I want to keep goat(s) for milk, but from what I hear you need to mate them each year for them to produce milk. What is the most feasible way to do this? Get a male goat?
What do I do with their kids?
Introduce a brown recluse as a breeding partner for the goat.
>What is the most feasible way to do this?
AI
>What do I do with their kids?
Eat them. Or sell them to hungry people.
>>2023293
>AI
What?
>Eat them. Or sell them to hungry people.
Sounds good. Could always feed them to my other pets as well.
>>2023295
>What?
Artificial insemination. Male goats stink and make everything around them stink.
>>2023298
Thanks.
>>2023282
You could always find someone with a billy and breed yours to it, even if they charged a stud fee it would be cheaper than AI. Should be easy, ask whoever you get your doe from.
Just fuck the living shit out of the goat and spread your sweet nectar all up in that ass op. N then you can have milk whenever you want
You know you can just buy your bags of milk at the grocery store like a normal person, right OP?
>>2025478
My dream was always to have a homestead
>>2023282
AI is incredibly unreliable; it's probably cheaper and more reliable to rent a male for whatever week(s) your girls are in heat, and then you don't have to deal with the stench during the rest of the year.
As far as the babies are concerned, you can eat them or raise them and then sell/eat them. Raising them gives the potential for you to sell the ones that come out structurally well, but also requires that you feed them for however long they stay with you.
Pic somewhat related, goats I've worked with.
>>2025536
Thanks, lad. Do male goat kids stink as well, or is that only when after they become adults?
>>2025543
Well males stink because they piss all over themselves, and the youngest I've seen that at is ~4-5 monhts of age? So it happens pretty soon, but you'd have a little bit of time where they're still cute. It's pretty apparent which kids are males vs. females, so if you wanted to you could just make meat of the boys and keep the girls around to see how they turn out structurally, which I think is the general policy of most dairy farms.
>>2023282
Were abouts are you located, do people in your area raise goats?
Personally, I raise about 30 oberhasli goats, and I have had people like you come to get bred rather than own their own buck. AI is dumb unless you are super into genetics, and good at it, and keeping your tank charged will cost you an arm and a leg
as for their kids, the greeks love them for greek easter, mexicans will buy them when they get a tad older.
>>2023298
It is true, but the worser thi g than their smell is their attitude, my family used to make goats for selling, and the billy-goat was aggressive, it even rammed againist a car and left a fucking dent on it.
>>2023282
goats will lactate for about 2-7 years after first giving birth.
you don't have to let them mate but you should watch their diet because they will get fat faster than goats that breed every year
>>2027957
2-7 years? Got a source for that? I thought it was once every year.
>>2023282
billies aren't so much aggressive as they are smelly and destructive in their quest to get at the girls. Look for someone who is willing to rent out their boys for stud. Make sure your goats and theirs don't carry communicable diseases like CAE or CL. AI is trickier in goats than in cows.Breed your girls to a meat buck (boer or similar) for at least their first kidding- babies are smaller at birth so easier on mom for her first time and makes the decision of what to do easier on you. You don't want your herd expanding 2-300% in the first year when you dont know what you are doing.
Goats are not easy to keep for newbies. I recommend helping out at a local goat farm for a while to get a crash course in husbandry and reading some books before you get them.
>>2027259
most bucks aren't aggressive unless you treat them poorly or train them badly.
>>2027957
they can continue to lactate but production suffers. Most places will breed every year or two at the most. If your doe's been lactating for months a diet change or sickness could kill production.
