Breeding Goats For Meat – 4 Things You Ought to Know in Raising Goats to Avoid Frustration
Image by Ed Yourdon
Note: this photo was published in an undated (late Aug 2010) blog titled "Boys Basketball Spieler Secret Tipps – Bewahren Sie diese für dich!"
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On my way to dinner at a nearby sushi restaurant the other night, I stopped at a local playground to see if there was anything interesting to photograph. I found that a local community organizer, Darrin Dunn, had raised some contributions to provide uniform-style t-shirts for two competing teams of basketball players in the playground’s court, which has been named "Goat Courts."
Dunn is the CEO of the Earl Manigault Foundation, Inc., and you can reach him by phone at 832-660-1039 if you’d like to offer assistance; he doesn’t have a Website or email address at the moment. The foundation, and the basketball court, are named after the legendary Earl "the Goat" Manigault, who died in 1998 after playing professional basketball in France and Germany. You can learn more about Manigault, the basketball court, and the local tournaments in a July 10, 2009 Black Star News article titled Hope Dreams – Beyond Basketball, which was written by Mitch Ligon, whose chess-playing talents (in the same park) I showed in this Flickr photo.
Anyway, it was an interesting game, with lots of action. I took some 300 shots, and whittled it down to 30 keepers; I’ll upload 10 of them each day, while trying to juggle my other work demands…
Article by Ted Allen
Breeding goats for meat may be the next step to take after successfully establishing your goat farm. After all, continually ordering in fresh batches of animals from the suppliers can become a pricey affair later on. In order to breed meat-producing goats, you need to remember a few things though. For example:
1. Most meat producing breeds (e.g. Boer goats, Spanish goats, etc.) normally mate between the months of August and all the way through March. In order to give you ample time to prepare the does’ nutritional needs and the birthing pen, try to plan exactly when you want the kidding or the birth of the young goats to happen. The usual gestation period of these animals lasts 5 months or 150 days. One way of maximizing your meat production is to try breeding the goats at twice during the mating season.
2. The term “flushing” is essential when it comes to breeding goats for meat. Flushing, or to be more precise: egg flushing simply means putting the does on a better and highly concentrated diet. This helps make the goat produce a bigger litter. Normally, goats produce 1 to 3 kids in one birthing. However, if the flushing is done correctly, the does may produce 4 healthy kids. It is also during the flushing period that female goats are de-wormed and given vaccines to help keep their health up during the gestation period.
3. An additional footnote when it comes to breeding goats for meat: if does are geared to reproduce twice during the mating season, it is very likely that the second litter will only produce 1 to 2 kids. Some goat farmers either choose to have their animals mated twice, or choose the flushing method instead. Combining both methods has proven to be detrimental in all the efforts for breeding goats for meat. Either the population of the goat herd becomes too extensive that the animals become susceptible to disease, or the mother goats’ health is compromised that further birthing for the next few year is almost impossible.
4. Even with all the science and technology available to goat farmers these days, nothing could beat a buck’s (male goat) ability to detect female goats in heat. Investing in one or more buck for your goat farm might be a good idea. Or, you could always ask other goat farmers to “lend” you a male goat 2 weeks before your estimated time when most of the does come in heat.
