# Working on our future farmette



## Nachoqtpie (Dec 4, 2011)

So, my husband and I are planning to have our own 20 acre farmette when he gets out of college. We want to do goats for milk, cattle for meat, chickens for eggs and meat, garden, orchard and beehives and probably some other random stuff as well. 

We want some suggestions on breeds of goats (and cattle) for our farm. We want to NOT grain feed, but, are willing to do some grain for the goats for milk production. Also, should we split up the goats and the cattle since they will have different fencing requirements and we want to keep them semi-close for milking? Since we're wanting to mostly feed the goats grass, how many can we keep on an acre? I've heard 3, and we would like to have 2 does and a buck along with a kid until weaned and sold. Should we do 2 separate 1 acre enclosures and switch so they can have something to eat in "winter?" (We live in southern NC, and want to go no farther north than Raleigh NC, but would like to go a bit more south, no farther south that mid-GA tho) Are these too many questions and details?! 

I do have questions about cattle breeds as well.... but I'll post over in the cattle section for those. I really appreciate any help that all of you experts could provide! I really like the La Mancha goats because of their precious little faces, but we're not dead set on that breed. Any breed recommendations?

ETA: Sorry if this isn't in the right topic, I didn't know where else to put it!


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## SmallFarmGirl (Dec 4, 2011)

Great Questions !! I don't really have that much experience but I will say I love Nigerians .. They produce a good amount of milk and are small and eat little .... Great breed if you want to start small !!!!!!!!  And


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## Nachoqtpie (Dec 4, 2011)

Thank you for the welcome! 

Those goats are ADORABLE!!! If we do go with the Nigerians, how many could we do per acre with almost exclusive grass feeding?

Our goal is to be as self-sufficient as possible, and we REALLY don't want to feed corn!


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## MrsDieselEngineer (Dec 4, 2011)

Are you going to be looking for milk goats or are you also interested in meat?  Remember you don't have to go with just one breed, you could have a Boer (or other meat breed) and an Oberhasli (or other dairy breed).  One to give you good meat kids and the other milk, the buck could be dairy or meat and still produce productive kids.


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## SmallFarmGirl (Dec 4, 2011)

You can breed nigerians with pygmies to produce a milk and good meat goat .. in a compact size . I hear a lot of people do that .. I can not A your Q though ...


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## Nachoqtpie (Dec 4, 2011)

I don't know that I would want to eat goats.... I've never tried goats meat! What does it taste like? 

One thing I DO know is... we shant have pigs!! *shudder* I'm not a fan of pork... at all!


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## MrsDieselEngineer (Dec 4, 2011)

Goat meat tastes like.... mmmm.... it's stronger than beef but not as gamey as venison.  Not at all like lamb either.... lol  that's clear right?


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## Nachoqtpie (Dec 4, 2011)

As clear as mud! 

We really like Venison as well, so, maybe we would like goat? I like Elk, Venison, Moose, and Caribou meat. I guess it wouldn't be too far of a stretch for goats?


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## SmallFarmGirl (Dec 4, 2011)

I've never had goat meat but I know Elevan can give you some info on Pygerians ( nigerian & pygmy mix )


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## marlowmanor (Dec 4, 2011)

LivingWrightFarms also has pygerians I believe. I have 2 pygerian wethers myself but I can't tell you about their meat or milking abilities.


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## Nachoqtpie (Dec 4, 2011)

I look forward to reading everyones insight and suggestions about breeds, housing, fencing, the whole lot! 

