If goats are housed so that they can get\u00a0out of the wind and stay dry (and they\u2019re receiving adequate nutrition and health care), then they generally tolerate temperatures that are cold without issue.<\/p>\n
Even in the coldest areas of the country, goats can tolerate the cold\u00a0temperatures if they\u2019re\u00a0dry and protected from the wind.<\/p>\n
In the cold, Nigerian Dwarf goats grow a nice\u00a0undercoat of cashmere that helps to keep them warm. The fluffy cashmere fibers puff out to surround them (that\u2019s why they look so fuzzy in the\u00a0 cold) and keep warm air trapped around their bodies.\u00a0As long as they can keep that protective layer around them (and it\u2019s not wet or has wind cutting through it), then they can tolerate cold temperatures. One way to think about it is if you can bundle up sufficiently to tolerate the temperature where you\u2019re housing them; then they should be able to tolerate it with their\u00a0protection.<\/p>\n
One thing that all goats do seem to enjoy in cold weather is warm drinking water. You will be\u00a0quite shocked by how much they prefer the warm water, how big a drink they\u2019ll take, and how warm (hot) they actually like it.<\/p>\n
For those farmers\u00a0keeping bucks and wethers, it\u2019s important to remember that keeping lots of water moving through their systems helps prevent urinary calculi \u2013 so providing them with warm water is important not just because they like it, but because it also keeps them healthy.<\/p>\n
Goat babies are a different story. Goat kids are born wet and don\u2019t have that dry\u00a0protective layer. If temperatures are close to or below freezing, Goat owners really need to be present when the babies are born to get them dried off quickly. Otherwise, the babies (or some part of the babies) freeze.<\/p>\n
When does are due to kid during cold weather, in addition to being present to help get the kids dried off quickly, many goat owners use heat lamps to keep the kids warm. However, heat lamps are also the number 1 cause of barn fires, so if using heat lamps, it\u2019s critical to use sturdy models built for barn usage and use them correctly.\u00a0An alternative to heat lamps is to either make\u00a0goat kid coats or provide the kids with\u00a0huts to warm up in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Goat Does that are kidding are also less resistant to cold. Its\u00a0observed that the rigors of kidding in cold weather often cause Does to shiver badly \u2013 it\u2019s just a lot of work and sometimes they don\u2019t have the energy reserves left after kidding to keep themselves warm.<\/p>\n
Goats will\u00a0appreciate the heat lamps you put\u00a0in place for the kids, a nutritious-warm post-kidding meal, drinks of warm water, and some kind of covering (dry towel, blanket, or old sweatshirt). With a little special \u201cafter-kidding\u201d care they return to normal quickly and are great mothers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If goats are housed so that they can get\u00a0out of the wind and stay dry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-goats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaguzafarm.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}