What Do You Do with All Those Goat Kids?

Kristel and Chad bottle-feeding a couple of kids for "fun"

I have been at a couple of homeschool conferences two weekends in a row, so I dug into the archives to find a story from our past "rural town" homesteading days. Here is an old post from a couple of years ago:

Awhile ago, I was reading a blog about a "Goat Lady." It was fascinating to learn the woman raises 400 goats! They were for meat, which reminded me of our one-time adventure with goat meat.

First of all, let me say that I LOVE dairy goats–they are right up there with my all-time favorite farm residents, the low-maintenance chicken.

Now, to keep a steady supply of goat milk coming, you have to breed the does. I milked two nubian goats steadily, and each doe was faithful to produce two or three kids every year. Most were bucks. My husband and I thought, "Ah-ha! Here is an easy source of free meat, much like lamb." (Another story about that. We raised sheep too).

Kristel and a little friend

"Free" meat is never free. And it is easier said then done to get a supply. After disbudding and castrating the little bucks, we allowed them to grow strong and healthy on all the free milk (we separated them at night, and I only milked once a day). Two goats give a LOT of milk for one family! At about two months of age, we figured they were just about "cookin’ size." So, we butchered them. Ourselves. What a mess. Goat kids don’t have near the amount of meat per pound as does a fat little lamb. It was a LOT of work to dress the kids and cut them up. And the flavor wasn’t like lamb. It was more gamey—more like venison. It wasn't tender, either. But is WAS free. Sort of. If you don't count labor (never count labor in your idea of what is free when it comes to the farm).

It took us one time to decide that eating our own goat kids was SO not worth the time and mess. From then on, we kept them for 2 months, loaded them into the truck, and hauled them to the Sales Barn (livestock auction), where the Asians snatched them up for a tidy sum—which helped pay for hay and grain for the milking goats. A MUCH better trade-off!