  The different magnetic phases of the intermetallic compound Nd$_5$Ge$_3$ are
studied in terms of the specific heat, in a broad range of temperatures
(350~mK--140~K) and magnetic fields (up to 40 kOe). The expected $T^{3}$ and
$T^{3/2}$ terms are not found in the antiferromagnetic (AFM) and ferromagnetic
(FM) phases respectively, but a gapped $T^2$ contribution that originates from
a mixture of AFM and FM interactions in different dimensionalities under a
large magnetocrystalline anisotropy, is present in both. An almost identical
Schottky anomaly, that arises from the hyperfine splitting of the nuclear
levels of the Nd$^{3+}$ ions, is observed in both phases, which leads us to
state that the magnetic-field induced transition AFM$\to$FM that the system
experiments below $26~\text{K}$ consists in the flip of the magnetic moments of
the Nd ions, conserving the average local moment.
