Nigerian Dwarf goats are small, friendly, and entirely capable of dismantling a careless holiday arrangement. They climb, squeeze, unlatch, and investigate, and a visitor briefed for placid livestock can spend a week being outmanoeuvred by animals a fraction of a sheep's size. The other seriousness is dairy: Nigerian Dwarfs are a milking breed, and any doe in milk turns holiday cover from feeding visits into skilled, twice-daily work that cannot be improvised. So the arrangement has two tiers: a thorough daily routine that any goat-savvy visitor can run, and, if milking is involved, a named person who has actually milked your goats under your eye before you leave.
The visitor: goat sense is specific
Choose someone who has kept goats, not merely livestock in general, because goat judgement is its own thing: knowing that a goat standing off alone is a warning, that goats waste and foul hay they have stood in, and that a fence a sheep respects is a climbing frame to a Nigerian Dwarf. Walk the routine with them: how you feed, in what order, how you open and secure each gate, how the hay racks are filled, where minerals live.
Feeding: forage first, measured concentrates
Goats are browsers built around forage, so the constant in the routine is good hay available at all times, kept in racks off the ground so it stays clean, with the visitor topping up and clearing out fouled waste daily. Concentrate feeds, where you give them, must be measured exactly as you leave them, because goats overfed on grain can become seriously ill quickly, and a generous visitor is a genuine risk. Write down each goat's ration individually if they differ, and note any entire male's needs separately, since his diet is usually managed differently from the does'. Fresh water at both visits, containers scrubbed, and minerals available and dry.
Milking: the arrangement that decides the trip
If a doe is in milk, she must be milked out fully at her usual times, every day, by someone competent, with clean technique, or she will become engorged, uncomfortable, and at risk of mastitis. This is the part of the plan that cannot be delegated to willingness. Your milker should milk your goats with you present before the holiday, learn each doe's yield and temperament, where equipment is washed and stored, and what the milk is to be used or not used for. If no competent milker exists, the honest options are to dry the doe off in good time before the trip or to change the trip: there is no third arrangement that protects the goat.
Fencing, housing, and goat-proofing the week
Have the visitor check fencing and gates at every visit, looking for the gap under, the climbable corner, the latch that a persistent mouth can work. Nigerian Dwarfs escape through spaces that look impossibly small and over fences that look adequately high, usually towards food. Confirm the feed store is secured with a goat-proof fastening, since a break-in and grain gorge is a veterinary emergency. Housing needs dry bedding topped up and a draught-free dry lie, as goats hate rain and damp more than cold.
Contacts and individual notes
Leave your number, the backup, and your vet with out-of-hours details, plus written authority to call the vet and approve emergency care. Note each goat individually: name or tag, ration, condition, temperament, and anything being watched, since advice about a herd of near-identical small goats is useless in the dark. KinsLe's Care Pass gives your goat sitter temporary, clear access to the herd's feeding, milking, and fencing routine and its contacts while you travel, so the goats meet the same competent routine at every visit, whoever of your arranged people walks in.