[Bionic]

But am very tempted 
My sisters neighbours have 4 pygmy goats and they are sooo sweet. There is a pure white one, 2 black and white and a brown and white.
What can you tell me about pygmy goats?

[ZaktheLad]

Only that they are very small     I know nothing about goats either!

[Backinwellies]

My experience with pigmy's is they look lovely but are impossible to keep .....  go for a larger breed

[mojocafa]

I have 15 pygmys and they are adorable......well most of the time

I find them easy to manage and are great family pets.

I am of the belief that pure white ones are not acceptable, don't know why though

[Brucklay]

I have 13 pygmy's and they all stay in their area's fine but you do need a well fenced area. We have stock fencing with a wire at the bottom and 2 at the top. One of my girls sometime wriggles under the lower wire to get to the next paddock with the lambs!! So if I was doing it again I would go for stock fencing an inch off the ground then 2 wires on top.


We also get visiting girls for stud and they have all been fine. They do need some toys / climbing things to keep them busy - rock mountain, big tree stumps anything to jump on, fight over and play around - then you'll have happy pygmy's.

[Bionic]

Brucklay, are they very expensive to buy?  My sister said her neighbours sold their kids for £500 each 

[plumseverywhere]

£500?! omg I bought 4 large goats for that once lol!! 

[Bionic]

Yes, it sounds like a good way to make money to me.  They keep the goats in their back garden. It is a large garden though. They breed each year and then sell the kids. They don't appear to use the goats for anything else and don't milk them. Easy money?

[jinglejoys]

At the beginning of the Pygmy craze I asked a friend why he had decided to keep them and he said "Anything small and useless pays for themselves" he was right of coarse working goats barely fetch pennies

[Anke]

It only takes a couple of difficult births/ c-sections plus dead kids to wipe out the profit... Pygmies are more prone to difficult births as they are often fed a bit too much, and assisting is also difficult unless you have a toddler available with the right sized hands...
 
Our rule for smallholding is - no animals that has not at least TWO uses for ourselves as well as a sale value itself -- meat, wool/pelt, milk, guardian, eggs etc etc - has worked well. Even though we don't really make any serious money from any of them through sales we do eat VERY well...
 

[Brucklay]

I wish I could sell mine for £500!!


I fell in love with pygmy's when I volunteered at a mini animal park in Dundee - Camperdown. I fed the goats and bottle reared a couple of kids, and when I took my young cousins to visit the goats would follow us about to the delight of my young guests.


Yes they are somewhere between pets and stock to me (I would never sell my pet GS but can sell a goat) and they don't just pop them out like shetlands - last year a petit first timer, kidding at the age of 2 had a 4kg male kid - no way was that coming out - so a c-section - if had been twins we would have been fine but there you go, no kids and a big vet bill.

[roddycm]

I have never known them to sell for more than 150 and that was for a pedigree reg and disbudded nanny kid! 500 seems insane, amazing for them if they can get it but surely to god you'd have to be crazy to pay that much! Look on preloved some go free! I think they are very cute, i prefer the american version which has been developed as a milking breed though! Shame you dont get them in the uk

[Lesley Silvester]

Pygmies aren't used for milking because of the practicality of getting a bucket small enough to go under. Why not get a couple of milkers so they earn their keep?

[Bionic]

Pygmies aren't used for milking because of the practicality of getting a bucket small enough to go under. Why not get a couple of milkers so they earn their keep?

To be honest I couldn't be bothered to milk them every day. On top of that I drink very little milk myself and absolutely HATE goats cheese.

[Lesley Silvester]

No accounting for taste, Sally.