Friday, January 16, 2009 -- 07:53 AM e.s.t.

Education - Publications - General Information

Starting a Meat Goat Operation

by tatiana Stanton

My private herd and work in goat extension have given me the opportunity to observe a wide range of meat goat management schemes. I've been asked to pass on some of my observations in a series of columns in the Goat Farmer. Please keep in mind that these observations are formed by my own experiences and are not even remotely infallible. Hopefully, determining why you agree or disagree with me will help clarify the basis behind your own opinions.

I'll start out this first column by talking about getting started in the meat goat business. Later columns will deal with marketing meat goats and some specific management problems.

What do I expect from my meat goat operation?

Many people start a meat goat operation with little financial planning. Goats are enjoyable animals. It's often fun to go on expeditions to buy a few, and they multiply. When the realization hits that you are spending substantial time caring for a few goats and selling surplus kids, it's awfully tempting to try to justify it by expanding into a commercial operation.

Before you do, try to articulate your expectations from this enterprise and research the feasibility of these expectations. How much money do you hope to make? Enough to contribute to your land taxes or enough to stop work and support yourself on the farm? How do you feel about your own labor? Do you need to justify your labor by paying yourself a wage similar to what you would earn off farm? Or can you justify the labor spent on your animals as being valuable not for money but as a substitute for a workout at a health spa or as an aid to your mental well being?

If you expect to raise goats as a means to quit an outside job and make your farm more productive, be sure to evaluate what other options you have. Is your land suitable for vegetable or fruit cropping or some other enterprise with a higher return per acre than goats? If so, do you have the capital backing to get started in these businesses or absorb their risks? If your land and finances are such that livestock are about all you can go into, how are other livestock projects doing in your area? Should you look at dairy replacement heifers instead or a specialty meat? The great thing about goats is they are relatively easy to handle and that the death of one meat goat is usually easier to financially absorb than the death of a larger, more expensive animal.

Four important figures to have are 1) the approximate annual costs of rearing a doe and her kids, 2) average market value of slaughter goats, 3) the carrying capacity of your land and facilities, and 4) what sort of productivity you can expect from a doe under your farm conditions. One way to get estimates of these figures is to talk to other goat producers. However, many producers are so busy caring for their animals they have problems reciting these figures off the top of their head, or have a mental block against it. Sometimes you get more information by asking basic questions about amount of feed fed daily, average size of their does, where do they purchase their feed, etc. In truth, you will probably have to go to several sources including resource publications on goats, the feed section of your classified ads, feed stores, nutritional analysis labs, etc. to extrapolate estimates for these figures.

Finding out from local sheep farmers or agricultural extension agents how much profit can be expected from a ewe raising lambs can also give you a reality check. You may be envisioning an enterprise based on show or breeding stock rather than solely on commercial animals and assuming inflated market values. If so, you need to ask yourself further questions. Are there even shows for meat goats or a particular breed in your region? If not, are you prepared to put substantial energy into promoting and coordinating shows? Is there any reason that folks should buy breeding stock from you rather than the person you bought your breeding stock from? Do you enjoy spending time chatting with prospective customers and cleaning your yard or house enough to be comfortable with visitors? Can you purchase enough bloodlines to keep buyers interested in obtaining future breeding stock from you without being limited by too much inbreeding? Is there a demand for 4-H market wethers in your area? In fact, are there even active 4-H meat goat clubs? If not, are you willing to promote them to the point of being a 4-H leader? What percentage of your kid crop can you reasonably expect to sell as anything but slaughter animals?

Even when you limit yourself to only selling slaughter animals you can run into problems with accidentally inflating your expected profit. Are you basing the average price received for your large potential kid crop on what you've made selling 2 or 3 kids yearly to a specialty customer? What does your financial plan look like if you use prices from local auctions as your market price received? This exercise helps emphasize the importance of putting energy into marketing your goats if you hope to make your expectations a reality.

What's a good herd size to start out with?

I heartily recommend starting out with a smaller herd than your target size. One reason for this is that goats multiply fast once you get the hang of keeping goat kids alive. It's easy and generally economically sound to raise enough doe kids each year to expand your herd. For example, if you wean 1.5 kids per doe per year, you'll produce on average about ¾ of your existing doe herd in doe kids each year. Some of these doe kids will replace dead or culled does but you'll still have plenty of doe kids to either sell or absorb back into your herd. If you are not having to sell doe kids the first few years, you can put more time into building a sound market for your market kids.

