By Edgar Muhumuza
In 2019, I restarted farming with goats in Isingiro district at a family farm. I have passionately taken on the role to do a study and observation of how to improve my flock from indigenous genetics to higher grade savanna goat breed genetics.
During this time, I have faced what most will call deal breakers in goat farming as a commercial enterprise. Challenges include breed selection, kid mortality, productivity, lack of weight gain, stock thefts and notifiable disease outbreaks.
Despite the hiccups, I am still trying to improve my enterprise. I would like to share some of my views concerning the idea of improving goat keeping.
Choosing Savanna goat breed genetics
My fore bearers ventured into commercial goat farming in the early 1990s. They had indigenous goats which they cross-bred with Boer bucks that had been imported by government then.
So, one would ask why we eventually chose savanna over Boer for improvement programmes. The Boer goat is an excellent meat animal that was bred in South Africa from the 1900s, and a breed society was established in 1959; breed standards and recognition of the breed.
It has excellent meat capacity with males growing to over 100kg live weight. But at our farm, it was soon discovered that kid mortality was high due to pneumonia, internal parasites and other infections at a young stage.
The Boer kids were deemed to be too delicate to thrive given the management style at hand. Along the way, a switch was done with the savanna goat which is also a South African goat breed with similar meat performance traits as the Boer, depending on the genetics one is sourcing from.
The savanna breed society was started in 1993 in South Africa. The difference I have observed is that savanna stems from its development. The savanna was originally bred as a veld goat [free ranging] in extreme harsh weather of long droughts and also heavy rains.
We soon discovered that their offspring are actually handy in our environment and management style, thus easier to manage and care for.
All breeds are good and can perform as expected, but choose your genetics according to your farm environment and management style. Savanna blends well with my farm and management style which is a range land with predators.
According to savanna breed standards, it is an easy care management animal on the veld with herding instinct just like the Boran cattle [this is useful in avoiding predators and easier herding by herdsman], they are very protective mothers of their young and shall even fight to protect them.
The kids are easier to manage and when sick, they give you a chance to administer treatment until recovery. In terms of breed selection, consider your objectives as a farmer, market, farm environment and management style plus the merits and demerits of the genetics available.
Look for genetics that are close to your farm environment and goals. Buy a buck that you can afford, as long as it can create an improvement however small, and if the first kids are not to your liking, take him out and shop for another.
Your buck is half your next generation of goats. You may choose a fancy breed that works well for your colleagues, but not for you. The best-looking buck may not necessarily give you the best kids.
Reducing kid mortality
Among the top three challenges any seasoned farmer faces is kid mortality. Mother nutrition Kid mortality prevention starts by looking after the mother well, is she well fed, de-wormed, and if timing allows, have you done clostridium vaccination at six weeks to kidding.
A goat is a very selfish animal biologically if her body gets a feeling of some missing nutrients; the body will prioritise the mother and can even self-abort. She may kid and fail to nurse the kid. Mother nutrition is key.
Close monitoring
In my system, I have now devised structures where the mothers and their kids stay together. It has a goat shade and exercise yard, then it opens to a kid paddock with natural grass.
The kids stay in this unit until they are three to four months. When done right, the kids’ survival is higher. They only interact with their mothers. I would love to have them walk with their mothers to grazing at one to two months of age, but because of predation, it is not possible.
I want them to move to the field when much older and agile. Close to the mother The kid should be with the mother 24 hours of the day, and suckle whenever she can and at will.
In this method, the kid consumes more milk as compared to the systems most of us Ugandan farmers practise, where by the kids are taken away from the mother during browsing hours and at night.
The best nutrient and growth booster for a goat kid is her doe’s milk; the more milk, the bigger and faster the kid will grow depending on genetics.
Navel protection
At birth after the mother has licked and bonded with her kid, apply iodine to the navel to quicken its drying. This navel can be an entry point for bacterial infections such as joint and navel illnesses.
Early treatment The farmer or his/her workers ought to learn to identify a sick or unwell kid as soon as it happens, and either consult the vet or apply medication as recommended by a vet. Infections Kids are prone to clostridium infections and internal parasites.
