All about Nubian goats!

[Music] [Music] [Applause] hi i'm kelsey from sweetfire farm we thought it might be a good idea to do a short series of videos where we explain to you guys what makes the breeds of animals we've chosen for our farm special and um that might be useful to other people who are looking to build up their own homesteads so first i wanted to talk about nubian goats they're my personal favorite um nubians are a breed of goats that were developed from goats from africa india and then those bread goats were cross bred with a british goat breed they were first imported to the us in 1909 and since they've been here at the u.s we've kind of developed two different uh lines or strengths of nubians so nubians are a dairy goat breed and some nubians lean more towards finer boned body structure that have heavier milk production other nubian lines are more heavily muscled and still excellent milk producers so those are more of a dual purpose goat we have both on our farm so pam is an american nubian and fawn over here she's a purebred nubian they're both more heavily muscled thicker body structures berries that are releasing and similar heavily muscle but all from good milking lines so these should be good dual purpose scopes we also have a very special goat here nelly she's comes from a line of goats that are a little bit more finer boned and from really excellent milking lines so nellie has something special on her adga purebred papers she has superior genetics so she comes from a long line of goats that have proven themselves to be excellent top quality milkers so we're really excited to see what these two different structures of goats look like as we move forward in the future breeding and see what kind of milk production we get out of them nubians are easily identified they've got the long pendulous ears and the convex noses um sometimes people confuse them with lower goats bores are shorter and more heavily muscled those are a meat breed of goat and boars usually have the same coloring they're mostly white with dark brown faces whereas nubians can have all the different colors and color patterns from all the go different breeds so what are your breeding goals my goals are to breed healthy goats that can pay their own way on a homestead so i want goats that are parasite resistant they don't need a lot of intervention and coddling i just want to have healthy goats that do well given the right care i want goats that are good milk producers and can kid easily and take care of their babies is goat milk better than cow's milk i think our nubian milk from pam here she kidded for the first time last march and her milk looks different than like our jersey cow milk it's pure white and the taste i think is very similar to whole milk from the grocery store something different i noticed about pam's milk though when i made cheeses with it the cheeses were incredible we made chev which is like goat cream cheese and it was like awesome fine texture but there was none of that goatee twang that chef from the grocery store often has it was really good cheese um so i'm excited to get to play more with it next year oh yogurt we also made a lot of yogurt with pam's milk last year and that was really good it's higher in milk fat content than the holstein milk you're used to getting at the grocery store so everything's really rich and creamy does the cream separate from the rest of the milk it doesn't the fat globules in goat's milk are so small that it's naturally homogenized if you let it sit in the fridge long enough you will get a very thin cream lime that forms but for the most part the fat stays mixed throughout the jar milk what's more popular worldwide goats milk or cow milk worldwide most people consume goat's milk and goat meat i think keeping cows for milk is more of a european and especially american convention are any of these goats going to be show goats they could be um i don't have any intention of taking them into a show ring but we've beginning to dabble in virtual shows which i'll let maylie tell you more about in another video but they have the quality of genetics that they could be show goats so characteristics like blue eyes and moon spots are those important for your your breeding goals or is that just something that's a fad or popular because they look cool right now moon spots and blue eyes are popular across i think all the goat breeds that have those traits there are no blue eyes in nubians so that's not something you'll find in nubians but there are moonspotted nubians aries here has one spot pam has a couple white hairs on the top of her head so she had a moonspotted buckling she gave us last spring so the coloration and patterns of the parents doesn't dictate really what the kids are going to look like because one little spot right doesn't really indicate that their kids are going to be so colorful yeah it's hard to make predictions about what the kids will look like based on the parents coloration and the coloration is just a matter of personal preference it doesn't affect their ability to put milk in the pail if that's what you're keeping goats for or if you're looking for a meat goat the color doesn't matter it's just what you like to look at when you look out at your pasture and i like to look at character i like the different colors and the spots and i like the idea of a herd that doesn't all look the same can you point out some of the breeding characteristics for a good dairy goat like the top line