What do you do with your male Dairy Goats?

If you have guns, you absolutely must teach your children about gun safety. It is just part of it.

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Nancy Boling
Frosted Mini Goats
Alpine and Nigerian Dwarf goats
2 Jersey heifers
1 guard llama
And whatever else shows up...
http://www.swfarm.net/

I was thinking more along the lines of the ancient, rusty H+R single shot or Marlin 60 that you find at garage sales and flea markets. (Actually, come to think on it, you can't even buy one of those without a background check in my state anymore!!!) Not a pistol or revolver. Even at my local gun shop you can still get a serviceable 22 rifle for about that. It won't be pretty, much less new, but it'll shoot.

You've said something like that before I think. I don't get it myself. It's a tool, no more, no less. No more or less dangerous than your car, your lawn mower or a bathtub full of water. To me, not having a mess of guns around would be abnormal. I'm a lot more concerned with my kids playing in the pool or messing with the horses or around the bucks and rams than I am of them around guns. But then, they've always know where and what they are and that The Mother of All Cans of Whoop you-know-what will be opened if they even touch a gun without permission, along with a whole lot of other stuff they know not to touch.

I have friends in Ca and while I understand things are even worse there than here in NY, I'm pretty certain a 22 rifle could be obtained and legally owned for not a whole big bunch of money. You don't need a $2K Cooper, a plain old run of the mill Marlin or Savage will do just fine. Gun safety courses seem to be available across the nation these days. If it's nothing you want to try fine, but living with an irrational fear of an inanimate object just wouldn't sit well with me.

BTW- I gave first aid once to a guy that thought he would finish off a car struck deer with a knife. He didn't. Just sayin'...

ETA- If bears are a real concern then you need to go larger than a 22. My grandmother used a broom to shoo them off the porch, so it depends on who you are and where I guess.

Who kills them?? I do. When I kill them, I know for a fact that they haven't suffered and the level of fear they've suffered has been minimal, since they haven't had to travel.

The trick is not to look at meat kids, not to play with them, not to pet them or make them tame. Let them nurse on their dams, don't bottle feed them, wether them or disbud them. When these wild, nearly worthless bucklings are competing with doelings you want to raise as replacement does, and are going to breed those doelings as soon as they hit puberty...it becomes easier to butcher them.

I'm not going to say it's easy to shoot them. It's not, and killing shouldn't be easy or nonchalant. On the other hand, it goes quickly. You put down a pan of grain, let the buckling eat it, place the end of the barrel of the .22 at the back of his head between his ears, and pull the trigger. Then you use a razor sharp knife to cut the arteries and veins in the neck so he'll bleed out, cover his head with a plastic grocery bag so you don't have to look at his dead eyes and face, and take a minute to get over the fact that you just killed something, while he bleeds out. After that, it's fairly straightforward to dress them out, and you know that your meat lived and died well and that your buckling died here, easily, rather than living out some horrible life on a dog chain, wasting away in lonlieness, maybe starving on someone's junk lot.

I'll never forget the time I took a bunch of kids to the auction, and had some teenagers exclaim happily over buying the doelings, which would have grown up to be decent family milkers, as practice animals for goat roping. They were going to be chased by a horse and rider, roped, slammed to the ground and tied, over and over and over again, by children....before succumbing to god knows what other kind of fate. :-( That was the end of my taking them to the auction or selling goats as pets.

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what you say really resonates. I hope when the time comes, I will able to offer them a good death (or maybe to the right person, a good life).

It's not goat roping, it's goat tying.
There is nary a rope in sight.
Most folks who rodeo see the animals as an investment and treat them well.
The goats also typically do double duty as pets or companion animals for the horses.
They are usually used one season and butchered just like all the other butcher goats mentioned above.
Just because it's not *your* desired use for a goat doesn't make it a less valid use.

I'm not saying you're not entitled to your opinion or that you have to cast your goats to the wind like so much chafe, but have your facts straight and don't disparage something just because it's not your way of doing things.

Well maybe there is hope for me... just found out that the neighbors who moved in across the street over the weekend.... used to Hunt (hubby still has a gun somewhere and wife wants him to get her a deer) maybe I can trade one butcher kid for him doing the deed for me on a set (this is future talk).... and he can even show me how to dress them(I looked at this Sticky already)....
I am def going to get creative on this and willing to do so....

I am a woose...I am a great caretaker/fixer. It broke my heart when a 5 week old kitten got its throat ripped out by a tom cat and it gasped its last breaths in my hands...
I will take any excess boys to my nearby processor when I actually have excess..and then I will have nicely packaged food. As far as the processor and how he disposes can't be to much harder then me trying to wrestle a wild goat so I can slit its throat, yaya I still haven't got a gun I know, so far for what I have needed my sling shot works well.

