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EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT RAISING MEAT GOATS

Whether  you are thinking about raising meat goats or  you are already raising them  and  having issues,   this article  is  for you.   I am going to detail what is involved in raising meat goats  and  what you need to have on hand before  you buy your first goat.

As in any new business, you aren't going to make money right away because of start-up costs.  With goats, that means  acquiring  land,  animals (goats and livestock guardian dogs),  installing pens, fencing, waterers, and other infrastructure.  You need to have enough funds on hand  to survive for at least two years without taking money out of the business.

None of the financial projections  of  what you can earn raising meat goats take  unexpected events into account while   painting a rosy story of how easy it is to raise goats and how much money you can make.  What you least expect will derail your plans -- droughts, floods,  severe weather conditions, predator strikes, abortion storms  --  just to name a few.

Goats are the most difficult  livestock to raise.   Ranching  is hard work that many  Americans aren't  prepared to do.  There are no holidays, vacations, or sick days.   Animals eat daily, get sick at the most inconvenient times, and weather is a constant enemy.   You must  live  where the goats and livestock guardian dogs live  and check on them daily.  You cannot successfully raise   goats on an absentee basis. This is a lifestyle of days gone by, and you  must  be sure that it is what you want to do, because you can't easily escape from it once you begin.

I began raising goats in 1990.   Most of the people who contact me for help have  been raising goats two to five years.  They got into goats without being properly prepared,   killed   goats from lack of knowledge, lost  money, and got out . . . and a  new group of people followed them,  repeating the same mistakes.

Goats are a dry-climate species.   They can handle hot and cold but they don't do well in wet or windy & wet  climates.    Goats are not "little cows."   Cattle and sheep are grass eaters.  Goats are deer in how they live, eat, and reproduce.       Goats are foragers/browsers -- not grazers; they move over acreage and  eat "from the top down" to avoid stomach worms that suck blood that cause  anemia and death.   You can't deworm your way out of stomach worms ; frequent deworming   builds  worms that are resistant to all classes of dewormers.

Wet marshy climates equal  sick and  dead goats.   Many people are trying to raise goats in such areas, but they are struggling with worms, hoof rot, coccidiosis, and a host of other problems that they can never totally overcome and their goats will never perform well because these conditions are not good for goats.

If you are going to raise  goats for meat purposes and make money doing it,  you must have sufficient land  for goats from  which they can feed themselves most of the year, supplementing sacked feed  during periods of  harsh weather.   Harsh  weather is defined as   stressors  like  extreme cold and heat,  droughts, floods,  high winds especially when coupled with rain,  etc.    For example,  I don't know anyone who is able to avoid feeding sacked feed or protein tubs/blocks during winter.  In  many locations, you have to feed sacked feed year around.  Given their  fast metabolism, goats require  better quality of nutrition  than other species.  Try to save money on goats’ nutrition and you will have wormy, sick , then  dead goats.

Proper nutrition is  the most difficult thing to get right in any managed herd  -- no matter how minimal  that management might be.   Find a trained goat nutritionist from a major feed company and enlist his help.

You can't make any serious amount of money raising goats on less than 50 acres -- and even 50 acres won't allow much production.  Meat goats can't tolerate crowding and the stress it brings;  goats can't be feedlotted like cattle or sheep without losses.    ( I am not referencing   highly-domesticated and heavily-managed dairy goats; they are totally different animals in terms of management and nutrition.)

A-D-A-P-T-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y.  Hardly anyone considers adaptability when they  buy goats.    Goats need time to adapt to new environments.   All goats, regardless of sex or age,  need time to develop immunities to the bacteria, viruses, and other organisms that live on the land to which they have been brought (which are different from those to which they have been previously exposed)  before breeding them.

Never buy pregnant does.  Goats don't move well and  pregnant does can reabsorb embryos or abort fetuses. resulting in very unhappy buyers.  Does bred at their previous home will not be able to provide immunity  to the organisms  on your property  for  their newborn kids via their colostrum and milk when they kid at your location.  Kids are born without a functioning immune system and get all of their immunities through their dams'  colostrum and milk.

