45 Day Goat Clicker Training Challenge

Written By Good Acre Yard-Farm

Hi! So it’s Dearing here and yesterday I started a 45 day challenge of training our goat, Ginger Honey, before she is due to give birth. She came to us without a lot of handling and zero training. My goals with the goats overall is for them to be comfortable with handling and to be able to have them opt in to cooperative care. For now, I am mostly focusing on Ginger as she is potentially due to kid on April 26th.

As a first time goat owner, my first thought was to go to the internet to see how other people in the goat world have been training their goats. Watching the videos of very popular goat channels on Youtube felt really odd as these people have so much experience with goats, but are using force to get their goats to behave. They often have to have two people to get the goat to hold still. One person usually is holding the goat so they stay still, while the other person is doing the hoof trimming or blood draws.

Coming from my experience as a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner, I know there is a way to work with my goats to get to my goal behaviors. There are amazing videos that I’ll try to embed below of trainers in zoos getting giraffes to cooperate for hoof care and other species like hyenas cooperating for blood draws. That is the type of relationship I want to be forging with my goats. Trust, consistency, and safety, and above all, kindness.

The first month the goats were here, we started teaching them (the whole herd) to touch a target, follow the target, and hop up onto things like the milk stand. Yesterday was the first time I worked with Ginger since then. As seen in yesterday’s session, Ginger is a very enthusiastic learner who remembers quite a bit of her previous behaviors!

Full Video of Day 1:

@goodacreyard We’ve got 45 days till Ginger is due. Time to get to work on her training. 😅 She had a brief intro months ago. Let’s see her baseline of what she remembers! :) . #clickertrainingginger #clickertraining #clickertraininggoats #karenpryoracademy #kpactp #positivetraining ♬ original sound - Good Acre Yard - Raw Fed Cats

Highlight Video of Day 1:

My goals for these 45 days are:

  1. Milk Stand:

    1. Hop up onto the milk stand and wait while being milked

    2. Wait until a release cue to hop down

    3. Potentially, turn 180 degrees to milk on the other side

      1. This is solely due to the fact that our milk stand is actually an old part of a kid’s play set.

  2. Cooperative Care

    1. Hoof handling

    2. Udder handling

    3. Grooming

    4. Physical exams

    5. Blood draws

    6. Vaccines

  3. Targeting

    1. Nose target

      1. She showed me yesterday she is pretty solid on touching it and following it short distances.

    2. Hoof target

    3. Shin target

      1. Potential to help out with hoof care

  4. Walk on a leash

    1. Haltering as a cooperative behavior

    2. Walking on a leash

Is this a huge goal? Absolutely. I cannot wait to see the progress she makes so I can best support her as a future momma goat. I’ll be posting video clips to Tiktok, Instagram, and soon - Youtube. There will also be weekly round up’s for how her training is going.

Check this out: Giraffe Cooperative Care Article and the video below!!

Okay, until next week bye!!

-Dearing

Good Acre Yard-Farm