goats

[Ranger99]

i didn't see any goat topics, or i missed it.


i'm thinking of getting some goats to raise
for meat. i've bought 'em before for barbeques,
but just by eyeballing a likely candidate at
a sale or wherever, not specifically asking
for any particular breed or anything.
maybe someone here has some experience
that they would share with me as far as
best breeds for meat, etc.
i don't care anything about milk or wool
production, just feed 'em up and eventually
eat 'em. i have more than enough forage
available (i think ) for several goats, plus
i'd guess i'd need to buy some commercial
feed if advised to.


thanks in advance for any advise/opinions

[freetrapper]

 Goats are alrite , check out hair sheep too.

[Couger]

I didn't see any goat topics, or I missed it.

Don't recall your subject ever being well discussed.  Like sheep, some goats and even some rabbits are great for their hair as well as meat.
 
I'm not a small animal guy, mainly because I don't live an area zoned to do any of those husbandry things.
 
But along with chickens, swine, rabbits and maybe even cotournix quail?  Goats of several types also belong on that short-list for the self-sufficient homesteader!
 

[blind ear]

Try to search old issues of Mother Earth News, Couple of interesting articles there. ear

[Ranger99]

i have some very old copies i bought
back before it became " liberal and
yuppie monthly" . i actually have an
issue with a bow hunting how-to
article for beginners. you dang sure
wouldn't see that now. i thought about
hitting the library next chance i get.
one of the reasons i'd asked here is
a lot of rural how-to books are written
by folks that have no actual rural experience.
if you have any knowledge on the subject,
it becomes apparent when reading some
of these books that they just gathered
some facts and wrote a book. i've seen
some goat books, but the ones i've seen all
dwell on milk production and handling, and
shearing and the like, but i wanted some
strictly to raise for meat. i intended to
let the nannies nurse the kids and wean
them so there won't be a need for milking,
and i want a breed that's shorter haired
so there'll be no need for shearing, and
some that can forage and semi-fend for
themselves without having to nursemaid
them every day. of course, with the predators
i have, i'll have to pen them up every night.

[FPH]

Try the Goldthwaite area for cabrito goats....Angora for hair if that interests you.  Nubian for milk.

[tacklebury]

I'm considering the same thing, now that we've moved rural.  The breed I'm looking at is the Nigora though, because it is good for Hair, Milk and Meat!  They aren't quite as common here though, so might settle for a few of a couple different breeds.  Really wanting to get something going this summer though the house repairs will be first.  hehe

[Ranger99]

my line of thinking is they will easy to
butcher by myself and it's hot here more
so than cold so i sure don't need any angoras
or the like. they raise a lot of goats and
sheep ( ) around el dorado but mainly
for wool. not interested at all. there's
plenty of cover and forage here so i'll
mainly be watching for the coyotes and
the few panthers that are around. the
previous owner raised a lot of rabbits
and there are still several hutches here.
i'll be getting a few hens but i'll have
to keep 'em in a run to keep the varmints
and redtails off. probably just have to go
shopping around for a few goats as if i were
bbq shopping and raise a few up instead of
cleaning 'em for a q .

[FPH]

Easier to butcher than those dog sized whitetail.  I use to do three in an evening for parties.. Owls are he!! on kids by the way.

[geezerbiker]

I'm thinking about getting a goat to eat up some of the brush and weeds at my place.  Do any of you know if a goat will eat English Ivy?

Tony

[Oldshooter]

Ive tried goats a time or two, still interested. A man told me once that raisng goats can be stressfull. They spend their whole life trying to commit suicide. Last time I bought a goat, the goat was sitting ona tree stump and a pyrenees pup was sitting beside it. I told the man that I would take the goat, he said the pup went with it.     So I got the goat and the pup! The pyreenes female I had here already and the pup and the goat went into a fenced yard. After two days they all vanished. Two days later The big female shows back up,    alone. never saw the other two again. Alls I can figger is she got tired of the goat hollering and the pup underfoot and led em off and coyotes got em. I was so sure the old girl would protect them. Next time I'll buy more goats and less dogs.     I'm thinking Goats and rabbits for good supply of meat and goats will eat the poison ivy and near every thing else!