We had goats when I was really young, and all I know is we either shut them in the barn or they were in the weeds and had horrible tasting milk for a couple days after that! My sisters would take them out on leads and let them graze for a few hours a day. I remember the kids pulling me on a sleigh when it was winter time. And I remember yummy yummy milk! (Most of the time anyways... LOL)


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## SmallFarmGirl (Dec 4, 2011)

Nachoqtpie said:
			
		

> I look forward to reading everyones insight and suggestions about breeds, housing, fencing, the whole lot!
> 
> We had goats when I was really young, and all I know is we either shut them in the barn or they were in the weeds and had horrible tasting milk for a couple days after that! My sisters would take them out on leads and let them graze for a few hours a day. I remember the kids pulling me on a sleigh when it was winter time. And I remember yummy yummy milk! (Most of the time anyways... LOL)


horrible tasting milk is possible if feed bad foods or stored in the wrong container .. then it can be flavored ... We tasted Nigerians  milk .. YUM . It tastes like cow milk !! It was such a shock !!! So creamy and kind of sweet but not to much .. no sour flavors ..  this lovely creamy taste made me think of FRESH FARM MILK ... YUM .....


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## Nachoqtpie (Dec 4, 2011)

We had some nasty weeds where I grew up. I can't remember what they were (I was really young... like 3-5 years old) but I remember my mom saying "The goats got out again girls! The milk is going to taste like $&!* for the next couple days." If I remember right they got some goat feed that we got from the mill in town and it was always stored in an aluminum can with a giant rock on the lid. Never know tho... that was a couple of years ago...


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## BetterHensandGardens (Dec 4, 2011)

A 20 acre farmette after college is a wonderful thing to be planning!  Wooded "browse" type pastures are better for goats whereas grass pastures are good for cattle.  So, ideally you'd have woody pastures for the goats and grass pastures for the cattle.  You have a very good idea to plan for "rotational" pastures, so that when one pasture gets grazed down, you can rotate the stock into another pasture.  Also, I'd plan more than one acre of pasture in each rotational pasture area.   The other thing that rotating pasture can help with is keeping the parasite loads down in the goats and cattle.  

We're currently doing goats for milk (Nigerian Dwarf), chickens for eggs and meat (Red Comets and Buckeyes), garden, orchard, and beehives - but ours is only a 10 acre farmette and it's a little colder here.


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## Blue Dog Farms (Dec 4, 2011)

We have Lamanchas and Pygerians. For milk we use our Lamanchas, though I love the taste of our Pygerians girls milk. Lamanchas produce nicely and have great temperment, very sweet natured and the Pygerians are very cute, but pushy. Good Luck with your Farm, we have chickens too and nothing compares to a farm fresh egg,    As for goat meat I cant help you there, never tried it.


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## that's*satyrical (Dec 4, 2011)

I would love to eventually get some honey bee hives. What is the best way to go about doing that? What do you have to be careful of with them?

I agree with loving the Nigies. They are the sweetest & coolest animals & the milk is a great bonus


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## autumnprairie (Dec 4, 2011)

,
I have boer goats for meat and I am getting alpine/ nubian mix dairy goats for cheese and milk, I also has the sweet Nigerians that I had first, which I need to convincethat I am utilizing them too so I can keep them. .
I also raise meat goats and chickens for eggs. I only live on a 1/2 acre but I am using an additional 1/4 acre where our Manufactured home is. ( Our DS and his family currently living in).
 I too want to become self sufficient. Mother Earth News had a really good article on it in October I think but it was for a whole acre.
Everyone here is great I hope you sign up for some of the sites that they have listed at the bottom of the page.


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## Nachoqtpie (Dec 5, 2011)

Hey thanks guys! 

I'm not quite sure how you would go about start a bee colony, but, here they have a beekeepers club, and free classes on how to start your own colony. I think I'm going to join both of those. I'm not sure if we will be able to do any hives here on our little lot, but maybe! I just worry about putting all of this stuff up and then the next owners not caring and all the bees dying and stuff. I imagine that we COULD take them with us, but I have no idea how you would go about moving a complete hive to a new location! LOL

BetterHens... I remember coooold Ohio winters!! I complain if it gets below 50 now!!  

So, what I'm getting mostly from you guys is that we should try ether LaMancha or Nigerians? For our eggs I think we're going to get some Easter Eggers. Since we're only looking for eggs, why not get some pretty ones? When we go for a combo bird I think we might mix some EEs with some meat chickens and get our own strain? Who knows... LOL All I know is that those EEs look SO cute and I want some blue eggs...