Another reason to start with a smaller herd is that your first kidding season can be quite a learning experience. This includes learning from mistakes. It is depressing and financially devastating to lose a lot of kids all at once. Starting out with a smaller herd gives you a chance to find out without major repercussions whether 1) your plans for staggering breeding and hence kidding dates really did work, 2) those feed rations you came up with for pregnant does were sufficient or instead led to ketosis or acidosis problems, or 3) those books you read on how to correct a malpresentation at kidding or revive a weak kid were comprehendible. However, I must qualify this by saying that kidding itself is usually not the problem. You may lose a few kids but most does on a healthy plain of nutrition kid fine without intervention. The devastating losses generally occur after kidding when you are testing out how well your facilities and management strategies actually hold up to threats from internal parasites and the various diseases goat kids are susceptible too. It's better to figure out that you are not allowing enough space per doe or have overestimated the productivity of your pastures or have somehow triggered Floppy Kid Syndrome before you have a large herd. If at all possible plan on reaching your target herd size after your learning curve is starting to level out. Even if you have plenty of livestock experience, remember that you are trying out new facilities and/or locations and that some of the management schemes you are implementing may not work out as well as you've projected. Coping with a wind chill of negative 15 degrees Farenheit while kidding in a new location may not have been in your plans.

If you must start out initially with a large herd (for example, your bank loan was contingent on getting maximum production from year one, your meat buyers require a certain level of production before they will even deal with you, or you are producing breeding stock whose value or rarity will decrease over time and need to have doe kids to sell as soon as possible) then I strongly recommend that you garnish all the hands-on experience you can before your own does start to kid.

What sort of goats am I looking for?

Ideally, you are looking for healthy animals that will be productive under your management system. There are several highly contagious diseases of goats that are common in large herds. One advantage of starting out small is you can be picky about selecting your breeding stock from herds that are free of these common diseases. Herds with foot rot or Caseous Lymphadenitis abscesses can be commercially viable, but there are definitely costs and headaches associated with eradicating or trying to control these two highly common diseases. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble if you don't buy from infected herds to begin with. If you absolutely must buy animals from contaminated herds in order to obtain the number of animals necessary to start up your operation 1) choose herds where the incidence is low and where eradication and/or isolation of carriers is being attempted, 2) purchase young animals within the herd that visibly appear disease-free, and 3) have your own disease control management plans in place before you bring home these potentially infected animals. If you sell yearling goats and cull does for meat be aware that these more mature animals can have CL abscesses in the lymph nodes of their hindquarters. You can lose customers for life if they slice into a nicely done abscess on their holiday roast!

Check out what breeding stock is already available in your region and from farm environments that are similar to your own. If you are from a country where goats are normally fed on a low plain of nutrition, yet you plan on more plentiful feed for your own herd, keep in mind that it may be difficult to evaluate how well native versus imported stock will produce on your farm. A native breed may have potential for weight gain but be unable to express it in the food scarce environment it is being raised in. A good way to check out the growth potential of your local breed of goat is to observe free roaming herds around local open markets or other places where feed supply is high. If you are dead set upon importing animals, find out whether any goats of the breed you are planning to import already reside in country. If so, how are these animals doing in the second and beyond generations? If they appear stunted, you need to evaluate honestly how improved your farm environment will be compared to the conditions they are being reared under. You'll also need to evaluate whether crossbreeding these imports with local breeds makes more sense that trying to raise purebreds. Biosecurity risks increase when you import animals rather than purchasing them locally so plan on being stringent in your health and quarantine requirements. Even strains of soremouth (orf) from a different region may be more virulent than your local strains.

Research has shown that goats learn their eating habits from their herd early in life. Therefore, try to purchase goats that have been raised under a similar feed management system as your own. Although most goats will make the switch from pasturing to a feedlot system easily the reverse is not true. Goats that are used to a feedlot system can usually be switched to browsing on brush without much trouble. However, many feedlot-raised goats will not acknowledge that grasslands and abandoned hay fields are in fact edible. This is especially true if you are planning to have them graze in rain, sleet and snow. Making the transition to pasture grazing can be eased by bringing in a few older dominant does that already know how to graze to take the lead and teach the others how to do it. Another option is to sit in your pasture everyday for a week reading novels while your newly purchased goats make the discovery that the green stuff under their feet is the same stuff they used to see dried up in mangers. In reality, few of us have the leisure time to justify this (plus, you end up with chewed pages).

When evaluating goat breeds and strains it is important to separate those traits a particular breed is known for because of how it has been genetically selected versus those traits it is known for because of how it has been reared.

