Goat farming income?

[tradcath5]

This probably sounds silly, but I am new to farming (just bought 3.5 acres) and was wondering if a family can make a living by raising goats? If so, how, what breed and how many etc...

Thanks in advance for any info....

Kelly

[Phred]

I thought abou this also but have to friends who quit doing it.
Two reaons:
1) fences
2) coyote candy

Be careful that all your profits are not eaten or run away to greener grass before being eaten.

Fred

[Stoneheartfarm]

Probably, there's a dairy near here that milks 140 does a day. They make a living, but it's a lot of hard, hard work.

I've had people tell me they are making money off breeding, but from what I can see that's pretty tough too. (Money, yes, but a living?)

Goats make good pets and you can sell a little milk on the side and perhaps a kid or two. If you get into it, check with a farm vet first, to find out what kind of testing is necessary.

Steve

[Conservative1]

We have 10 acres. We have this divided into two fields, one is 3.5 acres, one is 5.5 acres, and an acre for the yard. We bought 5 nanny goats (1 alpine-nubian cross, one nubian something else cross, 2 that I'm not sure what their breeds are. Our Billy is a Boer. We had 350 invested in our original herd (150 for the Billy, about 40 each on average for each nanny). We had our first kids last month- 9 were born, 6 survived. One more nanny is due to kid soon. We plan to sell the little billy kids this fall, and keep the new nannies to increase the size of our herd. Our goal is to have 20-30 nannies and one or two billys by May 2005. We have gone from 5 to 8 nannies already with one set of births
We have goats for three reasons. Mainly, to have something to sell for the tax break, and to enjoy the farming experience while hopefully breaking even soon (3 years).
We also have rather rough land- lots of rock, gullies, and brush that these goats will do a nice job of keeping down when there are a few more of them.

We can probably sell the billys for 75 each this fall. We sold one billy for 60 last fall. We have three right now to raise. So, year one, we lost 290 dollars just on stock investment. Year two, we will likely be 10 bucks ahead of our original investment just in stock. Year 3, we hope to do a little better than that, though we will have to buy a new billy this fall (can't do inbreeding).
Overall, I don't plan to ever make enough to live on, when you factor in fencing costs (600 last year for fencing repairs, gates, and stall repairs), feed costs(hay in the winter, a little grain all year, especially nursing does, salt and mineral blocks- 500 in the past 12 months). fuel (bushhogging the areas they don't control as well as trips to town for feed, medical supplies, hauling them for sales ect., as well as time spent caring for them (two or three hours a month on average)
We are also looking at raising Boer goats exclusively later on. These require a larger up front investment, but are more in demand and bring higher prices at sale. We plan to use the breeding of these goats we have now to fund that shift in three years.
Over all, we MIGHT break even on goats financially in a few years, once the herd is built up enough, or possibly make a small profit. However, the rewards of raising them make it all worth it to us. I enjoy wrestling that billy at foot trimming time, and we enjoy watching them grow and play.

I'm not trying to discourage you up front, I just doubt you'll come out ahead anytime really soon on 3 acres unless you plan to market goat products and spend the time to produce them. You could make goat cheese, soaps, or raise Angora goats and sell the fiber. We don't plan to do this as we don't have that much time. If you do, you might have better luck at it financially sooner.
If you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them if I can.
C1

[ljh2]

Kelly,

I'd highly doubt that you could make much of a profit let alone an income raising goats on 3.5 acres. You just don't have enough grazeable land to support many critters. Feed will cost you enough to keep your chances of profit pretty slim.

Not that raising them doesn't have a benefit in itself, but in purely financial terms, it probably isn't profitable. If you have a really cheap source feed and can get your starter stock for cheap, then maybe it could be profitable.

Educational?- Yes
Profitable?- Maybe
Make a living at it? - Unlikely

[Stoneheartfarm]

C1, you have written an excellent illustration.

If you could sell all of your babies for $100 each, how many do you have to sell to make a living? Answer: An awful lot.

Similarly, with milking, if you can get $8.00 a gallon for the milk, (it'll be less than that wholesale to the truck), how many gallons do you need to make a living? Answer: An awful lot.

Of course, a lot depends on what you consider to be "a living". I know some familes around here who get by a year on less than 6k.

BTW, C1 let me know how the alpine/nubian/boer cross does. I can't imagine a 300 pound Alpine. [img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] Our Alpines are way too active to be that big. I don't think I could handle them by myself. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

Steve

[RichZ]

My wife and I are in the process of establishing a goat dairy. We intend to eventually be milking at least 100 does. We are working on finding the simplest market, which would be to selll the milk to a cheese manufacturer. We are also exploring other markets for goat milk and goat milk products.

We intend to make our living off of our farm within the next few years, but the goat dairy will not be our ONLY source of farm income. We already have a free range egg business, that we will be greatly expanding this year. This year we are also establishing a breeding herd for heritage breed pigs, with our friend Cindi's help. We are also trying to get enough various types of berries and other fruits established to sell, and more types of livestock will follow.

We have done extensive research on our farming enterprise, and the most solid advice I can give to any other budding farmers, like ourselves, is NOT to put all of your eggs in one basket (pun intended! [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] ). In order to survive in today's economy, our research shows that a farm must be diverse, and that's what we're trying to do.

[GrandpaJohn]

Goat ranching, homesteading, small farming, give intangible payoffs. Someone who achieves "star/celebrity" status[someone who is incredibly talented, persevering, able to muck out a goat barn in a single bound] might get financially rich, the rest of us get rich too for trying.

Face it-if you wake up alive, have a reasonable day, no terrorists to do gruesome things to you, have something to eat-you're pretty blessed. Now if you have a computer with a good connection, a fun forum to enjoy people who are doing and talkin' about it-you're pretty close to the lotto payoff! [img]/forums/images/icons/smirk.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Daughter April the Mighty Goat Rancher is sloowwly building her herd up, with a nice Alpine buck, doe culled from a milking herd after she produced only one kid, dropped off her production from gold star status. Since then she's had multiple births for the past few years, given good milk production, been pleasant company. Her offspring are excellent.

The educational payoff is tremendous, no major financial breakthroughs, we just keep muddlin' through, glad we did it.

National Geographic describes genetically modified goats that give milk for spider web production. Spider web is the strongest stuff in the world, they just can't get enough of it. I took a surveying class with military surveyors from Ft. Belvoir. They bred black widow spiders for the spider web to make cross hairs for older survey instruments. Obviously small volume enterprise.

Now the potential for super production for spider web cables is on the horizon. The only problem is the goat's habit change. How would you like to get bitten by one of these critters? And how would you like to look up in the rafters and see your best milker dangling from a web strand, catching flies? Sounds like it's time for a rewrite of Charlotte's Web.

Grandpa John-just..when you thought it was safe to go back on the internet..duhdant..duhdant..duhdant..

[RichZ]

I agree with what you're saying, GrandpaJohn. You're not gonna get rich with farming, but if you're careful, lucky and do it right, you can make a living off of it. And that's what we intend to do. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[GrandpaJohn]

I'd like to make some sense out of my previous rambling.

Like Rich says, we can make a living if we do it right. The spider web goat's milk thing seems like a long shot, for a wealthy breeder or a big agribiz outfit, even if you could see it as being ethically and morally proper-fooling around with genetics, sort of a Young Frankenstein type of scenario, all that...

I have a question regarding the economics of goat husbandry. Would the Angoras and Cashmeres be more economically productive? The dollars and sense seems to the added income from mohair. Minuses seem to be added labor costs.

Our 4H advisor raised Angoras in the past, now favors Alpines. There must be a reason-guess I oughta ask her too. [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

John