Keeping Pygmy Goats: What They Actually Need
We have kept pygmy goats at Noonvares Farm in west Cornwall for years. This is what they need, what they ask of you week by week, and the two legal steps most people only find out about afterwards.
Are pygmy goats good pets?
Pygmy goats make rewarding pets for somebody with outdoor space, and they are legally livestock rather than pets. You need at least two of them, secure fencing and a dry shelter. In England you must also hold a county parish holding number and register with the Animal and Plant Health Agency before your first goat arrives.
NEVER ONE
At least two
The Pygmy Goat Club says never buy a single goat. DEFRA only says goats prefer company, which is the weaker rule.
COMMITMENT
12 to 15 years
The Pygmy Goat Club's figure for pygmies. No government or veterinary body publishes one at all.
IN LAW
Livestock, not pets
Gov.uk names the goat as its own example of a pet needing a county parish holding number.
Pygmy goats are friendly, playful and genuinely rewarding to keep. They are also curious, destructive and very good at escaping, and the people who struggle with them are almost always the people who took one home before the fencing was finished. We have a big goat family here, so what follows is what they actually need rather than what they look like they need.
Goats as pets: what people get wrong before they buy
Almost everyone arrives at this page having searched for a pet goat, and the single most useful thing we can tell you is that British law does not have that category. Keeping goats as pets is keeping livestock, and it is the gap between those two words that catches people out rather than anything about the animals themselves.
What that means in practice, before you buy: you need a county parish holding number for the land, a herd mark from APHA, ear tags, a holding register kept within 36 hours, and movement reports within three days. A goat that dies cannot be buried in the garden. Kitchen scraps are not a treat, they are an offence, and that applies to a vegetarian or vegan kitchen too. None of it is difficult. All of it is a shock at the wrong moment. We have set the whole of it out in the CPH number and goat paperwork.
The second thing people get wrong is the number. A goat on its own is not a pet, it is an animal in distress. The Pygmy Goat Club puts it in four words, never buy a single goat, and the RSPCA says plan for at least two that get on well. If you were hoping for one goat, the honest answer is that you are looking at two, and two of everything after that.
The third is what they are for. Pygmy goats are not lawnmowers, and the Pygmy Goat Club says so directly. They are browsers, so they will take your hedge, your young trees and your shrubs before they touch the grass, and Forest Research lists bark stripping and pulling out newly planted trees among the damage goats do. A goat is a companion animal with a livestock licence and an appetite for your garden. If that sounds like a fair trade, they are marvellous. If you wanted the lawn cut, buy a mower.
What makes them good pets, when it works, is that they are genuinely interested in you. They are clever, funny, physically undemanding and they live a long time. What makes them a bad idea is buying one on a whim in spring because a photograph was charming.
What keeping pygmy goats is actually like
The daily part is small. They are checked twice, fed, watered, and let out onto grass. The weekly part is where the work sits: fences walked, hay topped up, water containers scrubbed, and a proper look at each goat rather than a glance across the field.
Then there is the part nobody warns you about, which is how much they want to be involved. A pygmy goat will follow you, climb on whatever you are carrying, and eat the thing you just put down. Or stand on the car.
They live outdoors and they need shelter they can get into whenever they want, not only at night. Ours share a barn with a Shetland pony, which suits all of them.
Our goats share the barn with the Shetland. Company matters more to them than space does.
Do pygmy goats need to be kept in pairs?
Yes. Pygmy goats are herd animals and a single goat is a distressed goat, however much attention it gets from you. Two is the minimum and three is easier, because a pair becomes a single goat the moment one of them is ill or away. This is the rule people most often try to get around, and it is the one least worth arguing with.
How much space do pygmy goats need?
Less than people expect, and better fenced than people expect. The constraint is almost never the size of the paddock. It is whether the fence holds and whether the ground stays dry enough not to wreck their feet over a wet Cornish winter.
Fencing, which is the whole job
Ours are behind stock fencing about four feet high, with the bottom line tight to the ground and every gap they could put a head through closed. A pygmy goat does not usually jump a fence. It leans on it, works a loose post, and walks through the gap it has made. We walk the fence line weekly, and we still find things. Or they find them first.
Electric works as a deterrent on top of a solid fence. It does not work as the fence.
Shelter and ground
They need somewhere dry they can take themselves into at any hour. Wet standing is what causes foot problems here, far more than the amount of grass on offer.
A figure of 200 square feet per goat circulates widely online. We have not been able to trace it to a named UK authority, so we do not repeat it as a rule. Judge the ground by whether it stays dry and whether the fence holds.
Two legal steps before your first goat arrives
- A county parish holding number. The Rural Payments Agency states you must get one if you keep livestock as a business, hobby or pet in England.
- A flock or herd mark. The Animal and Plant Health Agency states that if you plan to keep livestock, including those kept as pets, you must register with APHA to get one.
Both apply to England; the guidance names separate rules for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Read 6 September 2026. Goats are livestock in law even when they live like pets, which surprises almost everybody.
What do pygmy goats eat?
Grass, mostly, and good hay to fill the gap when the grass stops growing. Hay is not a winter extra here, it is most of the winter diet, and the quality of it shows in their condition by February.
Goat feed in small amounts, fresh water always, and a mineral lick. Treats in moderation, because a fat pygmy goat is an unhealthy one and they will happily get there.
The plants we keep them away from are azaleas, rhubarb leaves and onions. If you are planting near a goat paddock, check first rather than after.
All of that is about pygmy goats, which is the breed we keep and the reason the quantities here are small. Most of the published rations you will find are written for dairy goats two or three times the size. For the diet answered across goats in general, with the welfare code and the sourced figures behind it, see what goats eat.
