Crossbred Goats?
 

I have a question that I haven't been able to find a straight answer to. I have a lead on Alpine/Nubian cross doelings. They are going for $125/ea. My wife and I are looking to purchase a couple of goats to keep on our homestead. We aren't looking to start a commercial farm and we don't need show animals, so we are considering purchasing a couple of them. Ultimately, we want a couple of goats that will give us milk. What are the pros and cons of crossbred goats? Any insight on crossing these particular breeds?

Most of my goats are mutts. I like 'em fine. As long as they are healthy and/or come from healthy stock, you should be fine. I do look at the milking history of the mother and both grandmothers when possible as that is what I'm after. I wouldn't go for those particular ones, but only because I don't really like nubian. Purely personal preference as there is nothing wrong with nubians.

The only real con that I can think of off the top of my head may be resale value. Purebred and/or papered animals tend to go for more. Not an issue where I live as goats don't go for much no matter what. If you're not really interested in that or showing, I can't really think of anything against mutts. My best ever goat was alpine/oberhasli/saanen/nubian, not in equal parts.

Crossbred goats are fine. :) The most important thing is disease free status. If the owners don't test for CAE, you don't want the goats.

Or CL an Johnes!

Thanks for the information! I am going to look into it and speak with the owner. I am between trucks right now, so if I buy two they are going to have to travel here in the back seat of our car. That should be amusing. I am in the process of ordering one of those plastic calf hutches. I plan to buy some movable electric fencing to pen them (unless you have a better suggestion?). I want to keep things relatively movable so that we can take it with us if we decide to sell our house and upgrade in a few years.

I actually think the crosses are hardier.

Calf hutches work really well for goat housing! (I use several). I agree 100% with the other posters' recommendations re: disease testing.

There is nothing wrong with cross bred goats one of my best milkers i ever owned was a alpine/nubian/boar cross doe she gave over a gal a day of the sweetest milk i ever had ,

Love our cross bred goats :)
$125 is about the going rate around here..yes, do ask about disease testing.
Look at their hooves & ask the last time they were trimmed, when were they
wormed last and with what, what they're eating, their kidding details. Have they had any inoculations. NOW, imho if they haven't disease tested - doesn't make them bad gots...if they're willing to have a vet out to test them or send off a sample, go for it. It may just not be something folks are interested in, for resale in your area. Here at the $125 rate, folks aren't real concerned with it. More in the $300 pure bred arena that you really see anyone ask.
Good luck! :)

One of the cons of mixed breeds is that the practical use for male offspring is diminished. You won't be able to sell them as breeding stock. Plan to wether them and possibly disbud. Check your local market for demand for meat. If there is a good demand you may want to breed your does to a Boer or Kiko. The males can be sold for meat and the doelings will get as good a price as commercial meat breeders as you would get for mutt dairy. You could still breed to a dairy buck every few years if you want dairy keepers/replacements for your own herd.

I also like their hardiness.

Thanks for all of the advice everyone. I appreciate it! This will be a new adventure for us, as neither of us have ever raised dairy animals before.

The seller is getting rid of them for $125/ea or all four for $400. I am going to have to make sure that I control myself here. When we started with chickens, we got 6, then that exploded to 20, then 70 (we raised meat chickens) and now we're back down around 20. Only two goats! I will keep telling myself that. I am one of those people who is always like "well, if a small amount is good, more must be better!"

I have another question. I just realized that I don't have any fencing put up and it is the middle of the winter! If I want to buy goats now so that I can get these particular animals, what would you suggest I use as a temporary form of containment until the spring? Has anyone ever bought goats prior to having everything finished for them? I could always buy them a large dog kennel at Tractor Supply Co. and keep it in the garage. Could a dog kennel be turned into a makeshift shelter at a later date?

I also have a ridiculously large chicken coop with a lot of extra space (think one of the largest sized sheds you can buy at home depot, with an overhead loft), but it is probably not a good idea to mix chickens and goats, right?

You could get the kennel and set it up in the garage for the winter - and later turn it into a kidding pen once you're all set up. :) The downside will be ventilation - the goats should NOT be closed in a garage all winter... You'd have to have good ventilation or open a door or something.

You can use calf hutches or even enclosed pickup bed caps as housing - just take the glass door off of them, put them up on cinder blocks, and stuff with straw. We also take a 2x6 board (or similar) and string it along the front and use cinder blocks to wedge in there, otehrwise the straw comes back out as they walk in and out - or the chickens scratch through new bedding and scatter it in the wind, lol.

