Goat dairy production has grown rapidly worldwide, but welfare standards lag far behind bovine dairy despite goats having equally complex social, behavioral, and emotional needs.
Goat dairy often receives a pastoral, artisanal image that obscures significant welfare challenges in commercial production. The same welfare issues affecting bovine dairy — maternal separation, disbudding without analgesia, isolation housing — occur in goat systems with less regulatory scrutiny. Goats are highly expressive animals with clear emotional responses to positive and negative experiences. Their strong social bonds mean that separation, isolation, and instability of social groups cause measurable distress. Welfare improvement requires extending the same standards being developed for cattle to goat dairy systems.