Is My Goat Skinny/Fat/Getting Enough to Eat?

A large belly doesn’t indicate body condition, but does usually indicate good rumen function. You’ll often see their bellies grow larger toward the end of the day as they store up food to ruminate on overnight.

The most accurate way to assess whether your goat is fat or skinny is to learn how to do body condition scoring, which is basically just feeling for fat deposits on certain areas of the body.

Body condition scoring is a great tool that can be used monthly to see how your goats are faring on your feeding program. Body condition along with goat behavior can tell you if your goats are satisfied or hungry – hungry goats tend to cry a lot.

Here’s a detailed video to show you how to do this on your goats.

And an article that describes each score.