You can have a cattle panel pen without having to pound fence posts... I'd borrow a truck or truck/trailer and go buy 6 or so cattle panels. put up the panels in a big circle, use u-bolts to attach teach end to the next panel. Then use spring snaps to close the 'gate'. They may move it a bit as they itch but they won't be able to knock it down. Or, taht being said, I've pounded my fair share of fence posts in freezing weather into freezing ground - then again, we also have all sand soil. :)

For a hay feeder, I just attach some scrap wire - fencing, or welded 2x4 chicken wire - anything really, you coud use scrap wood - and zip tie it to the cattle panel such that it makes a little bulge. With scrap wood, you could do wire to attach the edges at an angle.

I love the idea of cattle panels. Our property is very, very hilly (with some very steep hills, in fact) which is one of the reasons we decided to get a couple of goats instead of a cow. I'm not sure that a cow could navigate the property! I am trying to think of a place where the cattle panels could go without leaving a gap at the bottom. I have called two places over the last few days to order a plastic calf hutch. Both places took my information and told me that they would call back in a bit with the cost of shipping. Neither one called back, so we'll see how that goes :P

Don't forget to ask the owner lots of questions like Suzyq2u suggested, disease testing, check hooves, wormed when & with what.

If you get all 4 you could breed 2 at 2 different times of the year so you have at least 2 goats always in milk year around.

Don't forget the camera cause we'll want pictures too!

Do you think that 4 is too much for an acre of land?

It will be cheaper to get all 4, just think of all the money you will save. It would almost buy you a buck. Or a roll of goat fence.

1. Did you ask about testing for disease?

2. Don't get them till you are ready. REALLY ready.

3. Saving money now on diseased goats isn't saving money.

4. Saving money when you aren't ready leads to problems and stress.

It is hard to say if your acre can handle 4 goats. I have 1 acre on my land that could & another acre that can't handle 2, depends on your place.

I do agree with Alice about only getting them when you are sure you are very ready. When we started with sheep, we got on ram and sort of "hung" chicken wire to keep him in, being a newbie to everything and all. Yep, next morning we had a ram wrecking everything in the barn. That was a horrible idea! LOL

Definitely great advice. I think I am going to stick to two goats. I haven't asked about diseases yet because I haven't had a second contact with the owner of the goats. I will definitely ask when I go to see them in person. I think I am going to go with the cattle panel/calf hutch idea. I like the idea that I can continue to add more panels as time goes on and take them with me if we sell our house.

OH yeah, about the cattle panels. Baby goat can squeeze through them very easily. We have a 2 month nigerian dwarf squeeze out of the bottom panel easy peasy - and she was very hard to catch!

Good to know. These ones are 7 months old alpine/nubian crosses. I imagine they won't be able to sneak out of the panels, right? I hope so! Now I just need to figure out how to get the cattle panels home. I plan to buy a truck this weekend, so I guess I could just wait, but getting 16 foot panels into a 6 foot truck bed sounds difficult!

No they won't! LOL I'm just talking about newborns. And small nigerians or pygmies.

Hmmm... maybe you could pay for them at Lowes or wherever you are going, cut them while you are in the parking lot with bolt cutters, and them load them in. Good idea, right? NO lol

Could you rent a trailer or borrow a friend's?

Do they have horns? Horns with cattle panels don't mix well.

Yah, they have horns. Wuh oh. Am I going back to the drawing board?

My goats have horns and we have always used cattle panels. Never had any problems. It would be pretty darn hard for a goat to get stuck, those cattle panel holes are huge and the goats turn their heads to get out. Not saying it couldn't happen.

They can cut them in half for you with bolt cutters. I have built temporary pens that connect with hinged joints. Sorry, I wish I had a picture to show. Hope this makes sense. I cut mid-way through the horizontal(as opposed to next to the joint). There will be about 3" sticking out on each half panel. I use the hole in the handle of a monkey wrench as a pry tool to bend the wire back to form a loop. Then fit the verticals of the butt end of a panel into the loop and bend closed to form a joint. With 6 plus sections formed into a round pen it's self supporting, but I would recommend T-posts if its a longer term fencing.

