Young hikers

Great question Nate!
I like to start taking kids as soon as they can keep up. Younger goats on shorter hikes and older kids on longer hikes. I think its an important part of training a packgoat. If they set around in the barn till they're old enough to carry a pack they can get set in their barn potato ways and never reach their full potential as a packer.

Several times over the years I've seen people buy friendly dairy bucks and have them castrated to use as packers. Its a short cut if you are desperate to get started right away. In each case they only had a 50% success rate. In other words, half worked out and half didn't. Even the ones that did work never became the hard chargers that some of my wethers were.

Thanks Rex, i just cant wait to get my kids so i can get out in the hills and do some hiking with them.
Nate

Also...when you bring young kids along with older trained packgoats...they learn from the older goats and makes "training" the young kids a piece of cake.

I bought a young one that was born in March. The end of May he followed us over the trail for seven miles and did great. He is now 21 months weights about 125 lbs. I plan to start him with weight next month.
Bernie