The lowdown on goat meat

I slaughter at a point where it's convenient and economical for me.

If I have a lamb or goat kid born in early spring, he's on mother's milk and then green pasture all summer long. I'll try and have him slaughtered at the end of summer or in early fall when the vegetation stops producing as much nutrition. It peaks at various times in various areas (depending on your climate) but you want to slaughter right at the point where the pastured animal has gotten all the nutrition from plants that he's going to get and bulked up as much as possible and before he starts burning off excess weight.

If you feed corn and other grains with a mixture of hay, you don't have to worry about that but then you have the expense of feed. Doing it my way I pay nothing for the animal except a butchering fee. I don't butcher large mammals myself ... I tend to mangle too much meat that way and I don't have an appropriate place to hang the meat to age.

Most slaughterhouses will charge you a "kill fee" which includes gutting the animal and hanging him up to age. Depending upon how much fat is there after skin removal then the may let him hang for up to a week. More fat equals longer hang time to age. Trust me on this .... aging adds flavor. Then they'll charge you a second fee for whatever pounds of meat you take off the animal. For example, the butcher I use charges me a $35 kill fee and then $0.90 a pound for breakfast sausage. $1.40 for steaks or chops. I normally just turn my goats into sausage. It's easier to cook, plus I have small children (and I'll admit to a squeamishness myself here) and it's easier to eat an animal you've raised from a baby if it's not as readily identifiable as steaks or chops on a bone.

On that note, a good slaughterhouse will allow you to schedule a time to drop off the live animal so that they will be killed on the spot. Mine will even allow me to watch, which I do. I believe it's my ethical responsibility to that animal to not let him suffer any more than is absolutely necessary. Some slaughterhouses have "meat pens" where they'll throw any manner of creatures in together for an undetermined amount of time until it's convenient for them to kill it. Though it may seem heartless to some people, I care deeply about the animals I'm eating for food and I don't want them to spend any time at all scared, away from the rest of their herd or their dame, and in the callous hands of strangers. There's a pragmatic view to this sentimentality as well. Fear and stress releases chemical hormones into the bloodstream which gets into the meat and can taint the flavor.

If your slaughterhouse won't allow you to schedule that time or allow you to watch the kill, then find another slaughterhouse. If they aren't trustworthy and open in the manner of killing, then they may not be trustworthy in the manner of sanitation and they might even be taking the choice cuts from your animal for themselves and mixing in remnants from other animals to make up the difference.

It seems Im going to have a problem finding a slaughter house, so Ill have to find some one to kill it and try to apply deer carving to goat I supose, guess Im going to find google tonight and see what I can learn. The post on how to butcher was the start of this, it seems easy enough, and with times getting tougher its nice to know you wont have to worry about meat.
Im looking to buy some meat goats from a guy I met here in a couple of weeks so I dont have allot of time

Could or would a deer processer place do it? thats about as good as I can find, but dont know if I would offend them by asking.
I cant belive this, should I just buddy up to the meat cutter at the store and a hunter? Geez, my husband is even a worse sap than me.

Naturaldane, Deer hunting is a favorite sport, but I hunt only for meat now. I can hunt in the morning have backstrap for lunch and grilled venison for supper. No problem killing, cleaning, cutting or cooking- all myself. However, when I thought I would raise meat goats to eat, I failed. I couldn't kill one, nor think of someone else doing it. You'll need to find the 'right' hunter because goats are just different!... (my meat goats now belong to my neighbor to eat underbrush) Paul

I have called and asked our friends that have goats, and even though she wont touch it, her husband has a friend that will do the deed for us, and show me how to properly cut one up so I dont mess the meat up. Once I get into doing it, It wont bother me so bad, ive became a softie in the past 10 years. I used to raise rats, and still have an occasional litter, and thought nothing of stunning one and freezing it, but I just cant do it any more

The cutting a goat up isn't so bad, but skinning one is a real pain. You can't let the hair come into contact with the meat or you never get it all out. Really a pain. And I tend to mangle the muscle groups a lot on an older goat. A kid isn't so bad. Even deer are easier to do than goats ... possibly because they're bigger and more forgiving of small mistakes.

The next part is the aging. You've really got to let the meat age a little. Do you have a walk-in cooler where you can hang a headless, legless carcass for about 1-2 weeks? I don't. In the winter or late fall I *might* be able to do it in the barn but I don't know what critters are going to come around to try a sample.

If there's a processor, call and ask. They won't laugh at you.

I wasnt aware you have to age the meat, the stuff I plan on trying is fresh I believe.
I have naturally tanned deer hides for a hobby for some time now, so Im hoping my experience with getting a hide off with out scoring it will help me with that in the future.

Goat meat is not like beef and does not need to be aged. We eat a lot of goat and I never age it. They go from chewing cud to cooling in the freezer in about an hours time. No need to age and for most people its impractical due to cooler space.

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Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Nubians & Lamanchas
www.ozarkjewels.net

"Remember, no man is a failure, who has friends" -Clarence

Technically nothing HAS TO be aged. I just like it better.

Naturaldane, wish I had your tanning skill. I've been fiddling with that for years and I still can't turn out a decent hide, be it a deer or a raccoon. Got a possum skin decent once, but not much you can do with a 8" possum hide.