[FPH]

I'm thinking about getting a goat to eat up some of the brush and weeds at my place.  Do any of you know if a goat will eat English Ivy?

Tony

Depends on what else they might prefer that you have.......eventually they would.

http://tweentribune.com/content/goats-do-job-people-cant   

[blind ear]

Ranger99, Me to. The article I read was probably at least 35 years ago. ear

[Larry L]

When I was a kid we had a ranch at Tarpley Texas and we raised Spanish goats. Oldshooter has it to a T, goats, from the moment of birth is an animal looking for a place to die. That's why you have to have so many. Having one or two won't last long. They can get a horn hooked in a tree and lay down and die before you can get to it. They just give up quick. As far as diet, about the only thing they won't eat is the front bumper off of a speeding 18 wheeler and that's because it's moving too fast. Goats can clear land, no doubt, but make sure there's water within sight. Pasture goats will not feed beyond the sight of water. I've seen them stop feeding at the top of a hill and be within 50 yds of water yet won't go any farther as they can't see it. An amazingly stupid animal. Kinda like some of our politicians.

[AtlLaw]

...Nubian for milk.

Back in my homesteading/Mother Earth News days I raised Nubians; registered milk goats.  Goats are generally great critters, castrating the newborn bucks isn't a problem and mixing the formula and hand feeding the kids from bottles is great fun when they come bouncing up to you for dinner.   
 
Hi-ebber, and day always be a hi-ebber...  The does have got to be milked and you can end up with a lot of milk with even a couple of goats!  And who could kill and eat something you hand raised!?   

[Alias DW]

Check out Boer goat breed. They are a meat breed.
                                                                    Alias

[streak]

Well I have had some experience raising goats!
 Back in the 50`s we had just moved into our new  house that my parents had built about 11 miles west of Shreveport, La.
i spent the first summer ( a lad of 14 years old) digging post holes in solid red clay! This was for fence post
that we cut from some of the enormous oak trees that had to be cut for space for the house to be built! Learned a few lessons about cross cut ( Buck Saw) and splitting logs with axe and wedges! Talk about work!!
Anyway I survived the frigging summer inspite of post hole digging in the woods with little or no air circulation in 90 plus degree weather and 90 plus humidity!!
 Got the post up and finally the fence was completed on about a 1 1/2 acre`s. Got a nice saddle mare and then my daddy decided that we needed to get rid of all of the weeds, underbrush, poison ivy and poison oak, etc.! Goats was the solution! So he goes out and buys two little kid goats that both turned out to be billies!
well the goats took their task with gusto! They started to grow and develop little button horns! One of my brother`s was a animal maniac! He would get up on a old tree stump and the goats would try to get up there with him! Well as they got bigger they got to where that they could finally rare up and get a fair ways up on the stump. My brother would get on top of the stump and get into a butting match with these two billies!
 needless to say within about two months of this the goats got bigger and one day my brother was on top of the stump and started a head butt with one of the goats and bingo! The goat knocked him off of the stump, thus ended the head butting matches!  
About a month later my daddy looked over the pasture area and it was fairly cleaned out of all weeds, etc.!
 So he decided to slaughter the goats!
o he called up one of his friends who had a farm not too far from our house and set up a time to take ther goats there to slaughter and process them!
well he leaves with the two goats in the truck. He comes back about 5 or 6 hous later with the skins of the goats which he hands me to take and stretch across alog way down at the back of the fenced in pasture.
 I noticed that he looked kind of white and drained and was not very talkative!
 I later found out from my mother what had happened. After he arrived at the farm, they suddenly discovered that they did not have a .22 or sledge hammer to kill the goats, so the only thing they had was a butcher knife! Well they cut the goat`s throat to kill them. Well that really did not set well with my daddy, although he was a big game hunter and had shot and cleaned alot of big game. But killing this way really got to him!!
The goat meat was cut up and put into the freezer. It was a very long time before he finally got some of the meat out to bbq.  Let me tell you though it was delicious!!
 
Those billies were really aggressive sometimes with strangers! They would charge and knock people down and then try to gore them on the ground!!

[Ranger99]

one thing i'd ran into and hadn't realized
was that there are a lot more miniature
goats than i was aware of. i'd hate to
buy a kid (or think it was a kid) then
put time and money in it and it never
get much bigger. there's also the factor
when it comes money time of buying
someone's baby or pet or something
pedigreed that i don't really care about.
i learned that lesson when trying to buy
a place about someone's "dream home"
or what they think they should get instead
of what it's worth.

