Copper (Cu) is an essential trace mineral required for the healing of normal connective tissues including tendons, ligaments, cartilage and bone. Copper is also important for vibrant color in a goat’s skin and coat pigments. Copper has also shown helpful for proper nerve signaling and the absorption and utilization of Iron. And of course Iron is key for healthy blood. Copper also aids in parasitic resistance with your herd.
Copper deficiency in goats can result in poor hair coats, reduced growth, reduced fertility and impaired immune system function.
The best way to supplement your herd is with loose minerals freely available in an open trough. This trough should be kept high enough that adults can eat the minerals when needed. If kept too low goat kidlings are more likely to play in it and goats poop on everything so you will need to clean out their mineral trough more often.
if more copper is needed, or you prefer to know exactly how much each of your goats is consuming, you can feed copper directly to them, this is called copper bolusing. When you purchase copper supplement pills from your feed store they are in capsules (or a boluse) but at a dosage for cattle (23.5g). Contained inside each capsule are small coper rods. Goats love grain so you can easily give them their copper dose by sprinkling about 2g of copper in their grain. An easy guide for dosage is 1g of copper per 20 lbs of body weight.