Depends. The "mini silky fainters" bred solely for flashy colors, blue eyes, small size and long hair - are just about as useless as they sound. Pets only. (Slaughterhouses do NOT like long hair animals and will often not accept or severely discount price)
Myotonics bred for a purpose can be very prolific, fast growing, great mothers. The does are medium size (efficient) and the kids are heavily muscled.
My dream meat herd includes myotinic blood.
A good example would be the Onion Creek Ranch herd which I believe is both crossbred and purebred myotonics.
Depends. The "mini silky fainters" bred solely for flashy colors, blue eyes, small size and long hair - are just about as useless as they sound. Pets only. (Slaughterhouses do NOT like long hair animals and will often not accept or severely discount price)
Myotonics bred for a purpose can be very prolific, fast growing, great mothers. The does are medium size (efficient) and the kids are heavily muscled.
My dream meat herd includes myotinic blood.
A good example would be the Onion Creek Ranch herd which I believe is both crossbred and purebred myotonics.
Thanks, the reason I ask is that I am building my meat herd and there seem to be an awful lot of them available locally. I wouldn't use a buck, just does.
I raise Myotonics, fainters, wooden legs or Tennessee fainting goats.
They have lots of names, they are VERY harty breed, rarely do they get sick, built in safety factor, wont jump on anything or well they pass out. its almost annoying you go to feed them they get excited and you'll trip over them because they faint. But that is coming from a breeders point of view.
Caprice is right it all depends. Are you looking for meat goat or the more fancy "mini silky fainters" who are only bred for their flashy colors, blue eyes, small size and long hair look like they are wearing a skirt (that is a pet). They are about as useless as they sound. Most people who are looking for meat goat what the short hair not long. Fainting goats are fast growing, sometimes good at being motherly (I have two bottle babys because momma didn't like them not a FF). The does are medium size (50lbs ish) the kids are heavily muscled at birth they are about 5lbs. The bucks get about 75lbs ish they all get REALLY pretty horns, very impressive looking. Sorry for the rambling..
My fainters are much hardier than any other breeds raised by my circle of friends. Mine weigh about 90 pounds at maturity. They all have a little bit of brush goat and a smidgeon of Nubian in their background. They haven't been wormed in a couple of years and the Famacha test shows they don't need it.
My buck, Little Man, was used to impart greater worm tolerance and a higher meat-to-bone ratio to a herd of Kikos and a larger herd of Boers. The Boers had a loss rate of around 20% of all kids due to worms. The kids from the Little Man crosses had loss rates of 5%.
The Kikos were much more worm tolerant than the Boers before crossing. They were never wormed, and suffered small losses due to worms each year. That was acceptable to the owner and was part of his plan to breed for higher worm tolerance. He added Little Man to 40 of his does, and was impressed with the results. Apparently the miotonia causes the kids to muscle up better. He occasionally got Grade 2 kids at market with his Kikos, but the crosses had a much higher rate of Grade 2's. The crossed kids took 2 weeks longer to bring them to 70 pound market weight, but the increased prices for the higher grades more than paid for the difference.
He is one of the goat people who come to visit me once in a while. He never fails to remark about how fat my goats are. He usually picks out one and says, "I'd like to eat that one!"
They are the same as any other. If they are bred by an actual breeder who has had goats for more than five minutes, they might be able to fulfill the criteria they were being bred for. With proper management and proper culling, of course. If that set of criteria included blue eyes and flashy colors or some other fanciful trait, usually they won't be good for much else. Beware the claims of hardiness from people who haven't had goats long enough to load their soil with coccidia and parasites, they may be very empty claims. Remember "mini" anything usually includes Nigerian dwarf, and up until very recently the main criteria they were bred for was large carnivore food, so not much emphasis on anything other than being prolific.
I have always felt it scary to have something that just keels over so I have avoided the Mytonics. There are actually two dwarf goats - the original dwarf goat of Africa known as the pygmy and the split off from the pygmies - the Nigerian Dwarfs. The pygmy became the small meat goat and the Nigerians became the milk goats.
I had read where the mytonics were good as meat goats and that surprised me as I had always thought it was just the fainting that attacked people to them. I had no idea they had a read purpose. Regardless I do not feel that they are the right goat for me as I love watching my little goats run, jump and play. I could not imagine a goat that could not do that but I wonder if that is why they make a good meat goat.
I have always felt it scary to have something that just keels over so I have avoided the Mytonics. There are actually two dwarf goats - the original dwarf goat of Africa known as the pygmy and the split off from the pygmies - the Nigerian Dwarfs. The pygmy became the small meat goat and the Nigerians became the milk goats.
I had read where the mytonics were good as meat goats and that surprised me as I had always thought it was just the fainting that attacked people to them. I had no idea they had a read purpose. Regardless I do not feel that they are the right goat for me as I love watching my little goats run, jump and play. I could not imagine a goat that could not do that but I wonder if that is why they make a good meat goat.
My concern right now is building a meat herd and there seem to be a lot available. I would not breed to a myotonic buck and would eventually cull any fainters when my herd gets up to size.
Myotonia gene also leads to an increased muscle mass of the animals. I'm not sure that will persist with ongoing outcrossing if you cull the myotonia trait, as I believe it's the cause of the heavier muscling. It's not a true double muscling, but I think it has to do with muscle stimulation/contractility leading to an inherently larger myofiber. I'd have to look it up to know exactly. Moral of the story, the myotonic blood would likely still have good influences such as hardiness, prolificacy once the myotonia is bred out. A good medium size to your brood does would also mean that they take up less space and spend less feed energy on maintaining an overly large frame, while still being able to be bred to a terminal sire (boer, most likely) and raise kids with exceptional growth and frame size. However, don't expect them to be the traditional myotonic 'bubble butts' (as I like to call them) with the heavy muscling that the breed is known for, if you breed out the myotonia.