[FPH]

one thing i'd ran into and hadn't realized
was that there are a lot more miniature
goats than i was aware of. i'd hate to
buy a kid (or think it was a kid) then
put time and money in it and it never
get much bigger. there's also the factor
when it comes money time of buying
someone's baby or pet or something
pedigreed that i don't really care about.
i learned that lesson when trying to buy
a place about someone's "dream home"
or what they think they should get instead
of what it's worth.

 

Buy them from a goat rancher and you eliminate all that crap.  Goldthwaite area!!!  San Angelo!!

[mannyrock]

 
  Okay, I'm going to chime in here.
 
  When I had my 45 acre place, I raised a few miniature goats for 3 or 4 years.  They were about half the size of regular goats, very healthy and clean, and virtually trouble free.   I did not keep a billy goat.  Most of the stories about how terrible goats are revolve around the billies.  (By the way, they stink to high heaven.)
 
   The miniature goats had a pen area, made of steel stakes and animal wire (4 inch by 4 inch) about four feet high.  Every night they went into the pen, and during the day we let them out and they roamed around the place in a small herd, generally staying right in the front or back yard, near their water source.  If you went outside the house, they would follow you wherever you went, always staying together.
 
   They never got sick, they never "tried to kill themselves" and they never died.  I had to get rid of them for two reasons:
 
    1.   Our house was made of cedar siding, with a decorative three foot stone ledge that ran around the whole outside of the foundation.  The ledge was only about 5 inches wide.   The goats loved to jump up on that ledge, and walk around the entire house, chewing on the cedar boards.   They would actually eat the wood..
 
  2.    If they were in their pen, then as soon as you walked out in the morning, they would all bleat, really loudly, non-stop, until you came and fed them and let them out.   If you didn't let them out, they bleated all day.     The main reason I had my place was so that I could deer hunt on it.  The problem was, in the dark of the early morning when I left the house to hunt, they would all immediately start bleating as soon as I walked out of the door.   It didn't take long for the deer to recognize this as a warning  that a human was coming.  Same thing happened in the afternoon when I walked out to hunt.   Couldn't let them out of the pen, or they would all follow me to the stand.
 
   If you are just dipping your toe into the area of raising goats, I would highly recommend you start with the miniatures.   Ours were of the short hair variety, and the females had short horns.  We didn't find them to be stupid or accident prone.  Very durable.  Loved to be around people and be petted.  We didn't fool with milk, cheese or collecting hair.
 
Hope this helps,
 
Mannyrock
 

[mannyrock]

 
   P.S.- forgot to mention that my miniature goats were Pygmi Goats.
Mannyrock

[Bugflipper]

I'm not real big on goats. They piss on their beard for cologne. Don't much care for their stench. I have raised hair sheep for a long time. They don't piss on their own face so it's tolerable if the wind is blowing from them to you. The also believe in self preservation.
Three things more that I don't care for in dealing with goats is having to worm them. Them always finding a new way to escape or get locked up in a fence. And brush goats not taking care of brush at all. They are like a deer, they selectively graze. Sure they will eat brush but they have to wipe out every good food to get to that point. I had 11 arces and they never got it under control. Hair sheep had it where you could see a hundred feet in the first year. After 5 years it looked like a park. That was 50 goats vs. 4 hair sheep(they did reproduce in that time so really 20-25). Just to much grass and clover to worry with all the saplings, weeds and briars in the overgrown lot.

Hair sheep generally don't need worming, their acidic gut doesn't give a good environment for worms. They perfer the briars, goldenrod, polk and every other type of weed over legumes and grass. Your pasture turns into a park. The more nutritious it is the less they like it. So your other animals that need the clover or grazing grass will have more since they selectively eat brush and weeds. The breeds I raise don't need a guardian since the rams will police any coyotes or dogs that come around and send them yelping away.

