The single most consequential decision a first-time goat owner makes, and most people get advised badly.
If you take one thing from this guide, take this: most first-time buyers should start with two wethers, and almost nobody tells them so, because wethers are the cheapest thing on the price list.
Calm, affectionate, inexpensive and completely uncomplicated. No seasons, no smell, no kidding, no breeding decisions, no milking schedule. They grow a little larger than does, they are steady, and they tend to be the friendliest goats on a place because nothing else is going on in their heads.
They are the best pet goat there is, and the honest recommendation for anyone whose goal is I would like some goats. They are also the right way to learn: a year with two wethers teaches you fencing, hoof trimming, feeding and what a healthy goat looks like, without a pregnancy attached.
The one thing to know about wethers. Castrated males are prone to urinary calculi — stones that block the urethra. It is the single most common serious health problem in pet wethers and it is largely a feeding problem, which means it is largely preventable.
The general principles: keep them off grain and high-concentrate feeds, base the diet on forage and good hay, and be cautious with lucerne-heavy diets that skew the calcium to phosphorus ratio. Most goat owners aim for roughly twice as much calcium as phosphorus in the overall diet, provide a loose goat mineral rather than a sheep one, and make sure there is always clean water they will actually drink — water intake matters as much as the ration. Ammonium chloride is commonly used as a preventative where diet cannot be fully controlled. Wethering later rather than very early is also thought to help, because it allows the urethra to develop.
Talk this through with your vet for your own animals and your own feed. But know the risk before you buy, because a blocked wether is an emergency and a distressing one.
The right choice if you want milk, kids, or a breeding program. Wonderful animals, and a real commitment.
Does come into season, which is noisy, obvious and occasionally undignified. A doe in milk needs milking on a schedule that does not care about your weekend. Kidding happens when it happens, usually at night, occasionally with complications, and you need a plan and a vet number before it starts rather than during.
Then there are the kids themselves. Every kidding produces animals that need homes. Doelings generally place easily; buck kids largely do not, and you should decide what happens to them before the doe is ever joined.
If you want milk, buy does. If you want milk eventually, buy wethers now and does in a year, and you will make far better decisions about which does.
Do not start here.
Bucks in rut smell genuinely appalling. People underestimate this, buy one anyway, and then discover they cannot un-smell it — it transfers to hands, clothes, gates and anything the buck rubs on, and it lingers. A buck also needs his own secure fencing away from the does, his own companion because he is still a herd animal, and stronger infrastructure than anything else on the place.
He does one job, once a year. For most small breeders that job is better done by someone else's buck, either by taking the doe away to be joined or by using artificial insemination. Buy a buck when you have a breeding program that genuinely needs him on site, not before.
If you do eventually buy one: buy the best you can afford, because he contributes half the genetics of every kid you produce, and look hardest at the udders of the does behind him.
Wethers and does live together happily. A wether makes an excellent companion for a lone buck, which solves two problems at once. An entire buck should not run with does year round unless you want kids at unpredictable times, and buck kids need separating from their dam and sisters earlier than people expect — they can be fertile surprisingly young.
Tell us what you actually want from your goats and we will tell you which to buy, even when that means selling you the cheaper animal. The number of people who came asking about a milking doe and went home with two wethers and a much better first year is not small.