Movement Book ( top pale blue) Medicine Records Book ( LHS Red) Movement Licences ( RHS white carbon multi sheets)

Local County Council Trading Standards sent the basic three lots of legal record documents you need when you are starting out ( again) with goats ( other species may have different basic requirements and registrations ie pigs have a digital movement control which is different from the paper licence for goats). NB you will need to know you can keep livestock on the land or not ( local council) and you will need a Church Parish Holding number for your land but if you have got as far as phoning Trading Standards they will have told you that) I’m grateful they still had this supply. You have to buy your own Carbon Paper!!!!

Your own Management Records

Today’s new/returning goat keeper has a choice from paper to software. The very minimum requirement is a calendar to record dates of any treatments, mating, observations.

Most good managers keep these records extensively – you really won’t remember everything. When it comes to performance – or weights and measures, costs and incomes, deliveries and batch numbers, guarantees on bits of kit, how much fodder and bedding they used – you cannot have too much information even if you consider your goats as pets.

I am interested in pedigree breeding and as such was always a member of The British Goat Society so I can ‘track and trace’ my goat families and others and I can pass on known qualities of livestock. It also helps you avoid inbreeding and the dangers of that.

I will also be trying to set up Milk Recording for my goats so that I can add proof of production to the family trees – I could show and or enter milking competitions which might add qualifications and awards that would appear alongside the goats’ names – male and female over time to demonstrate how well their relatives perform.

Equally recording what you produce and how you do it – from soap to cheese and other dairy products or meat or fibre.

All these things need recording and build up into a fascinating picture of life with your stock over time. I personally have a journal A4 spiral backed and plastic covered that I use as a daily diary for each type of stock and then – say when kidding – I have a clipboard with a pen tied on with string(!) that I leave outside in the shed to record kidding /lambings etc and in there goes and details of bottle-fed kids and later weighings and details of ear tags and replacement tags that I want. I then transfer that to the journal or the totals to the Annual Census for Sheep and Goats (that you will be sent 1stDec each year) and crossref that with the birth, deaths and movements in the Movement Book and Medicine Records ( which you may be asked to produce by Trading Standards at any time) Totals must match. Ear Tags must match. Replacement Tags must match.