Browse first, hay always, grain rarely — and one warning that matters a great deal for wethers.
Goats are browsers rather than grazers. Left to themselves they would rather strip a blackberry thicket than eat lawn, and a paddock of good grass is not the complete diet people assume it is. Understanding that one point fixes most of the feeding mistakes new owners make.
Hay, available constantly. A goat's rumen is built to work on long-fibre forage and it should not sit empty for long. As a rough guide, a goat eats somewhere around two to four per cent of its body weight in dry matter a day — for a Nigerian Dwarf doe, that lands roughly in the one to one and a half kilogram range, more if she is in milk or heavily pregnant, and more again in cold wet weather when she is burning energy to stay warm.
Grassy meadow hay suits most pet and maintenance goats well. Lucerne is richer — higher in protein and calcium — and is useful for does in late pregnancy and in milk. It is generally the wrong choice as a constant feed for wethers, for reasons below.
Feed hay off the ground in a rack or net. Goats will not eat hay they have stood on, and hay on wet ground is both wasted and a route for worm larvae back into the animal.
Branches, leaves, weeds, blackberry, tree prunings. Genuinely good for them, genuinely good for their heads, and free. A goat given a pile of cut branches will be busy and content for an afternoon.
Check what grows on your block before you rely on it. A number of common Australian garden and paddock plants are toxic to goats — oleander, rhododendron and azalea, yew, laurel, and green or wilted stone-fruit and avocado leaves among them. Goats have famously poor judgement about this. Wilted leaves are often more dangerous than fresh ones, so garden clippings tossed over the fence are a particularly bad habit. If you are unsure about a plant, leave it out and ring your vet rather than testing it.
Far less than most people give. Grain is a production feed. A doe milking or carrying multiples needs it. A growing kid may need a little. A wether, or a dry doe on decent forage, almost never does.
Where grain is warranted, introduce it slowly over a week or two — a rumen adjusts to change gradually and a sudden load of grain causes acidosis, which is an emergency. Feed it in small amounts twice a day rather than one large meal, and feed it separately enough that one goat cannot eat everyone's share.
This is the single most important thing to get right if your goats are pets, because it kills wethers and it is almost entirely preventable.
Castrated males are prone to urinary calculi — stones that lodge in the urethra and block urination. A wether's urethra is narrow, and castrating early keeps it narrow. The usual dietary trigger is too much grain and not enough forage, which pushes the ratio of calcium to phosphorus in the diet the wrong way.
The general guidance across the industry is to keep calcium to phosphorus at roughly two to one, which in practice means grass hay rather than constant lucerne, and minimal grain. Many goat mineral mixes include ammonium chloride for this reason. Plenty of clean water matters just as much, because a well-hydrated animal flushes the system.
Know the signs, because time matters: straining, crying, standing stretched out, a dribble instead of a stream, restlessness, kicking at the belly, no urine at all. A wether that cannot urinate is an emergency and needs a vet the same day, not the next morning.
Use a loose goat mineral rather than a block in almost every case. Goats have soft tongues and cannot rasp enough off a block to meet their needs, particularly for copper. Put it out free choice in a covered feeder so it stays dry and let them regulate their own intake.
Buy a mineral formulated for goats, not for sheep. Sheep mixes are deliberately low in copper because copper is toxic to sheep, and goats fed a sheep mineral long-term become copper deficient — a faded, rusty-looking coat and a fish-tail on the end of the tail are the classic signs. If you run sheep and goats together, this needs thinking about properly.
Selenium is low across much of southern Victoria and cobalt can be marginal too, so it is worth asking your vet what your district actually needs rather than guessing from a generic label.
Clean, always, and more of it than you think in summer. Goats are fussy and will drink less than they should from a dirty or warm trough, and a goat drinking too little is the start of several other problems. Scrub troughs out regularly, keep them in shade where you can, and check them daily through hot weather rather than weekly.
A goat in the right condition has a level back, ribs you can feel easily but not see, and no sharp hip bones. Learn to feel rather than look — run a hand over the spine and ribs once a month. Coat tells you a great deal too: shiny and lying flat is right, dull, rough or staring means something needs attention.