Generally yes, genuinely — with two caveats worth knowing before you buy.
This is one of the main reasons people choose the breed, and mostly the reputation is earned. Nigerian Dwarfs are small, curious, sociable and much less intimidating to a child than a full-sized dairy goat. A seven-year-old can stand beside one without being loomed over, which changes the whole relationship.
But “good with children” is not a property of the breed. It is the result of decisions you make about which animals you buy and how you set things up. Get those right and the answer is a genuine yes. Get them wrong and a friendly goat becomes a nuisance, and a nuisance goat becomes a problem.
A mature Nigerian Dwarf doe comes up somewhere around a child's chest — roughly knee to mid-thigh on an adult. She is light enough that she can be moved rather than negotiated with, and a kid can be picked up. That matters more than it sounds. Most bad moments with livestock and children come down to the animal being able to simply ignore the person, and at this size that happens far less.
Temperament is the other half. Well-handled Nigerian Dwarfs are affectionate and will follow people about the paddock for no reason at all. They are also relentlessly nosy, which children find very funny and which means buttons, hair ties and hat brims all get investigated.
Goats use their heads for everything — scratching, shoving, sorting out who eats first, and reaching through things. A friendly horned goat can still catch a child across the face, almost always by accident, simply because horns sit at exactly the wrong height for a small person.
Most Nigerian Dwarfs kept as family goats are disbudded, meaning the horn buds are treated within the first fortnight of life so horns never grow. It is not the same as dehorning an older animal, which is a far bigger and more painful procedure. Disbudding in goats is a job for a vet — the goat skull is thin, the margin for error is small, and pain relief is both expected and a welfare requirement. Check what currently applies in your state with Agriculture Victoria or your own department.
If you are buying kids, ask whether they are disbudded and at what age. If you are buying an older horned goat into a household with small children, think hard about it. A horned goat is not a dangerous animal, but it is one that requires more room and more awareness than most families give it.
A buck in rut is a different animal entirely. He will be loud, single-minded, and will spray urine over his own front legs and face because that is what the does are interested in. The smell is difficult to describe and impossible to get off your clothes.
None of that belongs around children. If your goats are family pets, buy wethers or does. A wether — a castrated male — keeps the size and the friendliness and none of the seasonal behaviour, and wethers are often the calmest goats on a property.
Children should be taught from the first day not to let a goat put its front feet on them, however sweet it looks in an eight-week-old kid. Goats stand up on things. They will stand up on a child because the child is there and slightly interesting.
A goat that learned to jump up at eight weeks is a goat that jumps up at three years, and by then it weighs thirty-odd kilos, has hard feet and can knock a small child flat without meaning anything by it. The fix is simple and it only works if everyone does it: step back, turn away, no attention. Every time, by every person.
The same goes for head-butting games. It is funny with a kid. It is not funny with an adult goat, and the goat has no idea why the rules changed.
Nigerian Dwarfs suit families better than almost any other livestock we keep. They are the right size, they enjoy company, and they are forgiving of the ordinary chaos of children. The things that go wrong are predictable — horns, bucks, and habits allowed in kidhood — and all three are decided before the goat ever arrives.