkers. But, you know, like I said, behind every unregistered caprine animal is a caprine animal somewhere that somebody said, "I'm not going to breed this goat anymore. And I don't want my herd proper name associated with information technology."

Deborah Niemann iii:fourteen
Now, when I say that they should be registered, I'm not proverb that they demand to be a $ane,000 show goat or anything like that. They don't demand to have champion parents. In fact, if your goal is just milk, so yous should buy goats from somebody whose number one goal is milk. Considering, you're merely going to be paying for something you don't demand if you get get a goat that'southward, like, a finished champion and has a milk star and, yous know, is simply style more accomplished than what you actually need. In fact, when I started my herd, one of the goats that I bought was a yearling that was being sold from a herd that was actually into showing; they were likewise into milk testing. So, all of their goats were nifty milkers, and basically, their culls were meliorate than what a lot of people, you know, had in their whole herd. And and then, I was looking at this goat's full-blooded, and it was but astonishing. All of the goats in her full-blooded had been really great milkers. I was looking at their milk records and everything. And I bought her, and my daughters got into showing—and that poor doe. Every single fourth dimension she went into the evidence ring, she was ever last. But, what she did for us is that she gave birth to does that were admittedly spectacular milkers, and she was a keen milker herself. So, all of those really wonderful milking genetics came through beautifully. And she just wasn't a very pretty caprine animal herself, but some of her daughters apparently looked a lot better. And the of import thing to united states of america is that the milking genetics came through. I have and then many of her, you know, daughters, granddaughters, slap-up-granddaughters, peachy-groovy-peachy-great-great-granddaughters… And I simply love that line, because they are really excellent milkers.

Deborah Niemann 5:xi
There have been times when I was so incredibly glad that my goats were registered, because I e'er say, "Information technology costs just as much to feed and care for an unregistered goat as a registered goat." And so, whether yous paid $50 for a goat, or $500 for a goat, if that goat gets ill, the vet neb is going to exist the same. And information technology is a lot easier to justify spending money on a vet when it's a caprine animal that is more valuable. And I don't just mean more valuable every bit in, "Oh, I paid a lot of money for this pretty goat." But, like, every time our goats have e'er had problems in labor and I needed to telephone call a vet, there was no question about calling the vet, because I knew that the kids she's carrying are probably worth a couple thousand dollars. Unless it's all boys, and she'due south a first freshener, in which instance that would exist wethers, so they would simply exist a couple hundred dollars. But I mean, in the time to come, she'south going to produce kids that are going to be worth hundreds of dollars each. And so, the idea of calling a vet is, like… Financially, information technology'due south a no-brainer. Whereas if y'all have a goat that you didn't pay very much for her, her kids are not going to be registered, and then you're merely gonna be able to sell her kids for like $100 to $200—that'southward a lot harder decision to make, just from a fiscal perspective.

Deborah Niemann 6:31
Obviously, if you lot but want a few goats to raise your ain goat meat, y'all also would not necessarily need to take registered goats, either. Really, registered is important if you want dairy goats, merely so that you know you're getting, yous know, improve genetics than what you're going to get at a sale barn. And then, the other matter is, if you know y'all're buying from a reputable breeder, you know that y'all're not buying somebody'south cull, or the offspring of a cull a couple generations back that a reputable breeder chose not to annals because it did not meet their standards.

Deborah Niemann vii:08
Now, I said "sale barn" a 2nd ago. At that place'southward really a couple reasons why yous don't want to buy goats from the sale barn. And, i of those is because of illness. Over again, the sale barn is someplace that people become to sell their problems, unfortunately. You know, 20 years ago, this was the identify where lots of animals were bought and sold. But information technology really is not a groovy identify anymore to buy them, because there'southward just too much illness that goes through—especially with sheep and goats. The affair virtually sheep and goats is that diseases similar CAE and CL and Johne's tin can all be asymptomatic. And if yous know a goat has it, that's a bully fourth dimension to take them to the auction barn, when they have no symptoms. So, they look perfectly fine. And yous can't do that testing at the auction barn, and those are not tests that are required by anybody. It'due south simply a "buyer beware" situation. So ideally, yous're going to buy from a herd that has been effectually for a few years, and also has had all of their animals tested negative.