What breed should I choose?

There are several breeds of goats available worldwide. In choosing a breed you need to consider its availability in your area, the cost of purchasing and importing it if it is unavailable, and its ability to produce well and economically in your farm environment. In discussing breed considerations I am going to limit myself to a discussion of my own region, the Northeast United States. I'll start out by outlining the different breeds available and then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the most common breeds as maternal lines.

There are six breeds of dairy goats readily available in this region of the US to use to produce meat kids. These include your larger alpine breeds such as the French Alpine and Saanen, the slightly smaller Toggenburgs and Oberhasli,, and your,fleshier breeds, the Anglo-Nubians and La Manchas, who generally have lower milk production but higher percentages of milk solids than Saanens and French Alpines. French Alpines and Saanens dams on average give lots of milk and tend to have big kids at birth. This is an advantage if you are raising kids for the Easter market where you need them to put weight on quickly. However, their kids tend to get lean and leggy after weaning. This is because they have been genetically selected to put their food into milk rather than meat. In contrast, LaMancha and Nubian dams tend to give less milk and have lower birth weight kids, but the carcasses from older La Mancha and Nubian kids are generally fleshier than Alpine kids raised the same way. However, you must always remember that there are enormous differences within each of the dairy breeds for milk yield, weight gain and carcass quality. It is easy to find a particular Nubian that milks more than a particular Saanen, or a particular Alpine buck with a better meat carcass than a particular La Mancha buck. When selecting dairy does with potential in a meat goat herd, it is more important to evaluate the actual animal rather than to choose an animal sight unseen based on its breed.

Some breeds and strains of goats genetically selected by man for meat production are available as breeding stock in the Northeast US. These goats include the

1) Spanish Meat Goat - Spanish goats are descendants of goats brought to the U.S. by early settlers. They are relatively small goats that have adapted well and multiplied in the rugged conditions of the Texas Panhandle. Specific ranchers have genetically selected Spanish goats for better meat production by keeping only the biggest or meatiest bucks for breeding to females. Nubian bucks have sometimes been crossed with them to improve size, milk production of dams, and fleshiness of the kids. These meatier goats are known as Spanish Meat goats. They come in almost any color and are usually left horned. Their ears are somewhat pendulous but shorter than a Nubian's. Many of them produce a cashmere undercoat in winter.

2) Tennessee Meat Goat - These goats are descended from Tennesee Stiff-Leg or Fainting goats. These goats as well as some other breeds throughout the world have a myotonic condition that causes their muscles to lock up whenever they were startled. Various ranchers in the Southeast US and Texas have chosen from this population, goats with the largest frames and heaviest muscles to keep for breeding purposes. Gradually they produced a goat that is larger and heavier than the original strain. Some of these selected goats are known as Tennessee Meat Goats. The myotonic trait and the constant muscle stiffening and relaxing it causes may be the reason why these goats are characterized by heavy rear leg muscling, tender meat, and a high meat to bone ratio.

3) South African Boer Goat - Boer goats were introduced into the US in the early 1990s. Under the relatively good nutritional conditions available throughout most of the US, Boer goat crossbreds produce excellent weight gains and muscular carcasses. However, the Northeast US meat market is very unforgiving of excess fat on goat carcasses or loose, floppy skin. Be aware that the rations you've used to fatten up Spanish and dairy weanlings may lead to over-conditioning in full blood or high percentage boer weanlings.

4) New Zealand Kiko Goat - The Kiko goat was produced in New Zealand by taking feral does that exhibited good meat conformation and breeding them with Saanen and Nubian bucks to increase their milk yield and butterfat content. Those bucks and does whose offspring grew best (as measured by weight gain) under rugged conditions were chosen to produce the future generations. Kikos have similar ears to Spanish goats but are usually larger framed. They are often white like their Saanen ancestors.

Dairy and Spanish Meat does and their respective crosses with Boer goats are probably the most readily available in New York for maternal breeding stock. Prior to the introduction of Boer goats in the US, I favored French Alpine/Nubian crosses as meat goat does. These crossbred does have the advantage of large birth weight, fast growing kids that are less inclined to become leggy after weaning.