My ideal doe would always be a myotonic/dairy/kiko/spanish (would love to play with the percentages to see what I love best), ideally a medium size animal that is prolific and heavy milking. These would then be crossed to a terminal sire (boer) for frame and meat size/quality. Boer marked kids sell better/more valueable too, just like black beef calves sell better than other colors due to the Angus branding.
Myotonia gene also leads to an increased muscle mass of the animals. I'm not sure that will persist with ongoing outcrossing if you cull the myotonia trait, as I believe it's the cause of the heavier muscling. It's not a true double muscling, but I think it has to do with muscle stimulation/contractility leading to an inherently larger myofiber. I'd have to look it up to know exactly. Moral of the story, the myotonic blood would likely still have good influences such as hardiness, prolificacy once the myotonia is bred out. A good medium size to your brood does would also mean that they take up less space and spend less feed energy on maintaining an overly large frame, while still being able to be bred to a terminal sire (boer, most likely) and raise kids with exceptional growth and frame size. However, don't expect them to be the traditional myotonic 'bubble butts' (as I like to call them) with the heavy muscling that the breed is known for, if you breed out the myotonia.
My ideal doe would always be a myotonic/dairy/kiko/spanish (would love to play with the percentages to see what I love best), ideally a medium size animal that is prolific and heavy milking. These would then be crossed to a terminal sire (boer) for frame and meat size/quality. Boer marked kids sell better/more valueable too, just like black beef calves sell better than other colors due to the Angus branding.
Three way cross is the way to go. You get maternal heterosis. Make some boer nubian crosses. Meaty large framed does that milk, and stay in three strands of electric. Top them with a saanen. Meaty, large framed kids that get huge in a hurry, look enough like a boer to bring a premium. Sell them while they still have milk fat. Don't keep any as replacements. You can't get predictable outcomes out of mutt goats, without a lifetime creating a composite breed. Two and three way crosses can make very predictable outcomes. Some of these so called breeds are nothing but a three way cross that somebody looked at the performance of, and decided to keep the terminal mutt babies, or convinced the breeder to sell as breeding stock. The same results will never be attained, but because the parent stock performed so well, people just assume that previous performance will carry them, and sometimes it just ain't so.
You could if your goal was to grade back up to boer if you wanted. Boer goats have an american and purebred registry, and you can register percentages which, depending on the lines, can be very valuable.
Personally, I'd breed a myotonic buck to a kiko/savannah/dairy (some percentage of some/all of those) and cross that resulting doe kid back to a boer. If you breed a 50% boer back to a boer (resulting in 75% kids) you'd loose some of the maternal traits you selected for in the original cross, as well as decrease the vigor from the outcross. Using a boer buck is called TERMINAL because the end result is that all the kids would go for meat. I would personally suggest using myotonic does and a boer buck, not boer does and a myotonic buck. You're hoping for the prolificacy and hardiness in the doe herd, not the buck as the does are the ones popping out the kids and milking. You can often fit 30 medium size goats in an area that would otherwise hold 20 large breeds, you'd get more kids, and you'd benefit from the hardier breed or cross being the majority of your herd instead of a less-thrifty breed (boer). The boer sire ads back the muscling and growth rate hopefully, while multiples means the kids have a low birth weight but then grow well. The boers are known to be highly susceptible to parasites, so hopefully by creating highly crossbred kids, the hybrid vigor both of the dam (helps with parasite/pathogen resistance, prolificacy, and milk production) AND the kids (2-3 way cross) themselves will help protect them from parasites during the growing period.
Though a triplet kid will always be smaller than a single, I'd rather have 90lbs of kids to wean (three 30lb kids) than a single 50lb kid, wouldn't you? "BIG" is always visually impressive to us as humans, but is meaningless if we aren't actually putting out more meat. I'd like prolific hardy does for a main commercial herd.
My experience with goats, albeit short, only the last twenty years or so, would indicate that kids are poor at converting pasture to marketable pounds. Compared to things like steers or hogs they aren't real great at converting grain into marketable pounds. The cheapest weight you will get put on a kid will come from his momma. That is why I like a dairy breed crossed on something meaty for a brood doe. The more compact and meaty lines of Nubian or Lamancha that don't milk real heavy and have high butterfat can add some very valuable genetics to a commecrial nannie. Throw a bunch of big framed kids on the ground and fill them out with milk and then put them on the truck. If they look like the boer brand it is great, but there doesn't have to be a speck of boer there to get a premium. Hold kids with too much dairy for too long, and they will turn more raily looking and you will loose some money, but with proper management you can do OK with pure dairy.
Look at the savannas. They are just a composite breed. When they shined was when they were still a composite, riding that hybrid vigor wave, just like any other composite breed of anything. Now, results may vary. Doesn't matter, the name recognition is there and you can sell breeding stock for good money and they don't have to perform. Or one breeder might hold them to a strict level of performance and the next guy has goats with the same kind of registration papers that just won't cut it. Build your own composites. Take a hint from the cattle industry. Put a boer over nubians or a lamancha over myotonics, keep the does and ship the bucks. Put the longest legged saanen or alpine you can find over those does and you will have huge fast growing kids on hardy mothers.
Keep the pygmies away. They make management a nightmare (won't stay in) and even though you might have the same poundage of a bunch of small kids, some buyers just won't bid on them. They know they won't yield good and make a cut of meat that looks familiar to people that buy goat meat, and it is a little runt that would be an embarrassment in a sacrificial context. Understand your markets, and watch those markets, see what the nigerian weanlings sell for compared to dairy mutts of the same age.
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