Deborah Niemann 8:20
And then now, we're getting into the, y'all know, closed-herd idea. If somebody has just had goats for 2 or iii years, if you're going to buy goats from them, you want to brand sure that they are testing those animals annually for those 3 diseases I simply mentioned: CAE, CL, and Johne's. Y'all want to brand sure they're testing for those annually. People demand to do that for at to the lowest degree the 5 or six years after they start their herd, to make sure that they don't have any asymptomatic animals that are suddenly going to zero convert and starting time testing positive—like, particularly Johne's. Because if they take Johne's, they're going to be out there dropping their infected fecal matter all over your pasture. This illness is contagious to all ruminants. So sheep, goats, and cattle. And and so, the standard advice is that—if you have animals positive for Johne's—is that y'all shouldn't have whatsoever more ruminants on that pasture for most v years.

Deborah Niemann 9:15
Young animals are the ones about likely to get infected. And then, you might actually bring dwelling one of these goats and not even know you accept a problem until you take kids that offset getting sick. And then, if you do testing, yous're like, "Oh my gosh, they have Johne'south. Where did that come from?" Because the older animals are not showing whatever symptoms. So, that'due south the other reason, too, that, like, for the beginning five or six years, things may await okay even though they're not, because your older animals may be asymptomatic carriers—basically Typhoid Marys—that are, you lot know, giving information technology to the other animals, and you don't know who the caprine animal is that has it.

Deborah Niemann ix:53
If your goal is to breed goats, and then you desire to get your stock from a herd that has some really good combination of disease-testing and/or being a closed herd. And so, if you're gonna buy goats from a evidence herd that is taking their goats out every weekend, all summertime long, being exposed to other goats, you lot really desire them to exist testing every single year. A closed herd, co-ordinate to the USDA, is a herd where there have been no new does brought in for at least five years. And they do recognize that you demand to bring in a new cadet every at present and then, only if yous haven't brought in any new does, it'southward considered closed. Still, like I said, if somebody is exposing their goats every weekend to other goats, when they're at a show, similar, they're walking through other goats manure and things like that. So, they are being exposed to something that is a biosecurity hazard, because manure is where Johne's is transmitted. Some of these other diseases, like CL, would be transmitted through pus—which would be pretty obvious. Nobody'southward gonna bring a goat to a prove that'due south, like, got pus. Just, CAE is transmitted through milk.

Deborah Niemann 11:07
And, I do know someone who had a goat that was the champion at the American Dairy Goat Association national show. She was the breed champion one year. And, they were always testing their goats, because they showed very heavily; they had never had any animals exam positive. And a yr after that goat won the national title, she tested positive. And the possessor actually believes that somebody infected the caprine animal at a show, and probably through infected milk. Because, some people feed their goats' milk back to them, and that was something that this herd did. And and then, he felt that that's probably how they did it, is when they're at the shows, they milk out the goats, and so they just put the buckets of milk in there, and the goats can potable information technology. And so, they remember somebody probably only dumped milk into that saucepan from a CAE-positive caprine animal, then that caprine animal and some others tested positive. So, I hateful, that'south super rare. But, it's just an example of how things tin happen when your goats are out and virtually.

Deborah Niemann 12:14
So, if somebody legitimately has a closed herd, and information technology's been closed for five years or longer, and they were doing very stringent testing earlier that, the odds are pretty good that it's a affliction-free herd. One example is from us, actually. Total transparency hither. So, we got our offset goats in 2002. And, we tested every twelvemonth until 2009. And, we bought our… Then about seven years, we did annual testing for all of these things. We bought our last doe in 2005. And, nosotros mostly stopped showing in 2005; we went to one show in 2006 or 2007. And and so, then nosotros continued testing, and then tested once again in 2009. Everybody was still negative. So, nosotros oasis't been testing since and so. Merely, our herd is completely closed. They don't go anywhere. And so—I never say anything is impossible. I mean, it would have to be some actually crazy convoluted style. Like, the shoes I clothing into my barn are not the shoes that I article of clothing when I go to town, which means, similar, going to the feed store or going to the vet or anything like that. So we're very, very careful. And, if I ever have a goat dice and I'm not sure why, we have a necropsy done, because I desire to know. And, I take had two goats with abscesses, and I had both of them tested, because again, I wanted to know. Then, you want to make certain… Like, feel free to talk to the sellers. If somebody is legitimate, and they actually care nearly their goats, they're fine telling y'all all of this, because they have nothing to hide; they feel like they're really doing the best affair. And, like, in our example, we're consuming our goats' milk. Then, it'due south really of import to united states that they be as healthy equally possible.

