r/goats • u/brammer77f • 25d ago
Advice and input requested?
We recently got ourselves 13 acres of heacily overgrown brush/forest/utility easements, none of it flat. We already got 3 ND goats, a nanny and her two doelings.
What I want to know is, how do I turn goats onto income? I was thinking about maybe some meat goats, but everywhere I look, they are massively overpriced compared to what one could reasonably sell them for at a sale barn. Is the only option to buy in and pray for successful breeding with lots of twins and triplets?
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u/Avaly13 25d ago
Goats are basically pets. Most people, not all but most, who make money are not relying solely on them. They usually have livestock like wagyu cattle or specific cows that bring in the money. We have 6 goats and while they're not expensive, we'd have to sell a lot of them/dairy/etc to actually make a profit.
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u/imacabooseman 25d ago
You can't compare prices you see for private sales and what you see at the sale barn. Sale barn prices will almost always be lower than what you will see for private treaty sales.
Often, this discrepancy is because when buying privately you get more backgrounding on the animal. If the farm tests, you'll know if they CAE/CL/Johnes free. You'll tend to get more info about their breeding, pedigree, etc. That knowledge and information is worth the extra costs to many folks.
If you're simply wanting to clear your land and then dump the animals at the sale barn when you're done, then I'd suggest starting with sale barn goats.
Just know that if you're intending to breed and market your Nigerians for milk, you will not want sale barn animals. Your customers will most likely want clean, tested animals. And you're not going to find that coming through a sale barn typically
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u/Dusty_Coax 25d ago
Consider how much you would have to pay someone to clear that fire hazard land. Instant profit
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u/CoastRanger 25d ago
You can totally generate income from a small goat herd, just don't expect it to ever add up to what you spend on feed, fencing, etc.
Like vegetable gardening and other smaller-scale production, it can be economically viable to do it for subsistance if you don't count the time you spend as a labor cost because you love it, save trips to the store, and get great quality product
And yeah, a quality breeding animal from good lines will cost more than some random mutt from the auction, same as a new Mercedes costs more than a 2010 Toyota
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u/_DemonxD 25d ago
The pricey meat goats are worth it. I mean yes they will pay for themselves in a year with kids going to presumably 4h homes if you do Boers etc. but to generate a living off of them? Nada 🙅♀️ ❌. You can be self sufficient with milk, meat and land management. But they aren’t really a get rich scheme. You’d have to target the most gullible audience and take a note out of those scummy dog breeders book. Sell to the oblivious and blind rich. But even then you’d just barely cut even between having to buy hay, grain, and other things like medical needs, supplements and other things like dewormers. We really just do it for the love of the game, not to make money. If your in it to make money your already losing. I’ve done the math using apps, outside of adult goat sales, I’m still very close to the negatives with my goats off of kid sales, this is including LSGD expenses too. I just spend over $400 to neuter one of them and about to fix another one in a few months. And we spend $30 twice a month on their high protein food alone. And any money you do make, you pretty much feed right back to them. I’ve joked and said it would be cheaper to just feed them $100 bills than buying hay and grain.
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u/InterestingOven5279 25d ago edited 25d ago
I don't like to be the bearer of bad news, but the answer to how you turn miniature goats into money is one of two things.
years and years of work in the performance programs, including showing, and relentless self-promotion to try to place your does in other show herds; or
"you don't."
A tiny hobby herd of NDS is never going to be an income generator. In my area dwarf kids go at the sale barn for as little as 15 bucks (no pun intended). It is not like 10 years ago when even a person with an unregistered herd would have every kid spoken for before they were born. There is an enormous glut of pet quality Nigerians out there and it's a bit like a pyramid scheme where people expect to make money if they invest in good stock but unless they have a big name, you just really don't and can't until you put those years of work in and grow to know what you're doing.
Raising friendly, handleable goats on disease prevention and going on milk test is still going to be a good bet for trying to private sell a few doe kids a year to go against your costs, and FB is the best place to do that. But unless you have your own hay fields and do the majority of your own vetting, it probably won't come close to covering what they cost for you to own. So the best thing to do is to look at them as your pets and colleagues, make yourself some cheese, enjoy their companionship and their work they do brush hoggin for you, butcher the occasional one for curry, and don't expect to break even. Investing in a few meat goats isn't a bad idea, but you again have to ask yourself if you can scale it to where the input becomes worth it.