and yeah so dairy goats should have a nice well she's hunched over because she's grazing but she should have shoulders a little bit higher a nice straight top line there shouldn't dip down it should be nice and straight there should be a nice angular back here from the hips down to the tail and then especially with dairy goats you want there to be maybe pam would be better to show a wide escutcheon you want there to be a lot of space here nice utter attachment so that as the goats breed year after year and they're nursing their babies and giving milk for you and your family you want that utter to stay up high so that they don't drag on the ground uh it has happened if you're not careful about your breeding that you can get goats that put a lot of milk in the pail for you for a few years but it before long their udders will drag on the ground and you have to stop breeding them so that's something we're being deliberate and careful to avoid what about just the care we give these goats can you talk about that yeah so whether they require as far as food nutrition minerals yup so goats are browsers not grazers so if they had their way they'd be nibbling the ends off of like branches of bushes and then picking the best best leaves off of different plants they're not gonna mow your lawn like a cow or sheep would i was gonna say because these goats hardly leave their pens well they do in the summer they come out and play but when there's snow on the ground they don't like to get their feet wet but goats are nutrient accumulators so they pick and choose the best bites from a lot of different plants um and if you have to feed them in a dry lot like we do in michigan in the winter um you need to make sure that you're giving them hey that's not just grass they need legumes also and the more different kinds of plants you can have in your hay the better because they need variety in their diets just like we do so we feed the best day we can get during the year so right now they've got something that's a mix of a couple different kinds of grasses and alfalfa um and they really like that especially when the doughs are in milk more alfalfa is important alfalfa is high in protein and it's high in calcium which is great for dozen milk if you're keeping bucks and especially weathers you need to be careful they don't get too much alfalfa so bucks we need to feed less alfalfa than the other girls get so in addition to good quality varied hay that's got lots of legumes you also want to feed your goats a ration that's made specifically for goats so we like the kambak milk what's it called milk and meat pellet and this is good stuff i choose it because it has more selenium and copper than the other options i've been able to find in our area we live in michigan where our soils are naturally low in selenium and copper and that means that the hay that's grown is also low in copper and selenium and those are two two metals that are important for breeding um and keeping your votes healthy so we're careful that we buy grain that gives them those things also goats need access to free choice minerals also so we offer sweet licks milk and meat maker minerals and that also has more copper selenium and sodium and all the other things that goats need but they might not be able to get from a bale hay for their grain ration one other thing that's less nutrient but also important is we offer fruchos free choice baking soda so goats are ruminants which means that they have four stomachs the largest stomach is the rumen and that's like a large microbial fermentation bat and a big part of keeping that microbial community in the room and healthy and happy is maintaining the right ph if they get too much grain or they eat something that upsets their tummy their rumens can become acidic and that can kill off the bacteria that they need to be able to digest their food so baking soda is something the goats only consume when they need it but it helps them manage the ph in their rumens i have to look it up i think one in one milliliter of rumen like volume has like 10 billion microbes of all various different species yeah 10 billion per milliliter it's like that much yeah like a sugar cube so goats need more and more specific care i think than um a lot of other farm animals at least than what we've raised because we put them in an environment that's not natural to them so goats are primarily like desert species or arid mountain regions places where they wouldn't be eating grass naturally and they wouldn't be eating off the ground they'd be eating up off of things so when we bring them into a system like what we have here in michigan where we make them eat grass and they have to feed off the ground when they're grazing rather than eating off of bushes and shrubs it puts them at a disadvantage so you have to be extra careful with goats than you would with pigs or our dexter cattle but you can certainly do it well you just have to be smart about it talk about some of the issues we've had with pam after kidding didn't she lose a bunch of weight and needed probiotics or she did yeah pam the black new bean over here stuck she's not stuck she's just chosen to go back there but after pam kitted this spring we our regular hay supplier ran out of the hay that we'd been feeding so we had to change hay types suddenly and that is stressful on the room and because dietary changes in ruminants need to happen slowly over time so that the microbial communities can adjust along with the