Clipping goats

I never considered giving my goats a serious clipping before now.  Last year I did kind of a tentative clip to get the worst of the winter fuzzies off but not a down-to-the-skin close clipping.  Scott from Fel-In-Luv Farm did a great presentation at our goat club meeting on the whys and hows of clipping your goat. It is a great way to ease the stress of summer heat so that the girls keep producing and to also find any hidden skin issues that might be hiding under all that hair.  It also discourage lice infestations and other bugs that want to inhabit your goat's hair and skin.

With the heat building for the Memorial weekend I decided that this was a good a time as ever to dive in. We set up in the shade on our deck where we have electricity and hot and cold running water.  My equipment included:

A stanchion to hold the goat
Oster A5 clippers with number 10 blade
A can of spray blade lube
A bottle of generic Betadine
Food to occupy the goat
My husband to distribute food
A glass of iced tea for me

My goat's coats were pretty clean so I didn't give them a pre-clip washing.  I started clipping at the rear of the goat and clipped against the lay of the hair.  Belly areas, heads, udders and legs were harder and the goats got a little happy-footed but we manged to pretty well clip the entire goat without incident.  I learned as I went and clip marks were less prevalent as I went from goat to goat (six in all).

The girls were pretty easy because they had shed much of their winter hair.



Hairy





Clipped



















The bucks were harder, especially Phantom.  He still had a dense undercoat which was matted and difficult to clip.


Matted undercoat.



Clipped

I did find a couple of skin boo-boos which just needed a bit of Nu-Stock creme to clear up.  Below is an example of one.


Skin sore.

























After clipping, each goat was scrubbed with Betadine to remove any dead skin and to disinfect everything.

Betadine scrub.

The goat are now more comfy out browing in the warm weather and are much cleaner to milk too.