Deborah Niemann 14:04
Now, I want to kickoff talking nigh how to protect yourself from scammers. And this used to be then easy. Yous know, five years agone, I would tell people: "Just buy all your goats from people who have a website, because if somebody is only a fly-past-night breeder, they're not going to have the time to create a website, because they don't have anything special to say about their goats. Just if people are serious breeders, they're going to have a website. They're going to take a page that gives you all the details on every unmarried one of their goats. And so you know if you're ownership from somebody who has a website, that they are at least a step above somebody that'due south on Craigslist or at the sale barn."

Deborah Niemann fourteen:45
And this is not entirely true anymore. A year ago is the first time I saw somebody with a website who jumped out at me immediately as a scammer, considering they didn't know what they were doing. Like, it was obvious. They had no clue what they were doing. They were grabbing bits and pieces from different goat breeders' websites. And I have a group for Nigerian Dwarf goats. And it's on the Ning Network—N-I-North-Grand. I'll put a link to that in the show notes, too, in case any of you lot Nigerian Dwarf goat people want to join. And so, we accept to approve all members on there. And somebody came on at that place, and one of the questions is, "If y'all take a website, what'south the URL?" And I looked at their website, and nothing added upwardly. Like, yep, there were some pictures of Nigerian Dwarf goats for sale on there, but when you read the information well-nigh them, they were talking about national champion Saanens and things like that. Now, I have a fleck of an advantage, considering I teach higher. And and so, I'yard very adept at recognizing plagiarism. And so, I copied and pasted a sentence into Google, and put quotes around it so that Google was looking for that specific sentence. And, a national champion Saanen herd popped upwards. So it'due south like, "Aha! They stole this paragraph from this national champion Saanen herd." And then, I looked at the pictures of the Nigerian Dwarf kids and copied a couple of those. And when I did the image search for those kid photos, I found them on Instagram and Facebook, where the legitimate owners of those goats had shared those pictures of those kids. So this was, to me, information technology was super obvious that this was a scammer'due south website.

Deborah Niemann 16:47
The thing that beginning made me suspicious, too, is the fact that there was admittedly null about the parents. Then, if somebody is, like, a legitimate breeder, they're not going to accept a website where they are just posting all the pictures of their kids for sale like a commercial, like an ecommerce website. That'south not what this is. They're gonna have, similar, a page. You know, like, a whole department on each of their breeding animals. Because, similar, a lot of my goats—and a lot of goats for people who are serious breeders—they are reserved before they're even born. And they're based upon the convenance. And when we practise have kids for sale, we provide links to their parents so that you can become expect at their parents' pages, I take a folio for every goat. Some people volition simply take, like, a actually long page for, similar, all of their yearlings or all their senior does. And so, they may have, like, ten goats on a page, just it'south a lot. Similar, they're gonna requite yous, like, the goat'due south birthday, their registered proper noun, their pedigree, and so you tin can come across who their ancestors are. And then, you can always expect upwardly those ancestors on ADGA Genetics if it's a dairy goat. Basically, they give yous a lot of information near the goats. It's not like they're trying to sell yous a pair of shoes, like "Oh, wait how pretty this beautiful little kid is! Doesn't it accept lovely spots? What pretty bluish optics," that kind of matter.