food source when we had to change hay suddenly that was more stress than pam was able to manage on her own after having just delivered twins and nursing them so i called our vet who's awesome and he suggested giving probiotic bolus to help get her rumen back up and running because after we switched hey she stopped eating grain she wouldn't eat any grain and when when the goats are lactating they need that grain ration to help meet the energetic needs it takes to produce all that milk and care for her babies so she lost a lot of weight and we were really worried about her but the vet said give her these probiotics and within two or three days she should start eating again and he was exactly right it was like clockwork so what's a bolus uh like a pill that they have to swallow can you grab me nope that's a cockroach [Music] so you can get these at your local farm supply or tractor supply store so these are calf sized so i break them in half and then you can use a balling gun to put it down their throats or nellie thinks they're delicious and she'll just eat them but it is just like a probiotic you'd take yourself it's full of the bacteria that they need to have in their rumen so they can function properly how come he didn't want a pet cramer there aries is really stinky right now he's a rut so he pees on his face he's he's a smelly boy he stinks yeah all right what else i think the last thing oh we didn't talk about something else that if you're interested in nubians and you want to buy and especially if you plan to breed nubians you need to be aware of the g6s mutation so this is something unique to nubians or nubian crosses nubian goat carries uh like 24 of the population are heterozygous for a defective g6 s allele and what this means is they've got um a gene that doesn't function properly so a carrier has one normal copy of the gene and one defective copy of the gene so that one normal copy of the gene is able to produce enough of the protein they need so that they can be normal healthy goats but if you breed two of these carriers together 25 of the kids will have two copies of the defective g6s allele they'll be very sickly they'll be weak and they'll be very short-lived so it's important to be a responsible breeder if you're breeding nubians you should have your goats genetically tested to determine their g-success status if you have a carrier goat you can still breed them you just need to be certain that you're breeding them to a partner that has two copies of the normal g6s allele that's something we did this year we had pam g6s tested and aries g6s well ares we know from the breeder that both of his parents had all normal copies of the allele so we know that he has two normal copies pam's blood work came back she has two normal copies so any kids from this pairing will have all normal g6s alleles fawn comes from a farm where her parents were both g6s normal so we don't have to do any genetic testing on her we know she's good to breed to any goat [Music] [Applause] so that's something important to keep in mind with that's unique to nubians okay cool good all right and then i think i wanted to tell you guys why nubians are my favorite i love the nubians they're extremely affectionate they're so much fun they give great neck hugs um i really like the look of the long floppy ears and all the different color patterns the breed can have um and uh one of the things nubians are kind of known for is being loud they their scream they are vocal um and i find that very endearing i like to hear them i like the background noise on the farm of my goats calling to each other if there's ever any trouble the nubians will let me know there was one day when pam got her knee stuck in the crook of a tree and she wasn't in there long because immediately she started screaming and hollering and i think we were in the house eating lunch and we heard it and came running out and helped her out new helmet thank you um did the same for stark i also like the nubians for milking because milking is a lot of work not just the actual act of milking but you have to keep all your milking equipment like immaculately clean and filtering the milk cooling it down afterwards milking is a lot of work and if i'm gonna put in the effort to do all that work milking i don't want to do it for two cups of milk i want to do it for a half a gallon and last year even pam as a first freshener feeding twins she was giving us almost half a gallon i was only milking her once a day since we had the kids on her but i thought that was an impressive yield of milk half a gallon while she was feeding twins and that was enough to justify the effort of cleaning all that equipment what's the butter fat content of nubian milk nubians have the highest butter fat content of the large dairy breeds of goats it's about five percent and they also have just about four percent protein content so it's a really rich milk there's a lot more in there a lot less water than what you'd get from some of the other breeds [Applause] [Music] okay anything else on nubian goats are they the best scope melee what are nubians the best scope nubians aren't the best clearly it's mini nubians [Music]

Channel: Sweet Briar Farm

Views: 3,899

Keywords: nubian goats, dairy goats, dairy, small farm goats, goat farm, registered dairy goats, goat milk, raw milk, raw goat milk, homesteading, homestead goats

Id: eIaw35My3p4

Length: 20min 45sec (1245 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 08 2021