Poop

So the other day my father-in-law asked me, “How do you know if your farm animals are healthy and doing well?” I gave him several ways that I go about monitoring the health of our goats, chickens, and even our dog, Brighid, then I told him, “I spend a lot of time looking at poop.”

Poop will tell you great deal about the internal health of your farm animals. Take our Nigerian Dwarf goats for a good example. Goat poop should consist of loose, brown or black “berries”. They should not come out stuck together, in a big lump, and definitely should not look like dog poop. Poop that deviates from the norm could result from several causes and is especially a concern if it continues for several days. One of the things it can connote is a parasite problem.

So as I walk our goats out to the pasture I am usually behind them and goats just love to poop anywhere and everywhere they happen to be, including while walking, running, and even jumping in the air. So these walks to and from our pasture are a great time for me to do some poop observations and check up on the health of each of our goats.

Take all that poop observing from our goats and multiply it by our laying flock of chickens and our dog and that is a lot of poop. So as a livestock shepherd/herder/farmer (I can’t decide what term to call myself yet) I spend a lot of my time staring/examining/just plaining looking at poop. What a life the farming life is.