Never buy breeding stock at commercial auctions;  there are no surplus quality goats to be found this way.   At commercial auctions, you are buying other producers' problem goats that they have brought to auction in hopes of getting better than slaughter prices.

Contrary to popular belief, goats do not and actually cannot eat "anything and everything."    They need top-quality hay and plant materials ,  because they have a rapid rumen passage rate that requires   easily  digestible foodstuff  to  extract  maximum nutrition in  a short timeframe (11 to 14 hours).     It is   easy to feed incorrectly, mess up the rumen, and kill the goat.    Think feeding the RUMEN, not the goat.

"Number of goats per acre" is based on how well you can control the Haemonchus contortus (barberpole) wormload.      Availability of plant materials for the goats to eat does not determine  the stocking rate per acre, like it does with other species of ruminants.     This means starting very small, culling heavily in every generation those goats who display bad traits (susceptibility to worms, bad mothering abilities,  kids that are too large resulting in birthing problems,  poor feet and  mouth, etc.)  and  selecting those goats to keep that have good traits (ability to tolerate a  low-to-moderate worm load, good mothering traits, small-to-medium birthweight kids for easy birthing but  grow  well, good feet and mouth, etc.).   If the goats that need culling are your children's favorites, this is going to be difficult to do, but must be done because their weaknesses are threats to the overall health and safety of the  herd.

****The goal is to develop an entire herd   that tolerates a low-to-moderate  wormload and has other positive traits that result in low  maintenance costs yet high  productivity.****

Raising goats involves a great deal of common sense and  many  people don't have it concerning   livestock and agriculture in a time  where most folks are city dwellers.     I know this first hand;  from age 4 to 42, I lived in Houston, Texas,  where I never had a pet and as a adult worked in an office.     If you don't have  a gut instinct for what it takes to raise  goats, you may  struggle to be successful unless you commit yourself to learning "everything GOAT."

Pay attention to your animals.  Notice how they move,  eat,  rest,  get from location to location,  and watch what they eat and avoid eating.  Recognize how important the herd is to every goat in it.  A goat away from its herd is either sick or a doe getting ready to kid. Learn to think like a goat.

Don't  blindly do what your friends and neighbors are doing;  they are likely as confused or ill-informed as you may be  about raising goats. Ask questions when someone tells you something that they insist   is factual. They may be parroting what they've heard and spreading   bad information.  Listening to many voices will  confuse you.   Don't take advice from people raising show goats unless you plan to raise show goats,  because almost everything they do is  contrary to  what you need to be doing with  meat goats. Choose your mentors carefully. Try to find  a  qualified goat vet  or one who is willing to learn along with you; vets knowledgeable about goats are difficult to find.

Goats are high-mortality animals.   Any species that has early sexual maturity, short gestation, and multiple births is going to experience a high level of mortality or  it  is going to overwhelm the balance of Nature  and  over-consume its food supply.     If you work diligently, you are  going to have a 5% mortality rate when kidding.  If you do nothing, you will have anywhere from 10% to  100%  kid mortality rate.

There will be times when you need to put a goat down because you can't save it.   This is part of raising livestock.  " If you  can't do dead goats, you can't do live goats." I've learned from these animals that there are far worse things in  life than dying.   Goats aren't afraid of dying; this is part of life to them.   If a goat (or livestock guardian dog) knows its time to die has come,   it will quit eating and drinking and move far away from its herd  to hasten its death.   A weak or dying animal is a threat to the rest of the herd, and goats are very much herd animals.  They have few natural defenses from predators, so the herd means safety.

When raising goats, you must have needed supplies and medications on hand because you will have no time to get them in an emergency, which usually   occurs at night during bad weather over a long holiday weekend.     Goats are considered a minor livestock species  and almost everything  we use as medications and dewormers is  "off label," so  you have a vast amount of learning ahead of you if you are going to raise healthy animals.

The problem isn't the breed; the problem is management.  People tend to want to find a quick fix for their problems. Example:  "If Boers can't tolerate our worm loads, let's try Kikos because they come from  wet New Zealand  so they will do well in  our wet area."     Nonsense.    Goats must have time to adapt to their new environment and develop immunities to its  organisms.  Adaptability does not transfer from one location to another. Adaptability has to start all over at the new location.

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