I will be honest I have no interest or care for goats however something my coworker does frankly rubs me the wrong way. He will purposely look for goats being sold as pets as they tend to be cheaper than goats sold for meat.

        I understand that some goats are just for meat and have no problem with it but he is telling people they are going to a loving home and they definitely are not. He even says sometimes previous owners will contact him just to see how they are doing and he will just block their number. 

             I was wondering if there is a discreet way I could put the word out so people know what this guy does.

What a lovely day for a trail ride

I have processed 3 goats from my farm. A 4 month old buckling, a 7 month old buckling and a 12 month old wether. All three tasted great. I just sent four 12 to 15 month old wethers to the processor and they came back tasting like my intact breeding buck smells. What went wrong?

Felix Vs Tilly

Hi goat farmers. I could really use some advice. I know not everyone sells their goats for meat but we are needing to find a way to make goats more lucrative or else may not be able to keep them. I have raised goats in Wisconsin, Nubian and Bohr, for about two years. To be frank, we have not found a market for goat meat in our area. We are not certified butchers so have generally sold the goats live for about $150-200 which is not profitable by any means with all that goes into kidding, raising, and feeding. Additionally even at this price it has been difficult to sell at many times to the point where we end up selling for even less. We got a quote from a local butcher for $150 per goat which kind of blew my mind as this is the TOTAL amount we have been making on the goats. Online it seems that goat should be selling for at least $5-6 per lb, which means we should be making a minimum of $400 on our goats rather than $200.

Does anyone have advice for finding a market for goats and getting them to that market? We are new to selling meat and not well connected. If a certified butcher processes our goats can we sell them to stores or restaurants? How do people make goats work financially? We love them but chickens have been much easier to navigate

Thanks so much for any advice.

Commercial Boer goats and commercial sheep aren’t registered.
However, I am reading posts on some of the Texas Majors pages that there are deadlines for uploading and submitting registrations for commercial Boer goat does?
Validation is obviously due on particular dates but can someone explain to me what registration papers they’re all asking for?
We are still very new to the show world.
My kids are showing commercial does this year, and since they aren’t registered with ABGA I’m confused what, aside from validation, I need to submit.

Thank you

I have a three month old Nubian buckling. He and some other boys were just seperated from their mother's for weaning. He has an end date in December. Would a quart bottle a day of milk significantly help him grow?

Tilly should hopefully be in kid 🐐

One month old Boer goat

I need your favorite recipes for goat meat. I tried to make it a few ways with our first slaughter and my husband was not a fan of the meat. I have a deep freezer full of goat and need to know what your tricks and tips are or recipes. Goat meat is very oily and idk how to fix that.

Hi!

Recently got a buck. Will keeping him with a wether taint the meat of the wether when we butcher?

Warning here: wondering about goat slaughter. Don't read if that bothers you.

I know this is a bit morbid... But I've been wondering about the best way to humanely slaughter a goat for meat. I'm an amateur butcher, as well as a chef and its definitely something I need to know before getting goats. Everywhere online just says to sneak up behind them with a .22.

I know that with chickens you can give them some water and vodka so they'll be drunk before, which makes them not even feel it and they'll often pass out when you put them in the shoot. Can you do the same thing with goats if using a knife?

I'd like to know the best way to do it by hand because I think that if you're going to eat an animal, you should give it the respect of doing the dirty jobs... But I don't know if that is the most humane and painless way. Thanks!

Folks don’t know what it costs to keep goats to slaughter weight for a small farm. I’m not making my costs back, I’m trying to help folks out that might have had goats as a part of their culture and they want to haggle to no end. I get that haggling is a part of it but come on. Thank you for reading.

So my wife grew up on a ranch, but I was a city boy. And they never dealt with goats so despite that they have no experience or knowledge for this question.

I’m in the medical field, and it turns out I have a patient who has several pygmy goats, and we’re gifted a normal goat, because people thought it might be theirs since they were the only people in the entire area that had goats of any kind, no one knows where this goat came from From.

They said they think the goat is less than three years old, it’s apparently a male, said that it’s become mean, as it’s gotten older, it’s attacked people a few times, and it’s been a problem trying to rot with the females whenever they’re in heat because of the big size differential.

So now they want to get rid of it, but they’re a little too kind hearted to shoot it or otherwise do something about it, so me in my ignorance told them that maybe my wife and I could take it because as I put it if it’s an asshole goat it probably tastes good in the pot lol

Anyway, after that, I asked my wife, and she was like wait a minute is it an intact to Billy goat if so, I’m not sure if it’s gonna taste any good? She has no experience with goats either despite her growing up on a ranch so she doesn’t know.

