Where we would have our central incisors, or front teeth, goats instead have a solid, dental “pad” which they use to crush up food.
This is common among ruminants like deer.
Goats are browsers and herbivores, meaning their teeth are adapted to quite particular needs.
How many teeth does a goat have?
A mature goat will have a total of 20 teeth at any one time.
These consist of ten pairs of different kinds of teeth.
The most numerous kind of tooth in the goat’s mouth are the incisors, of which they have 8 in 4 pairs.
Incisors are used to bite and break up food in your mouth, it just so happens that goats tend to start breaking up their food after they’ve put it into their mouth.
Whereas we would use our front incisors to bite off chunks, say, of an apple, a goat is probably more likely to get a large chunk in its mouth and then bite it in half using its back incisors.
They can also use their front, bottom incisors and their dental pad to break up food.
Next, goats have 3 pairs of premolars.
These are used for crushing and grinding up food before swallowing.
They have a flat, biting surface that mashes up plant matter like grass, leaves and roots that your goat loves.
They have 6 compared with our 8, so there is less difference there between us.
Both us and goats have premolars because of the abundance of plant matter in our diets.
Goats also have 3 pairs of molars, which serve a similar function.
Molars are the largest teeth in the mouth and again, grind, tear and crush food into something we can swallow.
The premolars grind it down a bit first, before the food is then passed on to the bigger molars.
Can goats bite you?
So, on the one hand goats’ teeth can be easy to miss.
On the other hand, they usually have quite an impressive set of bottom incisors which they can show off when flapping their lips around, and naturally, you might be a bit worried that goats could bite.
Goats are exceptionally docile and tolerant animals, but the fact is pretty much anything could bite.
It is made incredibly difficult for goats to bite, however, by their lack of upper teeth.
They couldn’t bite you very hard.
That said, there’s barely a risk of it happening in any case.
If you cater to all your goat’s needs and keep it happy, it will love the sight of you and will never bite.
You should always supervise children when they are with your goats.
Even as patient as they are, you shouldn’t leave children alone with your goats, even with their lack of upper teeth.
Do goats have two sets of teeth?
Just like us, goats also have a long development period before they have the teeth that will carry them through to full maturity.
In kids, ‘milk’ teeth are the first to appear by the time they’re around a week old. All domestic animals have teeth which develop in this way.
The baby teeth remain there for about the first year of the goat’s life.
The first pairs begin in the center, replacing the baby teeth from around the end of the first year.
Their teeth then essentially begin to develop outwards from there, growing extra pairs throughout their early development until the time that they’re around 4 years old.
At that point, they should have a “full mouth” of teeth, all 8 incisors, 6 premolars and 6 molars.
How can you tell a goat’s age?
It’s very difficult to age a goat past the age of four, when all the teeth have grown in.
Before this point, looking at the mouth and seeing which teeth have developed and which haven’t will give you a good idea.
You can still get an idea from their teeth as they age further into adulthood, but it’s less of a science and more of a guessing game.
As they age their teeth will spread out, elongate, even fall out, and the more this is the case, the older you can guess the goat is.
But this will occur differently in every goat, so, again, it’s really an educated guess.
So, goat’s teeth are very different from ours, but they certainly do have them.
It’s a very common misconception to think goats do not have teeth at all, since they’re often very difficult to see, and it’s easy to see that they lack defined upper incisors.
If you’re worried about your goats biting, then with or without teeth it really isn’t much of a problem.
Goats are highly docile and very rarely aggressive towards people.
Even if they did tend to bite, their lack of upper incisors makes that very difficult to do.