Advanced Goat Management and Welfare

This unit integrates herd health, nutrition, legal compliance, and husbandry practices for small-scale goat producers. Students will synthesize prior foundational skills to manage kidding, medication and vaccination protocols, feeding strategies, record-keeping, biosecurity, and the business and welfare considerations of selling or boarding goats.

Learning Objectives

• Demonstrate safe injection and vaccination techniques and maintain accurate treatment records by completing a simulated medication administration and documentation exercise
• Analyze nutritional requirements and design a 30-day supplemental feeding plan (including mineral supplementation, fodder use, and water needs) with calculations and rationale for different production stages
• Evaluate California legal and regulatory requirements for selling milk and other goat products, drug withdrawal times, and boarding services, and produce compliant labeling and record templates
• Apply herd-health and husbandry protocols by creating a pre-kidding checklist, biosecurity and testing schedule, intake evaluation for purchasing/boarding goats, and a welfare plan addressing socialization and routine care