The dairy goat industry is expanding globally, but welfare standards and research lag behind the dairy cattle sector despite similar husbandry challenges.
Dairy goats face many of the same welfare challenges as dairy cows including kid separation, milking stress, lameness, and mastitis, but receive less research attention and weaker regulatory protection. Goats are highly motivated browsers that suffer in barren environments without vertical structures and varied substrate. Kid separation causes vocalisation and searching behaviour lasting several days in both does and kids. Anthelmintic resistance in goat parasite populations is a growing problem that threatens effective welfare management. The rapid expansion of the goat milk market has outpaced welfare standard development.