The sooner these are treated according your vet’s recommendation, the better you will be, and the kid mortality will be greatly reduced.
Goat breed
Choose your genetics wisely i.e. the bucks you buy should not only give you meat capacity, but also hardiness and kid survival. What is the point of having heavy kids yet they are easily killed by even slight infections?
Watch out for diarrhoea
Any diarrhoea that may be seen in kids should be tackled the hour it is noticed in that particular kid. Goat productivity and weight gain My experience has taught me that productivity and weight gain is correlated to genetics and nutrition or feed.
Productivity in this case is about the kidding rate, weaning rate, how fast a doe goes back on heat, feed conversion rate and time to reach slaughter/market weight.
A buck that is lacking in nutrition and of low body weight at the time of mating, will have undesirable effects on the amount and quality of sperm produced or even energy /libido.
Likewise, a doe, if she has the proper nutrition and feed in her body, she will produce more eggs, thus having the ability to take on multiple births.
This is why more advanced farmers, especially those that synchronise their breeding seasons, do what is called flush feeding before the breeding season.
I have also observed at my operation that even when a doe has kidded and is in proper body score either from good browse or supplementation from pellets, she will go on heat before she weans the kids she is lactating.
Likewise, when a doe is lactating, it consumes a lot of her nutritional requirements in that when you wean this doe and takeaway those kids, it is guaranteed that within two weeks, she will be on heat.
This signifies the value of nutrition to the productivity of does. A doe makes money for us by having a set of kids every eight months, the faster she cycles back on heat the better for the goat enterprise.
Goat health
Goats can become problematic and die in epidemic style even from internal parasites such as worms. Goats are not as resistant to worms compared to sheep or cattle.
This is designed by nature because they are browsers and the further away from the ground they feed, the less the worm burden.
A key step to getting ahead of the worm game is to sit with your veterinary consultant and come up with a game plan for dealing with worms at your specific farm.
Some do routine applications but the application schedules are also dependent on a farm-to-farm basis, others are adopting the FAMACHA or egg count system where by either only the animals showing worm burden are treated or treatment is applied after a certain threshold of worm eggs is reached.
But remember Uganda is hot, humid and with lots of rain, thus our worm burden is much more compared to Southern or Northern Africa.
This is also true with our tick population burden. So extra measures are required. In addition, have your vaccination done in time and on schedule i.e clostridium, PPR, Goat Pox, CCPP, Brucellosis, FMD and any that may affect your animals.
If you can control worms, vaccinate in time, have a hygienic shade, you will have managed majority of the goat health issues and your herd mortality will be low. Lastly, presence is key.
The farm owner should see his animals every day, but this is normally not the case. Encourage and teach workers to inspect the flock daily while observing abnormalities.
Some have incorporated closed circuit television for monitoring. Learn to consult other farmers and vet consultants. Lastly, learn to identify an animal worth buying as a breeding one, and also train yourself on some basic veterinary skills of disease identification and basic medicine administration f or times when the vet is far.
Nutrition is key
Nutrition can be boosted by use of pellet supplementation to the lactating mothers. I am still trying out which pellet manufacturer will yield me better results.
Or one can use forage with good percentage of protein, energy and fibre. Another advantage of supplementing a lactating doe is increasing its milk production. The more milk the better performance of her kids.
In the ranching or free-range system, the farms that still have a lot of shrubs, especially the protein type like acacia species, their goats are unmatched as compared to those that graze grass in terms of body score, multiple births, kid growth rates etc.
So if you have a ranch and want to keep goats, do not bush clear as if it is a dairy farm in Europe or for cropping. I cannot stress it enough, but weight gain in kids corresponds to genetics and milk from doe.
It can also be boosted by protein-based pellets. I am trying and figuring out which pellets work best for me, but giving kids and weaners pellets has proved to at least give them a good body score which is good for marketing.
Also, the weight gain is faster, but this corresponds to genetic sources also. I have witnessed weight scores of 30kg under six months and this is achieved by a correct blend of genetics and nutrition [can be supplements or the correct bush].
Muhumuza is a savanna goat breeder and trainer on goats at the Vision Group organised Harvest money expo.