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## 20kidsonhill (Dec 5, 2011)

I suspect once you raise a couple goats, and give goat meat a try, you are going to really like it a lot.  I have met very few people who don't like goat meat, It is very very healthy for you and your growing family. Butchering the goats on your own is easier than a big cow, very very similar to butchering a 80 to 90lb deer.  It is very similar to venison, Not as gamey, especially since you would be butchering younger goats that you raised compared to butchering  a buck(deer)  that has been running wild in the woods. 

My husband dosn't like goat meat, but he doesn't like venison or any gamey meat at all. 

As far as the dairy breeds of goats, we don't milk. We are lazy and don't care to commit ourselves to the daily chore of milking. But from what I have been learning and reading about. 
You would first want to think about the overall size of dairy goat that you want to deal with. 

Nigerians are very very popular, seem quit hardy, but will give less milk than the bigger breeds and can have smaller udder and teats to milk, unless you are very very picky about the blood-lines you choose to buy. Nigerians are actually considered a meat/dairy breed, but again they aren't real big.  They are said to get fat on air, and seem to be very easy keepers. 

The bigger breeds will offer you larger quantitites of milk and hopefully larger teats to handle when milking, but they do eat more and require a lot more calories to maintain their overall body size. You will get larger kids, but dairy breeds in general don't have a lot of meat on them, even if they have larger frames. Even though butchering a 8 to 9 month old kid is fairly easy you wouldn't get much meat off of most dairy breeds. 

Keeping dairy does and breeding them to a boer buck is popular and will add some meat to the kids for butchering. But if you are wanting to keep replacement doelings to increase your herd numbers, you would then have 50% dairy and 50% boer(meat) doelings, As soon as you add boer to your blood-lines you will cut way back on the amount of time the doe will milk for. Lets say a good dairy doe will milk for 10 months of the year a boer dairy cross doe may only milk for 5 or 6 months before drying up and needing to be rebred. boer goat milk is very good and if purchasing a boer goat with a good udder history they can be quit easy to milk, But meat goats aren't raised for their udder qualities so one must be careful about choosing meat goats with good udders, nice sized teats, teats with good orifices, and no extra teats. How ever regardless on how wonderful a meat goat's udder is and how much milk is initially produces, or how easy she is to milk, she will not produce milk nearly as long as a dairy breed will. Technically, though one could have 4 to 6 boer does and rotate when they kid so you have a doe in milk all the time. Meat goats are NOT seasonal breeders they cycle every 21 days and can easily be bred any time of year. Many dairy breeds are seasonal breeders and often times can only be bred in late summer and fall. Although there are exceptions to the rule and I have herd of seasonal breeders breeding other times of year. 

If wanting to do a cross breed, you will need to make sure your does are a big enough breed type to beable to handle cross-breeding to your buck, The rule of thumb is to make sure your does are as big a breed or bigger than the buck breed.  Alpines and Nubians are very commonly cross bred with boer bucks. and infact it is common for either cross breed to be used for show whethers at 4H in meat goat classes. Often having 88%boer and 12% nubian or alpine in them. 

You mentioned having children, so I thought I would throw in the possibility of 4H and showing for your family. Not all areas  offer the same opportunities for showing in 4H and FFA. For example our county fair only has meat goat shows and not any dairy breed shows for the kids, however the county over has breed shows in 4H for the children, but we can not show in the county over, we have to show in our county. 

okay, I will stop rambling on.


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## Queen Mum (Dec 5, 2011)

Frankly on 20 acres, I would go with a larger breed, because you can use them for working.  Pulling carts, carrying stuff.  A meat/milk/cart animal would be good.  Maybe an Ober/Boer cross.  

Now if you could get one of those Beetal goats from India... and cross it with a Boer and then cross that with a Nubian and maybe cross that with an Ober and an then an Angora, you could end up with a fiber, meat, milk working oxen sort of goat...    Just kidding there.