No seriously, it is different than beef, etc. Something to do with the way the marbling/lack of marbling helps the meat break down as it ages. Goat meat just doesn't react the same. Several people "in the know" about hanging meats explained it to me, but its been long enough its grown fuzzy. Before I started butchering my goats several years ago, I asked lots of old pros at home-butchering about the hanging of meat. Answers were the same. Beef needs it, goat doesn't.

Because of lack of space and our weather, I also do not age my deer. It is tender and tasty. But we also usually only get young does. The only thing we hang is beef.

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Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Nubians & Lamanchas
www.ozarkjewels.net

"Remember, no man is a failure, who has friends" -Clarence

I completely skin a goat before I gut it so as to keep the meat as clean a possible. I then gut and remove the organs we keep and cut the goat into the two hams, two shoulders, two backstraps, two tender loins, two rib slabs and the neck. I place all meat in a large cooler of ice and place in the shade with the cooler slanted towards the drain plug. I keep adding ice until the meat is completely cooled and the water draining runs clear. This usually takes 24 hours but it can be kept this way for up to 3 days if need be. I then cut and wrap whatever cuts I want and wrap for the freezer. I take the neck and shoulders and trimmings and grind into burger or make sausage. We really like it barbecued and chicken fried steaks. The burger can be used in many ways. Enjoy.

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I'll try our next older goat without aging and see if I can tell a difference. I don't age venison so maybe there's something to that. Up here in Illinois, come deer season, I could just about hang a buck from a tree limb for 3 weeks and not have it spoil. Down there in humid, hot Missouri you hang it for 3 days and it's growing fur on the inside.

One of my favorite dishes is cabrito. That's a very young kid (anywhere from a few days to a couple of months old) which is roasted. I even had it once as "en sangria" which is basted and braised in a sauce made from its own blood. Wasn't a huge fan of that. I prefer it just roasted over an open pit with no seasonings whatsoever other than the smoke it absorbs. Those kids weren't aged either. In fact, they'd walk them over to the pit, cut their throats and butcher them and they'd be roasting within 10 minutes.

LOL! So true!

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Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Nubians & Lamanchas
www.ozarkjewels.net

"Remember, no man is a failure, who has friends" -Clarence

hey naturaldane -

just noticed the "skinning" angle of your goat meat post and wanted to jump in on that note. i've done a fair share no-scoring skinning & braintanning (deer hides mainly). i skinned my first adult goat a couple of months ago and noticed many similarities and some differences in the process. i wanted to save this particular hide (from an older doe) for a drum head, and thought that the "fisting" (no knife except for the initial cuts) method would be most suitable. there were some SERIOUSLY harder areas - the chest being the main one - to apply this method. by harder i mean pulled with all my strength with no progress. with deer i make every attempt to leave as much membrane and meat with the carcass as possible and just try to be methodical about this. the difficulty could have been related to the age of the goat - more experienced goat skinners can speak to this - but i ended up using the atv to pull through the stuck parts. i'm sure that a younger animal would be easier - but i wonder how any other tanners deal with these spots.

Im trying to understand what you are exactly meaning, and it may be in part of we do things different.
When cleaning and scraping the hide, i have it on a square frame with ropes done up so that every 8 inches in a large hide I can attach there and I just streach it more and more as I work it, then it soaks in the brain then we re string it and streach it some more, if its a really tough hide we do the spots using our feet if needed, I would have been too scared to do it with an atv.
How long do you let yours soak? Im very tired and maybe thats why I cant get what you mean, that and its been 4 years since I tanned so it would probably take me a hide or two to get back into it well enough. I dont remeber having really tough spots, but do remeber having hard hides, streaching and soaking and believe me, I hate the smell of brains. We use a mix of pork and deer.
Most of my hides are used for clothing, and they are so buttery soft when Im done, breathable and washable. I met a pretty cool guy at a pow wow and we dated for a while and thats how I got into this and its a very complex hobby, when you get two hides to come out the same, then your doing ok, when you can get three, thats awesome, anymore than that and you can be a tanning god. I know that some of the buck hides we would run thru the washer a couple of times just to beat it up and soften it.

I think mulechick is speaking of the actual pulling the hide from the carcase. I have no experience with tanning, but I know the chest area is very hard to just pull the skin from the fat/meat.
And yes, the older the animal, the harder to pull the hide from the carcase...at least in my experience. Very young kids are not much harder than pulling the skin from a rabbit.

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Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Nubians & Lamanchas
www.ozarkjewels.net

"Remember, no man is a failure, who has friends" -Clarence

ahh, ok, duh, im trying to figure out what the problem was.
I would rather have a meaty/fatty hide to clean off than a scored one, but now with me actually going to eat the meat I may have to find a balance. I always collected hides from the taxidermy

thanks, emily,

i did mean the actual pulling the hide off process. . .:baby04:
and i have not tried tanning a goat hide - was going to use ours as "raw" drum heads.

We left one to soak once and forgot about it, the result was a purple colored mold that made it very pretty and unique that we wound up making a drum head out of for a Irish folk band we loved. I have never made a drum on my own, but the process is quite interesting, I wish I could find that guy again, I learned allot from him.

I found a video on youtube on how to butcher a goat.. It is rather graphic though as he does hang and kill the goat on camera.. Very informative though.. If you'd like to see it, PM me and I'll send you the link..

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