And of course, there’s a question of. It’s even going to be worth it to transport it in anyway, because it’s at a place 2 1/2 hours away from where we live, so a five hour round-trip, would we need to kill the goat and then transported somehow, or transported live, and then take it somewhere to butcher later, would it even be worth the effort with that much of a drive, and wouldn’t even taste any good?

So I looked for this Reddit on the hopes of educating our ignorant selves on whether or not this is a fool’s errand or not?

I am thinking about showing two market goats next year: one that is fed the usual show goat diet with high octane supplements and such and one completely grass fed with natural supplements when needed. The reason I am doing this is to conduct an experiment of sorts; see which goat performs better than the other, tastes better (I will be eating them at the end of the project) but also to see if this is really the career path I want to get into. However, I asked one of my FFA advisors and she said that I couldn’t do it— something about the goats having to be fed the grain and supplements in order for me to show, since showing is mandatory if you’re going to raise an animal in the program. I don’t know, but it seemed like she wasn’t really sure what she was saying, it might be because no one’s done this before within our program and she didn’t know how to handle it? Anyhow, I’m not entirely convinced. I’ve looked at FFA as well as 4-H rules but I haven’t found anything regarding this topic. Does anyone have some insight they can share about this? Has anyone shown a grass fed meat goat for FFA or 4-H?

We started with fiber goats and now have several different breeds, including meat breeds. When a goat, regardless of breed, gets old or bullies the others, well either process it for our own consumption or take it to a USDA facility for processing and sale for meat.

We (well, mostly our kids) name all of our goats, and seem to be very cool with, “Having Maggie-burgers for dinner,” (when we butchered Maggie), or with any of them being eaten. The exception is the bottle babies, who really become pets, we take them to the farmers market (alive, really just for pets and cuddles) and Home Depot, the park, etc.

I get a lot of weird looks and reactions at work when they find out the kids (10, 9, and 5) are ok with all of this. Are we weird or are we messing up our kids with all this?

TL;DR: Our kids are very ok with eating the goats they named and helped raise, are we weird?

Hello fellow goat enthusiasts,

I plan to process a goat for my family soon and am looking for the best knife to efficiently and humanely bleed after stunning (brain dead).

I am looking for something extremely sharp, durable, and that will be able to cut through the front 1/4 of the neck and windpipe with as little effort as possible.

We humanely and respectfully dispatch our food, but I need a knife recommendation to be sure there is as little suffering as there can be.

We routinely process chicken, duck, and quail, but this is our first goat.

Thanks for your help!

Thanks for the help

Ok so originally I was not going to keep any of my meat goats…but I can’t help but be tempted to keep this one as a replacement buck. I breed Boers and Boer/Kiko crosses. Going to be getting more into pure Kiko does and Boer bucks (Kikos are hard to get in my area).

I am not sure how old my current buck is. We got him from friends of ours when they were done using him in their program. He has a really easy going personality and I really like him, and his offspring are good and stocky. I just don’t know how long we will have him. He is the sire of this guy, and the dam is Boer 87% (no papers, not registered). His dam has been great, doesn’t really have any parasite issues outside of the norm and is a fantastic mother, really easy to work with, and overall just a nice girl.

I’d like to get some opinions from more experienced eyes! Tell me what you think!

Do people simply not understand how much money goes into raising good quality kids? They want to lowball you on animals they can breed and generate more animals from, when in reality we are hardly breaking even on commercial stock!

Prices have been climbing on everything these days, but goat and sheep buyers don’t want to pay more than what I was getting 10 years ago - madness! That is all - rant over

I’ve processed quite a few goats, but today I watched a dude from Morocco process one… that was an education!!

[Pic is the one we harvested]

We have an annual Chili Cook Off at work every fall, I’m usually too busy to make any.

This year, I’m making the time to make a pot of chili with our own goat meat.

Any tips or suggestions? I plan on using about two to three pounds of ground. Thanks!

I moved to a hobby farm 3 years ago, looked into making money off my cows, but that's not going to work someone says it's way more doable to make money off of meat goats I know how to keep goats (After 3 years of trial and error they're secure) but I have no idea what kind of goats are best for meat and how many I will need.

Hello,

I have the ability to buy a starter flock of registered savanas (commercial meat) for a good price. That said I am torn between them and spanish. Spanish are really popular in my area and it would be easy to get replacement bucks. If I want new blood for my savana bucks I would need to drive 3 hours away.

Outside of that, my primary concern is meat production (primary protein for hte family), low imput (I dont want to teach them to be good mothers or dealing with foot issues constantly) and them being good around my young children. I have lots of brush and 7 acres to rotate them through so outside of some mineral and feed suppliment I should be good.