Raising goats

My husband used to have a goat for a pet when he was young. When we bought this house in the suburbs, we were planning to raise some goats, maybe 2 or 3 female and 1 or 2 male. There is a wide grassy area near our home and even the vacant lot beside our property can also be used for the purpose.

Goats only need water as long as there are grasses and plants. It's favorite is the mulberry tree which is prolific. From what I know, goats can have baby goats twice a year, 1 or 2 kids. So if you have a vacant lot, station the goats there and no need to tend it as long as there is a corral where the goats can seek shelter when it rains.

And for the benefits? Not only meat but the goat's milk is the best according to my husband because he used to milk the goats of their neighbor when he was a boy.

 

If you have a goat for a pet then when the time comes for you to get some meat out of it, you might hesitate.

I think for someone who plans to raise goats for milk or meat they shouldn't think of them as pets. They are a food source. If you have no emotional attachment to the goats, slaughtering them for meat, selling them or trading them for supplies you may want may not be that hard.

 

When it comes to having a pet, the last thing on your mind is "I can't wait to eat you". That is not a pet, that's livestock. Goat are fine, and they will produce babies. But from a production stand point, I have to go with rabbits instead. They produce like crazy and I'm sure it gives more protein then goats would.

 

My grandma loves goat milk. She used to always have several on her farm. Its beneficial that they graze for food. Grass is free! I've never personally tasted goat milk, but I've always wandered if it was good. I absolutely love cow milk, but if goat milk taste similar.. why not!?

 

Goats were not created to be pets. Therefore, at some time, you would be having to consider if whether you shouldn't be utilizing for the purpose it has existed for. It wouldn't be very difficult to let go of the pet situation and utilize it as food because that what's it's here for.

 

Eating goat is not that popular in the United States, but some neighboring Caribbean cultures, it is extremely popular. I have had it and I like it quite well. Plus, I love most of the cheeses I have tasted that were made from goat's milk. I did try drinking goat's milk once and didn't care for it though. I drink quite a bit of milk and I think I'm just used to my Ultra Pasteurized 2% cow variety that I didn't quite like the change. Still, there's a lot of good uses regardless.

 

Goats are a great way of making cheese. If you know how to produce, you can actually cut down the costs on buying cheese and other products that contain milk. Despite goat milk being less nutritious than cow milk, you can still take many benefits from it. I think that's very good you're making a goat farm and I hope you have success with it! Let us know when they have babies!

 

The Jamaican side of my family grew up around goats as well. I do very much enjoy curry goat as a dish that is wonderful smelling and tasty. i am glad that they do not require so much maintenance. One day i would love to have some sort of cattle but I wasn't too sure about what to do with bullocks and larger animals. Sheep and goat seem like a great alternative.

 

I agree goats are actually not meant to be pets. However, in some countries, such as Morocco they are pets and food source!
Goat meat is delicious. I would not slaughter my own goats but maybe have someone else do it for me.
When we visited my sister in Texas we went to a goat farm and chose a goat that got slaughtered for us.
We had enough food for quite a while.

 

Goats, like sheep, lack the innate intellect and domestication over the years to be a good pet given their size and propensity to eat everything that is not nailed down. Goat meat is a (generally) less fatty with a little stronger flavor than mutton and if we were running low on supplies, I would have little trouble in killing a goat for its meat. Although I love sausage, ham, pork and especially bacon, I'd have a harder time personally killing a pig that I raised since it is a more intelligent animal.

 

Okay, goats for meat might be okay, but the only time I ever had it, I remembered it tasting very gamey. Have you ever had goat's meat that tasted....not right....?
Maybe my mother didn't know how to prepare it properly. I don't know. But it's not a food I want to try again anytime soon.

However, I would love to have a goat to take care of my yard, since my son gets busy and is not....ummm...reliable in that area, if you know what I mean. And yes, I do know how to work the lawn mower, but it has gotten finicky in the past 2 years. I think it's time to put it down.

 

Goats are one of my favorite livestock. Not only because the are relatively easy to raise, but its meat is better compared to red meat from cow. Depending on the breed you are raising, they can be good breeders, good milk producers, very good source of lean meat.

I like the traditional african dwarf goat so much because they are prolific, strong and need little attention, compared to some other breeds.

I also learnt that goat milk is also used in the beauty industry for its rich contents. Although i have not used it for my skin before. LOL

 

I have had milk goats, and I think that they are just the right size for 1-2 people, because a cow just gives too much milk unless you have a family, or can sell the milk. Most states her in the US do not allow anyone to sell raw milk unless you have a certified dairy, and that lets out the backyard farmer with their one milk cow. However, there is no law against selling "pet milk", and often you can find someone with a cow that is happy to sell you their extra milk as pet milk.
I have eaten goat meat before, but it was a stronger meat than either beef or pork. Part of the reason for that is that goats are natural browsers (like deer) and they will be more apt to eat leaves and branches than just chew on grass like a sheep eats. For this reason, both the meat and the milk can have an odd taste, depending on what the goat has been eating.
I think that either rabbits or chickens would be preferable to me to raise for meat, although I do not want to have to butcher either one anymore, especially rabbits.
I think that I might be able to be a vegetarian and just have the milk, eggs, and cheese and do without meat for protein if it came to having to raise my own again.