Sorry, thats a bit confusing. If you are interested, I'll take some pictures for you tomorrow. I've carried these pens, folded up, in the back of a jeep when I do petting zoo for my child's school. Very durable and portable.

I would definitely like to see pictures. Thanks! How would I rig a door up in such a structure?

The end panels are clipped together with 3 caribiner clips. Oh, and I recommend the taller cattle panels. Hog panels will work for a temporary set up, but I wouldn't trust them if the grass is greener on the other side!

The lady I bought my 2 recent boer bucklings had a handful of goats who continuously got their horns in the panels. They hook one horn into the panel & fight -- pulling & pushing to get their horn loose. She had to tape or tie something across their horns so they couldn't get them into the panels. Not all would put their horns in the panel, but enough for it to be an issue.

I am sure everyone here can think of a story where a goat got its head or horns stuck on something. Had a plastic chair in the yard-- goat was running around with the chair stuck on its head. Oh what a mad goat.

Good point. All of my goats are disbudded. I know a Boer breeder nearby that has given up on cattle panels. His buck entertains himself by popping the joints with his horns, like a kid with bubblewrap!

The cattle panels can be placed on the ends to form a large upside down U in the back of a full sized pick up truck and strapped down for transport. They can also be used tin this way on the ground to make a quick shelter by just adding a tarp. Here's a link to you tube showing how this is done (in this case to make a green house). You shorten them to make a smaller shelter.

A stretch of PVC ductaped to the horns will help with getting them from
sticking their heads through.

I know you're super excited, don't be afraid to walk away if these goats
aren't up to snuff. You don't want to inherit (worse PAY for) someone's problem : /

If you check teeth...don't be afraid -- they don't have
upper teeth!!! I didn't know that for the first 2 years we had them, scared
me to death, lol I felt so silly for not knowing ;)

How are you planning on transporting the goats? We've brought home
every one of ours in the back of our mini van, worked great.

I spoke with them again. They said that we could purchase them and pick them up in a couple of weeks so that we can get fully set up. I guess they purchased a bunch of these kids for their own farm at a discounted rate because they took eight. They only wanted four, so they are selling half of them. Does that sound legit?

We plan to put them in the back of a truck with a cap on it. That is first on my list of things to buy this weekend. Don't worry though, I'm not buying a truck so that I can get goats. I need to buy a truck because we can't get up our street in the snow with our car. Or is it so I can get goats? The world may never know :huh:

Are the goats tested for CAE? Have you run your hands over them to check for CL lumps?

It is really important when bringing new goats on to your land to have the healthiest stock possible. It will cost you more time and money in the long run if you bring home the first "really great deal" that comes down the pike.

Good luck!

I'm going to see them this afternoon. I will check these things then.

Here are pictures of the cattle panel pen. To bend the joints you'll apply pressure to the wrenches in opposite directions (see the second to the last picture). It works really slick, you don't have to be a burly guy to do it. I'm a middle aged woman and I can bend all the joints in a panel in about 15 minutes.

Oh, the last picture is just candy. It keeps us all addicted to reading posts. Like crack for goat people.

Excellent. Thanks! I just went out and dealt with our chickens following the snow storm. I keep them in a very large shed with a 200 sq ft, 8 foot high run around it. The snow is higher up than their entranceway now, and the shed is elevated on concrete blocks. My wife thinks that we should wait until spring to get goats because setting up for them is going to be very difficult in 2 feet of snow. I don't 100% disagree with her. We really want goats, but it seems like the weather isn't right for it. Has anyone else ever bought their first goats in the middle of winter?

Plus, I can't get any calf hutch dealers to return my calls :facepalm:

You're right, its usually not the best time to be in the market. There generally isn't a good selection. Everyone has already sold off what they don't want to keep for the winter and are gearing up for spring kidding. There may be folks out there running out of hay and will put some up for sale to reduce numbers but these will usually be the marginal goats they're rethinking. If you want a doe in milk or a doeling to raise, the best time is mid-spring. Especially for a doe in milk. Breeders have had a chance to see their first fresheners and select the show/production string for the year. They'll be selling older does and FF that don't make the cut. They'll have a good season of milking ahead of them before breeding. And there will be plenty to choose from.

If you need a companion wether they'll be cheap and easy to come by as well. And if you're buying a doeling you might get her brother thrown in for free.

Like gardening, now is a good time to plan. Not so good to plant.