Quick weight question for an upcoming trip

[Tinfoil_Haberdashery]

How fit are your goats? Do they already do a lot of hiking without packs? How many miles do you typically cover? 10 miles/day with a 22 lb. pack is fine for a short-term trip and most youngsters could handle that without difficulty, but a young goat needs to be very fit to keep it up for several weeks.

Unfortunately the timing means this would likely be one of the first major hikes of the year--the Sierra is too snowpacked to have allowed for much hiking yet this year. Might have to prioritize a fitness regemin.

Do your saddles fit? At this age, standard-sized saddles may still be too long for their backs. Make sure your saddles sit behind the shoulder blades but well ahead of the hip bones. Watch your goats walk around with empty saddles and see if their hip bones hit at all when they step. If they do, then your goats need to grow a little more to fit their equipment. 

I assume this is without the pad? Good advice, I'll try this.

Is there any possibility that you could get by with only packing one goat? That way you could switch your saddle back and forth between them so they get a break every other day. Or you could even switch every day at lunchtime so they only pack half-days. They could probably carry a little more weight in the pack if you were giving them that break between-times. Something to think about. 

I think I can take measures to reduce pack weight by increasing resupply frequency. This should drop the weight to 15 lbs--closer to 10% of their body weight. Then I can trade the 3lb. bear can back and forth, or maybe just carry it myself.

Your goats are quite small for that age

I've been a bit worried about that, but it's damn hard to find anything like an "expected weight" chart or similar. Does ~63kg seem outside the healthy range for Alpine/Toggenburg cross of that age, or just on the small end of healthy?

Yeah, this is the big problem I personally have with goat saddles! Somebody needs to build an ultralite one  But, you can cut that by at least 2 lbs by going with a Sopris Rookie saddle & intermediate panniers.

You could use a Bearikade Blazer (50 ci bigger) instead of Bear Vault 500 and save another half pound.  http://www.wild-ideas.net/the-blazer/  

Then you're into the smaller items to save weight, just an example your scale at 142g, mine only weighs 91g.  It all adds up.

I've been thinking about using the saddles I've got as a template, replicating the "wings" in fiberglass and the crossbars from aluminum square tubing. Unfortunately, this would likely save around a pound or less, as the majority of the weight seems to be in the pad and straps, and it's hard to see anywhere weight can be cut there.

Wow...that can costs 4x as much as the bear vault! Not sure I can justify increasing the budget of this trip by that much.

What scale do you use, if you don't mind me asking?