They come in. They do not live in. There is a difference, and it matters more to the goat than to you.
How big do pygmy goats get, and how long do they live?
Short and stocky rather than tiny. We were able to read the Pygmy Goat Club’s breed standard on 7 September 2026, and it is more precise than the range quoted on most websites: males 17 to 22 inches at the withers, females 17 to 21, which the Club gives as 432 mm to 560 mm and 432 mm to 533 mm. Use those rather than the 16 to 23 inches in general circulation. The standard also describes the shape, which matters more than the number when you are looking at an animal: cobby, compact and full barrelled, with a girth proportionally greater than other breeds. A goat that is simply a small version of a tall goat is not a pygmy.
If you have seen these animals advertised as miniature goats, micro goats or mini goats, it is worth knowing what those words actually mean in Britain before you buy one.
On lifespan we will not print a number we have not read. Plan on more than a decade. That is the honest version, and it is the part of the decision people skip.
How do you look after a pygmy goat?
Three things run on a calendar rather than on how the goat looks. Hooves are trimmed regularly, because overgrown feet cause lameness and rot long before they cause any obvious limp. Worming is done on advice rather than on a fixed schedule. And they are vaccinated, which our vet handles.
We are not going to print a dosing schedule or a drug name with a quantity on a web page. Clostridial disease and tetanus are what goat vaccination normally covers in this country, and which product and which interval is a decision for a vet who has seen your animals. Register with one before you need one.
Should you breed pygmy goats?
Only deliberately, and not in your first year. Pygmy goats are small, and small means kidding can need help. If you are going to breed, take a kidding course first and have the kit ready before anything is due: clean towels, iodine for the navel, and your vet’s number somewhere you can reach it at four in the morning.
Most births here are straightforward. The ones that are not are the reason you prepare.
And be honest about what happens to the kids. Every kid is another decade-long animal that needs a home, company and a fence.
A kid a few days old in the barn. Small is why kidding sometimes needs a hand.
What pygmy goats cost to keep
The cost is not the goat. It is the fence, the shelter, the hay through winter, the hoof trimming and the vet, and it repeats every year for the life of the animal. We do not quote purchase prices we have not checked this month, and we do not sell goats.
If a price is the deciding factor, the honest answer is that the running cost matters more than the buying cost. Or put it another way: nobody regrets the goat, they regret the fence they did cheaply.
The Goat Compendium
What goats eat
Forage first, how much hay a goat actually needs, what you buy on top of it, and the plants to keep them away from. Checked against DEFRA, the RSPCA and the British Goat Society.
Miniature goats
Miniature goat is not a recognised British breed. What the word covers, how big a pygmy actually gets, why Nigerian Dwarfs are effectively absent from the UK, and what the law asks of you before you buy.
How long goats live
Twelve years or more, and why no government or veterinary body publishes a figure at all. What shortens a goat life, and the end of life rules that surprise people.
The CPH number and the paperwork
What you need before the goats arrive. The herd mark, why goats need no electronic tags when sheep do, the holding register, movements and the six day standstill.
Goat fencing
DEFRA wants 1.2 m and the RSPCA wants 50 mm gaps. Standard stock netting is 80 cm with 150 mm gaps and misses both. Why hedges do not count, and the horn risk.
Shelter, land and space
The published figures for floor space, shed size and grazing, who gives them and who gives none, and why a goat with no dry ground is on its way to being ill.
Worming, feet and routine health
No wormer is licensed for goats in Britain. Faecal egg counts, resistance measured in north Devon, the worm that causes no scour, and the argument about trimming feet.
Come and meet them
The goats in this article live here on our working farm in west Cornwall, along with the horses, an owl and a red-tailed hawk. If you would like to spend a few days around them before deciding whether to keep your own, our farm holiday cottage looks out over the paddock.
Parallel Journeys
Isla keeps a white-faced owl and a red-tailed hawk on the same farm, and compares them in a guide to the best first bird of prey.
Herd Notes
Frequently asked questions, and the ones people actually ask us at the gate.
What breed is a pygmy goat?
A hardy small breed of goat, kept in this country mostly as a companion animal rather than for milk or meat. Friendly and docile as breeds go, which is why they suit beginners, and stubborn enough to keep you honest about fencing.
Do pygmy goats produce milk?
A female pygmy goat can produce a small amount of rich milk, but they are not a dairy breed and the yield is nothing like a dairy goat’s. If milk is the reason you want goats, this is the wrong breed.
How do you tell a male pygmy goat from a female?
Males are heavier through the neck and shoulders and usually carry more pronounced horns. Females are lighter and more slender. If you are buying, ask directly rather than guessing, and ask what has and has not been castrated.
Can pygmy goats be kept as indoor pets?
They can come indoors and ours do. They should not live indoors. A goat needs outdoor space, company of its own kind and something to climb on, and none of that is available in a house.
Can pygmy goats live with other animals?
Ours share a barn with a Shetland pony and take no notice of the cats. Goats still need at least one other goat, because company from another species does not replace a herd.
How do you find a pygmy goat breeder?
Look for a breeder who will let you visit and answer questions about health, worming and what the parents are like. The British Goat Society is a reasonable place to start. We do not sell goats, so this is not a recommendation of anyone in particular.
Rural Payments Agency, Apply for a county parish holding (CPH) number, last updated 22 July 2026. Animal and Plant Health Agency and DEFRA, Register livestock to get a flock or herd mark, published 15 June 2023. Both read 6 September 2026, and both are the England guidance. The Pygmy Goat Club’s published breed standard could not be reached on 6 September 2026. Everything else on this page comes from keeping the herd at Noonvares Farm.