Tammy: How do you…I mean I imagine you know all of the good vets in the area since you’ve had goats for a while, but what’s your advice to a goat owner who’s looking for a vet? What should they look for?

Bobby: Well basically you just have to call them up and ask them. A lot of vets don’t want to handle goats at all. They’re not interested. Some of them are for large livestock only meaning they work for cattle dairies and feedlots and things like that and that’s all they do. Others specialize in cats and dogs and aren’t interested in doing any kind of livestock and especially not goats. Goats are a little different and they need to know a little bit about them. You can’t always find a good vet for goats. It’s sometimes difficult. You’re probably in a lot of cases better off to know someone locally who raises them. They’re probably going to be able to help you just as much as any vet, although there are times, of course, that a vet is necessary; broken legs, injuries, if they happen to have horns and they knock one off, things like that need veterinary attention.

Tammy: Okay. And what kinds of things do people need to know to keep their goat from having any kind of accidents like a broken leg or whatever?

Bobby: Well usually if you keep them real healthy and do everything you need to do as far as their diet is concerned, most of the time the goats won’t break their legs. Usually they only are going to get a broken leg if they have very careless pens. So in other words, if I were to go in someone’s yard and they had stacks of wood all over inside their goat pen with nail in it, crooked types of pieces of concrete that they could climb up on and twist or get their foot stuck in between, that kind of thing. Previous Page (148)