Healthy Care of Goat Hooves

Maintain healthy goat hooves and care for your herd.

Reader Contribution by Holly Chiantaretto and Hallow Springs Farm
Updated on May 5, 2025
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by Adobestock/Nneirda

Learn tips on maintaining care of goat hooves, including considerations for keeping dry goat shelters and different techniques for trimming goat hooves.

The original natural state of any animal must be considered when making decisions about how to care for your livestock. The natural and original state of a goat is dry rocky hillside. This dry and rough environment helps goats to naturally maintain their hooves. When moving goats away from that natural setting you must make artificial modifications to accommodate their new environment. It often takes a period of time to figure out how far to take these accommodations to maximize the health of your herd.

Goat Habitat and Pasture

Goats do not like to get wet. When the rain comes to our farm as it often does in Kentucky the cows relish in it while the goats make a mad dash for the barn, crying the whole way. While there is absolutely nothing you can do to control the rainfall; you can do some things to make your herd more comfortable, and maintain the health of their hooves, in the weather they like least.

Shelter for a herd of goats does not need to be big and expensive. If you consider the size of your animals and understand it is a place for goats, not humans, you can create a dry shelter for very little. Our goat shelter is an upcycled swimming pool donated by a friend. This shelter is goat sized and inexpensively keeps our sweet little goats out of the weather.

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