Tammy: Okay. Now if somebody is picking a pygmy goat as a pet, do you have any recommendations for them? Any criteria that they need to follow to determine if they’re getting a good, healthy, family-friendly goat?

Dr. Olcott: Yeah I do. Probably number one is if you can know where it’s coming from and usually that’s the experience with the ones I have. I use the “Oh you got it from so and so.” And they know the each other and they know the farm where the other ones are and the whole story. The goat, probably if you’re getting a lifetime pet, probably one of the best investments you could make is to take that – that’s if it’s a young goat you’re getting - to a veterinarian and just have a good health check on it to make sure there’s not congenital defects, that it doesn’t have a cleft palate or a bad heart or any of the other possibilities and his legs are good and sound, his confirmation is good and just kind of get that. That’s probably money well spent if you’re going to have that goat because these
0:20:00.2 goats live for quite a while. So get it checked out from the start and make sure that everything’s good from the get go.

Tammy: What is the life span of the pygmy goat?

Dr. Olcott: Pygmies will live…I guess the oldest one I’ve seen is about a 12-year-old goat, something like that, but they routinely go eight, nine, ten.

Tammy: Okay. And do you think that it’s better to have a wether or a doe or does it matter?

Dr. Olcott: Well let me just say about wethers is if you’re getting a wether, get one that’s been castrated at a late age – and, again, I’m harping on this obstructive urolithiasis, but it’s a miserable problem in pygmy goats.
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