This article was written by Madison Penney (PhD Student, University of Guelph). This article was originally published in the Spring 2026 issue of the Dairy Goat Digest.
Introduction
Allowing goats to express natural behaviours can reduce hoof overgrowth, aggression, and destructive behaviours. Providing enrichments could help promote positive natural behaviours like browsing and scratching. Goat farmers in Canada are required through NFACC’s Code of Practice to provide at least one form of enrichment to their goats. Therefore, it is important to know current practices and to study the effectiveness and feasibility of enrichment options to inform future best practices.
What we did:
We surveyed goat farmers across Canada to understand current practices surrounding the use of housing enrichments. We asked questions such as: What enrichments are you currently offering? What enrichments do you think the goats value?
What we found:
We heard from 260 goat farmers (commercial and non-commercial). Commercial goat farms reported using brushes and manipulatable objects (like hanging balls) as enrichments for their goats; interestingly, non commercial goat farms used a wider variety of enrichments, including access to the outdoors, raised feeders, additional forage types, and climbing opportunities.
Brushes were perceived by farmers to be a high value enrichment for the goats while also being easy to set up. Enrichments like additional forage, climbing, and outdoor access were also perceived by farmers as high value for goats, but were reported to be harder to provide. On the other hand, manipulatable and novel objects, although commonly used, were perceived as being lower value for the goats, but easy for farmers to set up.
Follow-up study:
Using survey results, we ran a trial on 12 commercial dairy and meat goat farms across southern Ontario to test out three enrichments: brushes, additional forage (wood logs), and manipulatable objects (ball, rope, and chain). We recorded enrichment use over time, and asked follow-up questions to each farmer to get their perspectives on offering the enrichments.
Want a sneak peak of the results? Data analysis is underway, but we can say that there were some interesting differences between meat and dairy goats! Watch this space for the full results soon!