There are different advantages and disadvantages to consider when choosing either Spanish or dairy type does as your maternal line. Some disadvantages of using dairy does are that 1) they are often raised under feedlot and rather pampered situations and thus, you may need to convert them to pasturing and a more rugged life, 2) they are relatively large goats, hence their feed costs per doe unit are more during the winter when most NY pastures are out of commission, 3) their natural horns are big, impressive, and problematic under crowded winter conditions, making disbudding of kids necessary for many herd situations, and 4) they are less likely to breed out of season than the meat breeds. Luckily, dairy does who have been raised under meat goat conditions are easy to find in New York. In contrast to does in a commercial dairy, these pasture raised does that have never been milked or managed for maximum milk production are good mothers, do well on less grain, and are easy to dry off.

Spanish does are reputed to be rugged. However, the difficulties in NY are not necessarily the same as those in the environment they were selected in. It's been my observation that large NE US meat goat herds running Spanish does must practice the same good management techniques as those using dairy does in order to avoid high kid mortality rates. If manger space is insufficient or pastures are overcrowded, Spanish kids succumb to internal parasites and respiratory problems as readily as other breeds. Spanish kids die just like other kids if they are born out on the snow in a subzero wind chill. Just like other kids, they like to stack up and may accidentally smother each other when the nights are very cold. A serious disadvantage for the suckling kid market is that many Spanish does do not produce enough milk to have rapid weight gains on twin kids. I don't know how your own financial plans pencil out but my solvency is highly dependant on a doe raising twins. If you are rearing kids for the Easter market, Spanish does usually need to be bred earlier or their kids supplemented with creep feed to bring as good a market price as their dairy doe reared counterparts. If the kids are substantially older or depend too heavily on creep feed versus milk you run the risk of being penalized by Easter buyers who desire suckling kids with relatively light colored meat. Also the feed costs of maintaining these kids to 3 to 4 months of age as compared to 2 to 2 ½ months of age and providing an expensive creep feed to kids may easily outweigh the advantages of lower maintenance costs to support a Spanish versus dairy doe. If you are going to use Spanish does to produce suckling kids look into the possibility of formulating a low cost creep feed. Plan on culling does whose milk production is insufficient to raise a good set of twins. If it appears that you are making a profit on them, evaluate whether you could increase their profits by breeding them every eight months. When considering accelerated kidding cycles, calculate whether you really have the time and energy to handle two kidding and marketing seasons so close together, and remember that as the accelerated cycles continue more and more does will opt to either skip a cycle or produce single kids.

For an Easter market producer who is relying on dairy does as his maternal line the need to formulate economic winter feed rations for maintaining pregnant and lactating does is paramount. As with Spanish does, culling of does will also be based on the inability of a doe to produce a meaty set of twins as quickly and economically as possible, but some culling will also be done of does with pendulous udders who require too much labor to teach kids to crouch down and nurse on them the first few days of life or of does that are not rugged enough to maintain their health and weight on a low grain diet.

Many of our Northeast US producers, myself included, bypass the Easter market completely and wait to kid when the weather is warmer and pasture is available. The resulting kids are usually butchered at 6 to 10 months of age or around 70 to 100 lbs live weight when the pastures are going dormant in late fall. Questions for these producers to ask themselves are 1) can they increase the number of doe units per acre by using a Spanish versus dairy doe, 2) how much meat can they expect to harvest from their respective pasture reared offspring, and 3) will the kids from either of these maternal lines raised on lush NY pastures look better than Spanish and Spanish/boer kids shipped into the NE US from the South, and if not, can they afford to raise them in exchange for the same market price?

I find that my pastures are limited in use more by worm contamination than by feed availability, so in my situation I don't believe it would help me to be able to stock more does of a smaller breed per acre. I do find that in my pasture situation where does are often still with their weanable kids in late summer when worm loads are high, I rarely see bottle jaws on any does save those does with persistent milk production who haven't gotten the message that their kids are getting plenty of nutrition from the pasture alone. Therefore, while a Spanish doe breeder might be culling a doe for poor growth rates on her kids, nature may be telling me to cull a few of my does for being too persistent in milk yield despite the great weight gains and health of their kids. Both of these maternal strains cross well with Boer goats. Dairy/boer does tend to have more winter cashmere than dairy does (this can be advantageous if you feed outside in the winter as I do) and are usually less persistent in milk production. They also have less tendency to become leggy after weaning.

Kiko and Tennessee Meat goats are not plentiful in the Northeast US. Yet there are attractive assets to both of them. My main concern in purchasing large quantities of them as my maternal breeding stock would be can I buy them for the same price that I can buy the more plentiful Spanish Meat/Boer does and dairy/Boer does available throughout the state? If I am going to have to pay more for them then they need to be able to make up the difference in increased productivity.