Conducting research on goats is always intriguing.  The goal is to identify a specific area to be studied, then get to work! 
IN THE BEGINNING…

Was my training with dairy cattle before my first research assignment on goats. Talk about a fast transition. From dairy cattle to dairy goats, now that was an interesting journey.

Dairy goats, with 6 defined breeds in the U.S. Nubian, Alpine, Saanen, Toggenburg, LaMancha and Oberhasli.
The dairy goat industry, with the Dairy Herd Improvement Association, kept excellent records as this embryonic industry began. But more information and research was needed, especially after a new herd of Angora goats with their curly coats came by the hundreds to Alabama from Texas and farmers demanded information. How do we raise and feed them, they asked? I knew I had to find answers.

As I recall, these cute creatures were not very good mothers. I found out, too, that their kids would die from hypothermia without proper manual TLC.

Then suddenly in the early 1990’s, the government subsidies for mohair production stopped and the Angora goats started disappearing from farms. What replaced them, it seemed, were Boer goats, an improved meat goat breed.

These were very expensive goats, so much so that purchasing them for research became costly at Tuskegee University. So we started using Boer crosses that were affordable to conduct research.

Recently, more improved meat goat breeds, Kiko, Savanna and others, have been transported to Alabama. They are larger animals and their nutrient requirements are higher.

New guidelines became necessary, hence, the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council charged the new “Small Ruminant Committee” to revise goat requirements in 2005.