Goat rearing is very popular because they are very important and valuable domestic animal. They are one of the oldest domesticated animal species.
The farm goat of present time, first domesticated from the southwest Asian and eastern European wild goats.
Goat is a member of Bovidae family and both goat and sheep are of Caprinae subfamily. There are more than 300 goat breeds throughout the world.
Goats are generally raised for their highly production capacity of milk, meat, hair and skins. The demand of goat milk, meat, hair and skins is very high in the world market.
Goat was considered as the most popular pet in the 20th century and from then various aged and types of goat was known as in different names.
For an example female goat are called “does”, male goat called “bucks”, newly born young goat called “kid” and the castrated males are called “wethers”. The meat of goat is called “mutton”.
Classification of Goat
Scientific classification of goat are described below.
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Chordata
- Class: Mammalia
- Order: Artiodactyla
- Family: Bovidae
- Subfamily: Caprinae
- Genus: Capra
- Species: C. aegagrus
- Subspecies: C. a. hircus
- SN: Capra aegagrus hircus
Goats are the small livestock animal weights about 15 kg-150 kg depending on the breeds. Color, size etc are different of various types of goat.
Almost all types of goat has various shaped and sized two horns. Most farmer cut he horns of the goat because the goat may injure humans and other animal by those horns.
Feed
Generally goats are ruminants. There are four compartments in their stomach. Rumen, recticulm, omasum and abomasum.
They eat almost all types food like leaves, plants, corns, grasses etc. But they love to eat green leaves and grasses most. They can go far for search of food.
An ideal goat feed should contain 10-14% protein and sufficient calories for energy. They drink a lot of water daily.
Breeds
Choosing good breeds is very important for goat rearing. Goat breeds are of various types according to their production and usages which are described below.
- Milk Productive Goat: The highly milk productive milk goat breeds are Alpine, Anglo Nubian, Saanen, Toggenburg, Barbari, Beetal, Malabari, Marwari, Damascus, Black Bedouin, Jamunapari, Kamori, Sudanese Nubian, Jannei, Kilis etc.
- Meat Productive Goat: Most popular meat goat breeds are Boer, Frisian, Katjang, Ma Tou, Sirohi, Sudan Desert, Black Bengal etc.
- Both Milk and Meat Productive Goat: There are some goat breeds which are famous for both milk and meat production. Black Bengal, Black Bedouin etc are both milk and meat productive goat breeds.
- Kids Productive Goat: Barbari, Boer, Black Bengal, Katjang, Ma Tou, Crayola etc. are famous for kid production.
- Goat Breed Famous For Skin: Black Bengal, Maradi, Mubende etc produces very high quality skins.
- Show Goats: Alpine, Boer, Anglo Nubian etc are famous show goat breeds.