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## Nachoqtpie (Dec 5, 2011)

LOL!!! Well... we're also going to be doing other things on the 20 acres as well! We want cattle for meat, but it seems that a lot of people are saying that we will want to try goats meat. My husband thinks that we should try goats milk before we decide on what types of goats we want. 
I wouldn't be hard pressed to use a goat to pull a cart or something and help with chores, but how would I get the goat to stand still while I did them?! LOL

And... I think I like the idea of a fiber, meat, milk, working, oxen goat!


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## Queen Mum (Dec 5, 2011)

Goats will follow you anywhere, if you bottle raise them. I have cart and pack goats.  They stand around me, over me and *on me*.  The are where ever I am and they NEVER leave me alone.  When I am gardening, I put a pack or a panier on them and they carry my tools around. (The hard part is keeping them OUT of the garden.)   If I hook them to a cart, they carry a LOT of stuff.  Pretty useful, goats are.


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## Nachoqtpie (Dec 5, 2011)

hmmmm... I wonder if I could fit one of my Greyhound muzzles on one to keep it from eating my garden? 

I still got quite a bit of time... so.. no rush, but I just want to be COMPLETELY prepared for when we get our farmette... I know there will always be surprises, but, I would rather be more prepared than just rushing into things and then going "Oh crap... what just happened?!" (With a husband with Traumatic Brain Injury... it happens WAY more than I would like for it to! :/)


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## Queen Mum (Dec 5, 2011)

Unfortunately you can't really muzzle a goat.  They would chew it off pretty fast.  And they need to eat frequently.  BUT you can put up a sturdy, very tall fence around the garden with stout posts all the way around.  (good corners.)   You can muzzle the husband.    One of those cone collars would work with the husband as well.  You know, the kind that the vet uses to keep the animal from biting at his stitches.  He might object though.    Behavior mod works better.  Treats and such...


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## MyKidLuvsGreenEgz (Dec 5, 2011)

We have 3 nigerian dwarfs (2 does, 1 wether) and a nd/la mancha cross buck. The two girls are pregnant and due any day. We plan to keep all the boys, castrate them and when they are old enough, butcher. We'll keep one girl and sell any others.  We also plan to butcher the buck and wether this summer, replacing the buck with a pygmy and keeping one wether for his companion. We haven't tasted goat meat yet, but don't have room for cattle. Besides, I do almost everything in the crockpot anyway!

Just a note: you mentioned that you plan to keep the buck with the babies until weaned/sold off.  Sexual maturity can happen around 8 weeks so if a girl comes in heat (estes) when she's near the buck (or her intact brother), she COULD become pregnant. Might want to separate the boys from the girls. We do until it's breeding time, then we have a separate pen to keep them.  Would be a good idea to keep your buck away from your girls in milk because the scent (using that word lightly!) of the buck will also make the milk taste kinda, well, nasty.

On 2 acres, it's really tight here, but in the Spring, we're constructing lots of different "paddocks" on most of the property. Using the rotation method, some will have crops (like corn, beans and squash) and some will have alfalfa, sunflowers, milo, etc.  The girls will have access to one paddock at a time, depending on which gate I open. Won't be able to get to the corn until it's harvested (they LOVE corn stalks).   The boys will be located on the leach field (from our septic) and will have less room and less paddocks because the grass and weeds in the leach field grow so very fast.

I'm also housing groups of chickens with each group of goats. They get along well together. That's just in the summer area. During the winter, the housing for all is in my backyard and is very tight.

Be very careful when choosing your goats. If you buy does in milk, make sure the seller milks her in front of you, and that you taste the milk. We didn't. Our first experience with milking our oldest was horrible... she wouldn't let us touch her, her teats were tiny ... we finally gave up last year. This summer after she kidded (4!!) her teats got longer and because we'd spent the year rubbing her sides and tummy, she finally let us milk her. Was the sweetest richest milk I'd ever tasted!  The other doe had her first freshening this summer and HER teats were tiny too.  I'd spent her whole life rubbing on her so she wasn't skittish about milking but it was difficult. I did use a small handpump milker but gave up after a while. The older gave us plenty of milk for the time.

Hope this helps.


