Start with what a healthy Boer appetite looks like
A healthy Boer goat is a competitive, businesslike eater: first to the trough, keen on browse, and settled for long stretches afterwards chewing cud with a full, comfortable rumen. That makes appetite your earliest herd health instrument. The changes that should move you toward a vet visit are a goat who stops pushing in with her penmates, picks at hay she would normally strip, walks away from browse on a walk she usually enjoys, or — most telling of all in a ruminant — stops producing cud balls to chew. A goat standing alone, cud-less, with a hollow left flank and a dull expression is not having an off day; she is showing you a digestive system that has slowed or stopped.
Changes measured in hours, not days
Goats are small ruminants with fast metabolisms, so the clock matters more than it does with cattle. Eating nothing at all across a full day is a vet conversation for any Boer, and sooner for kids, heavily pregnant does, and animals already thin. A goat who eats a little but whose intake keeps falling feed by feed, who drinks much less alongside it, or whose droppings change to scours or to almost nothing is on a downward slope worth reporting early. Rapid visible hollowing behind the ribs, weakness when she rises, or a goat who gets up and lies down repeatedly with her appetite gone should be treated as same-day problems, not weekend observations.
Mouth, throat, and belly signs that change the urgency
Some appetite losses are really an inability to eat. Drooling, dropping chewed feed, tilting the head while chewing, or a goat who wants feed but backs away after the first mouthfuls points you to look — gently and safely — for mouth pain, a damaged tooth, or something lodged, and to tell the vet exactly what you saw. Repeated neck stretching, coughing after eating, or distress after grain can suggest feed stuck on the way down and should never be left to resolve itself. A tight, drum-like swelling high on the left side with appetite gone and breathing quickening is an emergency picture in any ruminant; phone the vet immediately and describe the swelling and breathing, not just the missed meal.
Boer-specific traps in a pen of good doers
Boers are bred to grow and flesh readily, which creates two traps. First, in a group pen the average trough disappearance can look normal while one subordinate doe is being shouldered out and quietly eating half her share; separate suspect goats at feeding for a day so you can see an individual intake. Second, a dominant, greedy Boer who suddenly leaves feed is a louder alarm than the same behaviour in a shy goat, because she is overriding a strong competitive drive.
What your vet will want to know
When you call, be ready with specifics: when she last ate a full feed, whether she is chewing cud, what her droppings look like, whether she is drinking, and whether she is pregnant, lactating, or recently kidded. Mention any drooling, swelling, coughing, or separation from the herd, and how the rest of the pen is eating. If several goats are affected, say so at the booking stage, because that changes what the vet brings and how the visit is run.
Turning appetite into a written herd record
Keep a short per-goat note of who eats boldly, who hangs back, who has form for going off feed around kidding, and what each episode turned out to be. In a breed kept in groups and often sold on for breeding, that individual history is easy to lose and expensive to relearn. Writing it into each goat's KinsLe Pet Passport alongside her health treatments and kidding history means a vet, a buyer, or a covering stockperson can read the goat in front of them against her own record, not against a pen average that may be hiding her.