 

Yeah, having goats for a pet (or any farm animal for that matter) is kinda difficult especially when you give them names. You start to "emphasize" with them.

I used to have a pet chicken when I was a kid. I was so happy with this pet. Then one day I came home from school only to find out that my pet is now gone. My mother cooked it for dinner. Turns out she just told me it's my "pet" even though they were really rasing it to eat.

 

Admittedly, Dawn and I are city folk who moved to a rural area with not much experience except for small gardening and (in my case, a couple of chickens as a kid). I did keep rabbits when I first moved to Arizona and raised a litter of seven kits until they were about 14 weeks old and pulled the plug on them. Picking up a cute little bunny-rabbit who wiggles his nose at you and then squeaks as you break its neck was pretty unpleasant, but I did it, then dressed them and we ate them up.

I don't know, though.... chickens aren't much smarter than a turnip and I've murdered Mr. and Mrs Bambi on a few occasions. But with the four kids we're getting ... maybe we ought to stick with the doelings and a wether until we get a little more used to the idea of processing one for its meat!

 

The gestation period is 5 month, and it takes another 2-3 months for weaning, so you can't breed twice per year. 1 acre of good pasture will support 4-6 animals but you will still need to supplement their feed part of the year in most locations.

They need access to clean fresh water all the time.

There's a lot more to raising livestock than just fencing in an area and turning them loose.

 

That's what I'm learning as well. We have a 3/4 acre pasture on our new property which we had fenced with a 4-foot hog fence topped with two strands of barbed wire (I cringe when I think how much that cost). We have 2-1/2 shares of irrigation, which means we have a ditch on our property running all summer long. We're getting four goats next month (at about 8-9 weeks of age), and shouldn't have any problem keeping them there; but they are smaller goats (Nigerian Dwarfs) and we do plan on supplementing their feed.

And did you know (we are just finding this out) that you can't just throw a bunch of seeds out in the back yard and all kinds of vegetables would magically spring up? We spent an entire month just double-digging and mulching twelve 4 X 8 raised beds in the fall, and we haven't planted a single seed yet!

And to think I'd planned on spending my "golden years" of retirement building up my collection of antique empty beer bottles....

 

do you separate the milk from the cream to make your cheese ? the cream separaters I looked at were expensive . I would be interested In your cheese recipe .

 

The only goat milk that I have tried is from Nubians . From my research it appears the flavor of the milk varys with the breed . I have been told canned goat milk doesn't taste very good , but I can say my Nubian's milk has a g0od taste but richer in cream than I am used to No doubt what the goat eats will determine a lot what the milk or meat tastes like . Back when we milked cows we had to be cautious to not let them feed on bitter weeds or it would give their milk a bitter taste .

 

Early settlers regardless of what area or continent they found themselves , relied heavily on some type of livestock for survival . Without that leg of the survival stool most will find it hard to survive . They will likely watch their family eat worms and crickets . A milk goat will give a nutritious food supplement regardless of the time of year or weather . My milk goat gives milk about nine months out of the year . With plentiful fish and wild game available I see no reason we could not survive for years . I take my prepping serious enough that I tend to and often milk my goats on a daily bases . Talking about being a prepper and actually being a prepper is two different things .

 

Well, in the five months and 4 days since my last goat-post, and here's what's happened. We ended up getting a pair (doe and wether) of Nigerian dwarfs, and another pair (also doe and wether) mini-silkies ("fainting" goats). Both does are from very good milking lines and cost $350 a pop, while the wethers are only $150, which is just one more piece of evidence that men are just no damn good. We hope to breed the girls early next year, and after about 5 months' gestation and two weeks' weaning, we should be milking around September of next year.

Now these goats are small, but should produce about a quart a day apiece (maybe a bit more) so this should be enough for us to drink and maybe make cheese. I did drink milk from both breeds (as well as the Nubians, which are the commercial milk goats) and they all taste pretty much the same as whole milk from a cow. Now I can't sell milk without going through a lot of government paperwork and bribes, so I don't see any reason to get Nubians.

What I do want to do, once I have my two does in milk, is to buy two or three kindled (pregnant) Boer goats. These are very large meat goats; they grow very fast and the kids can be slaughtered at about 90 days. By then, they should weigh about 70 lb and will go for about $3.25 - $3.50/lb on the hoof. There are a lot of Hispanics and Eastern Europeans here; there's a great market for kid. Hopefully Dawn and I can actually make a little money from this, once we get it going.

So far, though, we've been learning about feeding, medicating them when necessary, hoof-trimming, etc. We built a milking stand like this one, which we use to trim their hooves, give them a drench if they need it , and (someday) milk the does. We're getting there!

 

Duncan that is the same milking stand plan I used to build my milking stand . I choose to not put legs on mine so as not to have to worry about any wobbly legs . It works great and for the last several months have been using it every day to milk . You may have better luck than me but have found milking a goat to be different than a cow . I use a manual vacuum hand pump milker that sells on E-bay for about thirty dollars . Being a prepper I didn't wont a milker that required batteries or electricity .