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## Nachoqtpie (Dec 5, 2011)

I've tried behavior mods with the hubs... I think I would have a better chance training my Greyhounds to tap dance... 

Thanks for the advice MyKidLuvs! I guess I'd never really thought about that! I REALLY didn't know that they could be bred at 8 weeks!  I guess I've got a bit more to think about than just "put goats in pen... milk goats... have yumminess!"


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## SmallFarmGirl (Dec 5, 2011)

Nachoqtpie said:
			
		

> I've tried behavior mods with the hubs... I think I would have a better chance training my Greyhounds to tap dance...
> 
> Thanks for the advice MyKidLuvs! I guess I'd never really thought about that! I REALLY didn't know that they could be bred at 8 weeks!  I guess I've got a bit more to think about than just "put goats in pen... milk goats... have yumminess!"


Yes,  .. Go to your library first ... Get every goat book possible ...   Thats what I did !!! I know there is a lot more than it seems but I think its going to be worth it !!


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## 20kidsonhill (Dec 5, 2011)

I guess we aren't  as planned as some of you.  We brought home 7 does, 4 of them bred, we had 7 acres and some fencing. You could barely call it fencing. yup, that was it.   

15 years later, we have a herd of 20 to 25 breeding age goats, much better fencing, with our field divided up into 4 parts, plus a coral area at the back of our barn. Yes, we have a barn. Plus 10 large calf huts up in the fields for additional shelter. Lots of feeders and pens available.  A place to store 400bales of hay, and put a ton of grain. And just about every known first aid supply known to man to treat goats and supplies to handle, weigh, shear and transport goats.   I am tired thinking about it. 

You will get there. We did.


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## SmallFarmGirl (Dec 5, 2011)

Thats funny ..  The lady who wrote the goat book that I got from the library went out one day and bought 2 breed does .. Now she owns a HUGE farm with 100s of goats .. I guess it goes to show you you learn by experience as well !!!


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## Queen Mum (Dec 5, 2011)

Don't let anyone ever tell you, you can't milk a goat.  It can be done.  You just have to be patient, firm, loving and kind hearted.  AND no nonsense, determined and as stubborn as an OLD GOAT!

My first two milk does were pretty wild.  I  made a hobble out of thick soft rope.    It took a lot of patience and a firm loving hand.  A lot of milk went onto that stand and down on to the floor but after a week they were standing on the milk stand like pros.   Their milk was sweet and creamy and we never had a problem after that.


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## Nachoqtpie (Dec 5, 2011)

Oh goodness!! 

That's kinda how we got the goats when I was super young. Someone bought them for my older sisters and brought them to us.


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## sunny (Dec 5, 2011)

Ha, since you've had it before, goat tastes a lot like caribou. 

 You know, there's some nice stocky LaMancha lines out there and they dress out quite well for meat. Also they have sweet good milk with high enough butterfat to make good cheeses and such. They would probably be a good choice for a multi-purpose goat. 
 You'll want to save yourself some heart ache and buy disease tested stock to start out. Study up on CAE and CL etc. It's well worth it to pay a little more for negative goats and save yourself having to cull your favorites later. 
 You'll find that everyone has their own ways of caring for their goats. No one way is right. It does take time to learn the best way to care for your goats on your land. Everyones little spot is different and requires different care and prevention techniques.
 Have fun on your goat owning journey. It's well worth the ride.


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## SmallFarmGirl (Dec 5, 2011)

sunny said:
			
		

> Have fun on your goat owning journey. It's well worth the ride.


I think it is too !! :bun


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## Nachoqtpie (Dec 6, 2011)

Thanks guys! We still have a LOT of decisions to go before we even start looking for land! It was starting to get overwhelming there for a minute and I just kind of stepped back and said "This is still 2 years away, no need to be so overwhelmed right now! Save that for when you're looking at all the animals and trying to pick just a few to take home!!" 

I want my kids to have a positive experience with this, so that maybe they will continue on with it. My husband has been talking about having something like this for as long as we've been married, so I KNOW he's on board!


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