Goats may not be the biggest animals around, but they still need a good deal more space than a lot of animals of a similar size.
Knowing exactly how many goats you can safely keep in a single acre of land can often be difficult, though, since you may hear different things from different people.
Goats do need a lot of space and you shouldn’t underestimate their needs before getting into goat ownership.
Goats without enough space will quickly become very unhappy, even violent towards you and other goats.
You always need to make sure they have enough space.
Let’s find out more.
How many goats can you have in an acre?
At the absolute maximum, you should have 8 goats per acre of land.
For particularly large breeds, you might want to keep that number closer to 6.
Either way, that is a good range in general; 6-8 goats per acre.
Any more than this, no matter the breed, and there are very likely to be problems.
Your goats may feel they are competing for space and even food, and this can create tension.
It will depend also on the quality of the forage available, though.
If you are feeding them on a forage diet, then you need to be sure that the acre of land you’re assigning to them has enough food to keep them all happy and healthy.
If not, you may need more space, so that they have access to enough food.
If you have the space, then 6 goats per acre is really ideal, and better than 8.
This many goats will fit in an acre of land, but even then, there’s likely to be a sense of crowding. 6 goats per acre is the ideal number.
Goats, in this way, are quite a lot more sensitive than many other similar animals.
Sheep, cows and horses can generally all live in smaller amounts of land than this, relative to their size.
Goats need more space, though, otherwise you will begin to notice problems.
The other question, in the same vein, is about how many goats you ought to have in the first place—is it okay to have just one?
How many goats should you get?
As goats are becoming more and more popular as pets, instead of just as livestock or dairy animals, the question is becoming more common: can I have just one goat?
The short answer is no.
Goats are highly social herd animals, and they need members of their own species in order to be happy.
They need to live in a herd, and not alone.
Ideally, then, you’ll have at least 3 goats. 2 may be okay, but you really want a crowd, rather than just a pair.
You absolutely do not want a single goat on its own.
It will quickly become very depressed and lonely and may even resort to self-harming behavior.
4-6 goats on an acre is ideal, then.
This gives goats all the space they need, while also ensuring they have plenty of companionship and feel safe.
Being herd animals, they rely on one another to be vigilant for threats.
Without that present, even in the safety of captivity, they will be very nervous.
What about the breed?
Does the breed affect the space a goat needs?
It will, but only to a very small extent.
Personally, I would not give different advice for different breeds in terms of the space they need.
Whatever goat it is, you can keep 6-8 of them on an acre of land, at most.
The range within that, naturally, is mostly simply dependent on the size.
Boer goats, for instance, probably wouldn’t do that well at 8 goats per acre.
Similarly, pygmy goats would probably do fine on more than 6 goats per acre.
No breed falls outside the defined limit, though.
Whatever kind of goat you have, you should have no more than 8 of them per acre.
Nigerian dwarfs are another common question mark, but they too need at least an acre per 6-8 goats.
What happens if goats don’t have enough space?
There can be a lot of problems with not giving your goats enough space.
Firstly will be a question of available food.
There’s unlikely to be enough food on any acre of pasture to support more than 8 goats.
Ideally, one acre would support only 6. More than this, and the goats may be underfed.
This will lead to more aggressive and violent tendencies, towards each other and you.
They may injure one another and won’t want to interact with you.
Having too many goats per acre also increases the risk of parasites and disease spreading more virulently.
You need space to be able to isolate goats in the case that something like this happens.
Providing your goats with enough space to live is one of the most important and fundamental basics of keeping goats.
Without it, they will be unhappy, aggressive, and eventually they will probably get ill.
Don’t enter into goat keeping lightly—be sure you know what you’re getting into, and that you have the requisite space to keep them happy.