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The more I know people … the more I respect animals.
Lovn Ivy Farm
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There is also goat roping, but you're right, the vision I had of goat tying certainly wasn't of a goat tied up already, helplessly. I thought that the goat actually got a chance to run away. :-( And goat ROPING was what these people called it, but whatever. If it's anything like this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=BflBTnPbVZQ, there is no way I'd wish that on any goat of mine, over and over and over again, day in and day out, until the wanna be cowboy/girl learned their "sport".

I didn't breed refined dairy goats using the best bloodlines in the country, including A.I., so that some yahoo's kid could slam them to the ground like a sack of potatoes. I'll eat them long before consigning any of them to that fate.

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Looks like the goats were winning

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I agree if you are putting that much time, energy and expense into a breeding program you are not breeding sport goats or packing goats or even pets.

Then why take them to the sale barn? When a seller turns an animal in at the reception gate the seller relenquishes all rights to decide the animals fate.

That's like selling a baseball card on ebay and then complaining because the buyer chose to pack it away in a cardboard box in the attic.

There is goat roping that is like calf roping.

http://www.reporternews.com/news/201...oping/?print=1

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Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

Good old fashioned bartering!
Always a solid idea.

Sorry this thread is wondering so much, but I really don't see much problem with this goat tieing thing. The goats don't seem terribly stressed really. I have knocked goats from their feet before for trying to be higher on the totem pole than me. My mini alpine buck, Memphis, tries to bust through the gate ALL the time, sometimes about running me over. So, I just grab his opposite legs, knock him down, and sit on his neck. He is generally a little better after that.

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Nancy Boling
Frosted Mini Goats
Alpine and Nigerian Dwarf goats
2 Jersey heifers
1 guard llama
And whatever else shows up...
http://www.swfarm.net/

Goat meat tastes great. It is a cross in flavor between beef, venison, and mutton. When it is ground up like hamburger you will not likely know the difference by flavor alone. When you get a buckling born that you don't want or need to keep, castrate it by either banding or cutting the testicles off. Most people band, which is what I've seen my dad do and am the most comfortable with. When the castrated buckling (now called a whether) is about 6-8 months old he will be quite large and big enough to slaughter, which is quite easy to do at home.

If you can kill and harvest a deer, a goat is exactly the same thing. The way I did it was to separate the animal the day before slaughter and withhold feed; water only. Tie the animal to a tree or post, hit it on the top of the head with a sledge hammer. This stuns the animal. Then slit its neck from under the jaw at the back and toward the throat, exposing the jugular vein and carotid artery. The animal bleeds out while unconscious. This method is as old as Adam and Eve, painless for the animal, and is safer and more humane than shooting them. This is the way that I kill everything except poultry. Poultry gets put in a cone and the neck is cut for the bleeding.


Breed the best and eat the rest.

If you butcher before they are mature, no need to wether them.

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Alice
* * *
"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

Yeah bu that's like throwing meat away

Of those who butcher, has anyone worked through the process of using the stomach to make rennet for cheesemaking?

Try this link: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser...eparation.html

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www.glimmercroft.com
The basic message of liberalism is simply: The true measure of a society is how it treats the weak and the needy. A simple Christian message (Matthew 25:40). -Garrison Keillor

What she said. Every bit, including placement of the muzzle. My kids are tame. I take them aside from the other goats, put a pan of grain on the ground, and while they're scarfing happily, shoot them in the right spot so that they instantly lose consciousness. Then I cut their throat. Then, sometimes, I go cry for a minute. Then come back and butcher them out. It's unpleasant, but if I'm going to eat an animal, I want it to live as well and die as well as I can possibly manage. This rules out a stressful ride to the processor, and whatever the processor sees fit to inflict. I figure the pain is part of my end of the deal with the animal - I give it a good, happy life and a stress-free end, and it gives me the time it might otherwise have had on earth.

I took a buck to the auction once, and stayed to watch what happened. I told the auction folks that the buck would walk willingly on a lead, was from a clean herd with good bloodlines, etc., etc. They were mean to him, and I will NEVER take another animal to auction, EVER. If there's no other option, I will dig a hole in my yard first and put the animal in it. Also, no animal sold for meat will leave here alive. I want to make sure the killing goes well, so I will do it myself. Unpleasant, yes, but that's part of the cost for the pleasure of raising animals. It's my responsibility.

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The basic message of liberalism is simply: The true measure of a society is how it treats the weak and the needy. A simple Christian message (Matthew 25:40). -Garrison Keillor