As for goats I raised 3 types. The boers are a big meat goat. They are what folks usually raise for meat. They may need regular worming but are hardy enough. Brush goats are about the same, they are a little more hearty health wise. Their frame doesn't pack on a whole lot of meat. Fainting goats were the funiest. They were reasonably hearty and suseptable to worms just like the rest. A good livestock guardian is needed because they faint when scared. They were easy to catch though. Just clap your hands, throw a stick over their head or act like you were going to charge them. Some folks call them wooden legged goats. They lock up and fall over when scared. Their seizure goes away in a minute or two and they just go back to what they were doing as if nothing happened. It was funny until the 20th time you had to get off the tractor and drag em' out of the way.

[hillbill]

...Nubian for milk.

Back in my homesteading/Mother Earth News days I raised Nubians; registered milk goats.  Goats are generally great critters, castrating the newborn bucks isn't a problem and mixing the formula and hand feeding the kids from bottles is great fun when they come bouncing up to you for dinner.   
 
Hi-ebber, and day always be a hi-ebber...  The does have got to be milked and you can end up with a lot of milk with even a couple of goats!  And who could kill and eat something you hand raised!?   

who could kill and eat something you hand raised? well me i guess! lol goat is sum fine eating. wish i had sum.but rite now ive got to go bop a bunny for supper.

[bilmac]

Everybody I know that had goats couldn't keep them in a fence.

[FPH]

I'm not real big on goats. They piss on their beard for cologne. Don't much care for their stench. I have raised hair sheep for a long time. They don't piss on their own face so it's tolerable if the wind is blowing from them to you. The also believe in self preservation.
Three things more that I don't care for in dealing with goats is having to worm them. Them always finding a new way to escape or get locked up in a fence. And brush goats not taking care of brush at all. They are like a deer, they selectively graze. Sure they will eat brush but they have to wipe out every good food to get to that point. I had 11 arces and they never got it under control. Hair sheep had it where you could see a hundred feet in the first year. After 5 years it looked like a park. That was 50 goats vs. 4 hair sheep(they did reproduce in that time so really 20-25). Just to much grass and clover to worry with all the saplings, weeds and briars in the overgrown lot.

Hair sheep generally don't need worming, their acidic gut doesn't give a good environment for worms. They perfer the briars, goldenrod, polk and every other type of weed over legumes and grass. Your pasture turns into a park. The more nutritious it is the less they like it. So your other animals that need the clover or grazing grass will have more since they selectively eat brush and weeds. The breeds I raise don't need a guardian since the rams will police any coyotes or dogs that come around and send them yelping away.

As for goats I raised 3 types. The boers are a big meat goat. They are what folks usually raise for meat. They may need regular worming but are hardy enough. Brush goats are about the same, they are a little more hearty health wise. Their frame doesn't pack on a whole lot of meat. Fainting goats were the funiest. They were reasonably hearty and suseptable to worms just like the rest. A good livestock guardian is needed because they faint when scared. They were easy to catch though. Just clap your hands, throw a stick over their head or act like you were going to charge them. Some folks call them wooden legged goats. They lock up and fall over when scared. Their seizure goes away in a minute or two and they just go back to what they were doing as if nothing happened. It was funny until the 20th time you had to get off the tractor and drag em' out of the way.

Never had your problems......but all my males were castrated.........no Billies.  Never had a worm problem either.   Your pastures must have been contaminated.

[Bugflipper]

You may be right about that FPH. It was just a long overgrown homestead. You couldn't see in it more than about 5 foot with the millions of saplings. There were all kinds of rabbits in there. There is a good chance that they were carriers of a lot of parasites. Once it was thinned enough to bushog There were hundreds or maybe even thousands of rabbits on that little piece of land. No telling how many were in there when it was all saplings and briars.
By the way apple cidar vinager added to drinking water is a good wormer for any of you fellows that raise goats instead of putting harmful chemicals in them. Before I got rid of them I quit having to worm them because I kept a little in their water all the time. It turned their gut ph to slightly acidic which would kill any eggs they injested.

[streak]

Bugflipper!
 Clue me in on these hair sheep!
 What is their origin and what makes them so agressive towards coyotes and dogs?