Deborah Niemann 18:10
Another thing, too, that I wanted to mention: If you accept whatever doubts about a person, also ask them if they're a member of a brood association. So, if this is a dairy caprine animal that you lot're looking at, are they a member of the American Dairy Goat Clan, or the American Goat Club? If it'southward a Kiko, are they a member of the Kiko Goat Association, or if it's an Angora and it'due south the Angora Association? Like, about goat breeds take an clan, and that's where the goats are registered. And and then, if they are claiming to sell registered goats, and then they need to be a fellow member of that registry. Like, with the American Dairy Caprine animal Association, non-members tin register goats, but it costs twice equally much. Then, after you've registered two or three goats, you've paid for your membership. So, it'due south just not logical that somebody would be a serious breeder raising goats and registering goats and not be a member of that breed association. So, definitely enquire them nearly that.

Deborah Niemann 19:11
And as well, but feel complimentary to ask them, you lot know, whatever other questions most herd care and things similar that. Because, if they really love their goats, and they want to brand certain they go to good homes, they will be happy to answer any questions that you lot take nigh housing or fencing, and they're non going to exist shy most telling you what they do in terms of health and feeding and all that kind of stuff.

Deborah Niemann nineteen:34
Another thing, too, that somebody contacted me last year with a question when she was buying goats. It was really super weird, and I had never heard this earlier. Merely, if one person is maxim it, why not more? So, I'm going to go ahead and throw this out there, likewise: There is no such thing as a Pygmy Nigerian Dwarf Caprine animal registry, and there's not going to exist. That'due south just a mutt. Like, that is just a crossbred goat. Somebody got charged, similar, way more money than she should have for some crossbred goats, because the seller told her that "the Nigerian-Pygmy cross was getting to be and then popular, they were going to be starting a registry soon." Well, what'southward the bespeak? Like, that's a cantankerous between a goat that'southward primarily used for pets now, and a goat that's primarily used for milk; at that place is no reason to exist crossing those goats. Like, there is a Miniature Dairy Caprine animal Association that registers crosses betwixt standard-sized dairy goats and Nigerian Dwarf goats. And that has a very obvious purpose. That's for, you know, if somebody wants to get a goat that'south, like, bigger than a Nigerian Dwarf but smaller than a standard goat and possibly has some of the characteristics of a larger goat. Yous know, like, two of the actually popular minis are mini-Nubians and mini-LaManchas considering they have different ears. Most dairy goats have erect ears, just similar Nigerian Dwarfs. Then, if yous desire a smaller goat with those pretty floppy ears that the Nubians have, or the cute little elf ears or gopher ears that the LaManchas have, the just style y'all're going to get that in a smaller goat is to cross it with a Nigerian buck. And there is a registry for that; there'south a Miniature Dairy Goat Association. And so, those goats tin exist registered, and they've got a whole procedure for going through the experimental stage to the purebred phase—because that's their ultimate goal, is to take purebred mini dairy goats after multiple generations.

Deborah Niemann 21:31
So, exist very careful when somebody tells you something like that. Don't buy a caprine animal based on what somebody tells you lot is going to happen in the future, because they don't have a crystal ball. And when they're doing that, they're probably merely flight by the seat of their pants trying to sell a goat or 2.

Deborah Niemann 21:48
If you lot are just getting started with your goat breeding journey, and this is something that you lot would love to talk most, check out our Goats 365 membership, because our premium members accept 2 meetings every calendar month on Zoom. And this is exactly the kind of thing that nosotros can talk about if you are having trouble trying to decide, you know, what you desire in terms of, like, picking a brood or trying to decide which breeder to go with and things like that.

Deborah Niemann 22:14
So, I actually hope that you have found this episode helpful, and that it helps you to avert ownership goats from questionable sellers, and likewise helps yous buy goats that are meliorate quality so that y'all don't current of air upwardly turning around in a few years and proverb, "Oh, I wish I had started with better quality goats."

Deborah Niemann 22:34
And that'south information technology for today's show. If you oasis't already done and then, be sure to hit the "subscribe" push button and then that you don't miss whatever episodes. To encounter show notes, y'all can always visit ForTheLoveOfGoats.com, and you can follow united states of america on Facebook at Facebook.com/LoveGoatsPodcast. See you again next time. Bye for at present!

Can I Still Register My Goats?,

Source: https://thriftyhomesteader.com/buying-goats-mistakes/

Posted by: cramptonsmis1975.blogspot.com

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