[Caprice Acres]

rmiller, perhaps a LIVESTOCK forum where we discuss utility of animals is not in your best interest to participate in. While we welcome people who have goats for pets, we also have a lot of people who use goats for meat and milk. Many of us refuse to sell to pet homes for the well being of the animals - too many times I have dealt with pet homes who passively abuse their animals due to ignorance on how to properly care for them. I would much rather slaughter humanely then send to homes who claim to love them but do not properly care for them. This is and has never claimed to be anything but a livestock forum. If you don't like the idea of discussing slaughter, then feel free to ignore those threads.

 

[Missi]

@jay27: So you have gotten 25-30 pounds of meat off of your wethers?

Thank you for sharing as well as the picture. Do you personally use the hides decoratively, sell them, turn them into things?

It seems like there's a lot of weight differences. From what I've read Nigerian Dwarf goats are supposed to max out around 75 pounds for bucks, does are supposed to be around 40 pounds max. So are your wethers heavier than that since you are getting over 25% meat? Or do your goats have a better dress out percentage?

We just did our first ND wether today. He was 1 1/2 years old. Live weight was about 65lbs. Ended up with about 10 lbs meat (not including bones) but also including liver. That's 4lbs goatburger (mostly from front legs) and 6lbs between back strap, tenderloin, and meat from back legs. We will be using bones for broth.

 

[JRHill02]

We just did our first ND wether today. He was 1 1/2 years old. Live weight was about 65lbs. Ended up with about 10 lbs meat (not including bones) but also including liver. That's 4lbs goatburger (mostly from front legs) and 6lbs between back strap, tenderloin, and meat from back legs. We will be using bones for broth.

That's a lot of work for 4#. We have a Nigerian Billy. He is a pet. A darn stinky one at that, in my opinion. But he has his place and the females are long gone. We only tried the whole thing for milk and cheese. Why would you raise a Nigerian for meat?

 

[RJ2019]

We just did our first ND wether today. He was 1 1/2 years old. Live weight was about 65lbs. Ended up with about 10 lbs meat (not including bones) but also including liver. That's 4lbs goatburger (mostly from front legs) and 6lbs between back strap, tenderloin, and meat from back legs. We will be using bones for broth.

Congratulations! Did you keep the ribs? As you get more comfortable with butchering, you'll find that you can glean more meat off them in the future. It is a lot of work but gets easier after the first one. I've done 3 now...

 

[Pony]

That's a lot of work for 4#. We have a Nigerian Billy. He is a pet. A darn stinky one at that, in my opinion. But he has his place and the females are long gone. We only tried the whole thing for milk and cheese. Why would you raise a Nigerian for meat?

I doubt anyone is planning a large feast off a butchered Nigie, but what else are you going to do with the bucks that are born from your dairy breedings?

Everyone wants to keep the does, but too many bucks cause a problem.

Wether the bucklings, unless you get one that is remarkable, or you need to trade it off to add a little chlorine to your gene pool. Then raise out the rest and butcher when they're ready.

 

[Missi]

That's a lot of work for 4#. We have a Nigerian Billy. He is a pet. A darn stinky one at that, in my opinion. But he has his place and the females are long gone. We only tried the whole thing for milk and cheese. Why would you raise a Nigerian for meat?

It does sound crazy, but we raise Nigerians for milk, so the meat is a by-product. They're a nice smaller breed that my young boys can handle and they're easier to keep fenced in (in my opinion) than larger breeds. This year we had a couple bucklings we couldn't sell so we raised them for meat. It cost us almost nothing extra to raise them as they were rotationally grazed, we did the banding and disbudding ourselves, and they were kept in the same housing and fencing as our bucks.
I did the butchering myself and it took about an hour and a half, including making the goatburger and packaging everything.
If we did 12 goats a year, we'd have enough for our family to eat goat meat 2x a week.

 

[Missi]

Congratulations! Did you keep the ribs? As you get more comfortable with butchering, you'll find that you can glean more meat off them in the future. It is a lot of work but gets easier after the first one. I've done 3 now...

I kept the ribs whole and we plan to smoke them. I kept the back strap whole also. It was so small I just cut off that section of meat and bone and will cook it all together and let the meat slide off.

 

[Pony]

It does sound crazy, but we raise Nigerians for milk, so the meat is a by-product. They're a nice smaller breed that my young boys can handle and they're easier to keep fenced in (in my opinion) than larger breeds. This year we had a couple bucklings we couldn't sell so we raised them for meat. It cost us almost nothing extra to raise them as they were rotationally grazed, we did the banding and disbudding ourselves, and they were kept in the same housing and fencing as our bucks.
I did the butchering myself and it took about an hour and a half, including making the goatburger and packaging everything.
If we did 12 goats a year, we'd have enough for our family to eat goat meat 2x a week.

LOL!

We have had the opposite experience. While it is true that a full-grown Nubian buck can manage to clear a 4' fence when he is in rut (we have electric wire for that now), the mini breeds are Houdinis when it comes to finding their way out of the paddock.

Adorable as heck, easy to tend (just grab and flip to trim hooves!), and not impossible to milk, but ours must have come from a line heavy with escape artist goats.

 

[JRHill02]

LOL!

We have had the opposite experience. While it is true that a full-grown Nubian buck can manage to clear a 4' fence when he is in rut (we have electric wire for that now), the mini breeds are Houdinis when it comes to finding their way out of the paddock.

Adorable as heck, easy to tend (just grab and flip to trim hooves!), and not impossible to milk, but ours must have come from a line heavy with escape artist goats.

Don't you love those hoof scratches all over your pickup?

 

[RJ2019]

Don't you love those hoof scratches all over your pickup?

I do not!!😆

 

[Pony]

Don't you love those hoof scratches all over your pickup?

Funny thing is, we have never had a goat get loose and climb onto one of our vehicles.

We do, however, have multitudinous cat paw prints all over the windshields of every. single. vehicle. LOL

 

[RJ2019]

I took this pic yesterday
Edited: not my vehicle, I know to park WELL away from the hay shed.

 

[JRHill02]

I took this pic yesterday
Edited: not my vehicle, I know to park WELL away from the hay shed.

It happened once. Of course it was the young Billy and he was in the back of the pickup when we caught him. No problem at that point but a pen went up real fast. We had stuff we wanted him to tend to running loose but he had to show his true colors first.

Nigerians are just cute little things. They wouldn't do those big goat things....