[FPH]

You may be right about that FPH. It was just a long overgrown homestead. You couldn't see in it more than about 5 foot with the millions of saplings. There were all kinds of rabbits in there. There is a good chance that they were carriers of a lot of parasites. Once it was thinned enough to bushog There were hundreds or maybe even thousands of rabbits on that little piece of land. No telling how many were in there when it was all saplings and briars.
By the way apple cidar vinager added to drinking water is a good wormer for any of you fellows that raise goats instead of putting harmful chemicals in them. Before I got rid of them I quit having to worm them because I kept a little in their water all the time. It turned their gut ph to slightly acidic which would kill any eggs they injested.

Good to know about the ACV.  Thanks

[RemingtonMagnum]

I raised Purebread Nubian Dairy Goats since 1973 until a couple years past. We have many great memories and enjoyed so many animals. When raised on the bottle from birth you will have a puppy that will follow your any place. Nubian milk is hight in fat and make fantastic cheese and butter. I have taken fresh strained milk and added buttermilk culture and drank many gallon of really tasty milk. Yes the Nubian is a larger goat and your excess can be butchered and eaten. Really good meat. We raised and processed all our goat related food and kept sanitation a first action in any work.
 
For best results feed them a good quality hay and grain daily with browse.
 
Don Jackson  Remington Magnum/Ultramag

[Bugflipper]

I guess it's just instinct. A horse will run itself to death but a mule will refuse to go any further when he's wore out. The mule get's that from the jackass which is termed as stuborn. Self preservation trumps an owners best intentions of trying to get the animal to continue. A mule will usually freeze and back up when he hears a rattlesnake. A horse might run over a cliff with his rider.

With the hair sheep they just have hair like a deer or goat. It sheds with the season, so you don't trim them for fleece. There are different breeds of them like goats. Some bred for forage, some for meat and some for trophy hunting. I started off with American black bellies (Corsicans). They are a barbados black belly hair sheep crossed with mouflon (and or bighorn) to give the rams horns. Not all that big of a frame for meat, mainly just bones. A 45-55% meat yeild is usually about it. They are used to eating low quality food in barbados and a little bit of slim pickings in TX  so they get by and prefer very low quality forage. They are also very disease resistant and really don't require any care besides a roof to get out of the rain. They hate the rain. Generally they are known for birthing twins and will do so every year. Usually in the middle of winter, but they are tough enough to make it without any special care. If you have one that just drops singles it will never have twins for whatever reason.
 I guess it is the wild in them that makes them beat up on dogs and coyotes. Even the ewes will roll a strange dog and they don't have horns. They don't bother people, at least mine never have. They are pretty wary but sweet feed turns them into your best buddy. I think that's crack for horses and sheep. ABB don't have that strong rancid muttony taste until they get old and fat. So they can stay on the hoof until 4 or 5 years old easilly. An old ram will need every bit of fat trimmed from him and is so tough he's just good for crock pot cooking or jerkey. Butchered under 5 years old they have a very mild flavor. They don't fill out good until about a year to a year and a half.

Mouflons are bigger and yield about what a big deer would for meat. They taste more gamey, not as bad as a deer, more like a caribou. The same with the animals age and fat, but I hate the muttony taste so it may be just me. They are wild type sheep so they don't pack on the fat like a regular sheep does. Both breeds are like a game animal.
They are a bit more skiddish. They won't bother people but don't buddy up with them as readily either. They will always keep a safe distance unless sweet feed is envolved. Their hardiness is about what the American is. Slightly more susceptible to colds and such. I'll see one with a runny nose every now and then but they are pretty healthy. They just nibble on weeds and brush instead of going on a mission to devour everything that's not grass. They forage more like a cow, not really selective graising. But eat more brush than a brush goat. They are very powerful animals. They have the power to kill a coyote. The Americans just bust them up a little and they run off. I used to keep anatolian sheep dogs in with the Americans several years ago. After seeing them not being able to make it to the coyote before a sheep had run it off I figured there wasn't much use for them anymore. They did very well with the goats because they would run away and the dogs would run towards, so it always worked out well. The sheep will all charge at the same time so instead of picking off the smallest or the weakest they get a little surprise headed their way. By nature the rams want to defend the ewes and the ewes want to defend the lambs. I have shot quite a few coyotes at the edge of the woods from seeing an ewe act up. They snort and stomp like a deer. A quick scan of the woodline with binoculars will usually show some type of critter eying them.


http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/sheep/american%20blackbelly/
http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/sheep/