We'll be breeding and selling a lot if babies (if we don't get too attached and keep them all lol) and there are a lot of people looking to start small farms so Nigerian Dwarfs are popular for that.
". . . breeding and selling a lot of babies" . . . this comment worries me.
I may have misunderstood this comment, so if you are buying a couple of goats for house milk, enjoy them and have fun with your annual crop of kids.
But if you are planning on "breeding and selling a lot of babies" as pets this doesn't happen, unless you are planning to take all the goat kids to the auction sale barn. Also you don't say where you live, or how much acreage you have for your plan. You don't say whether you have any experience with livestock, or if you have done any reading on goats or other livestock. Since you are asking basic questions on this site, I assume you have not done much reading about goats. Do you have an experienced mentor that is willing to help you?
Like
Misfitmorgan says, you need to learn about the species before taking a leap into breeding for profit.
Here are some things to take into account before breeding goats for profit:
Unless you have lots of good pastures/forage acreage, keep your pastures healthy by liming, fertilizing, mowing, and rotating (which requires lots of expensive fencing) you may find that raising goats is not as cheap as it sounds. Hay is expensive and goats are picky eaters. They will not eat anything that falls on the ground or that they have walked on. This is why they have a reputation as being more parasite resistant. Actually it is because they prefer not to eat off the ground unless they are starving. Lactating and pregnant goats will need a measure of grain to keep them in milk as well a hay.
If you are planning to make cheese you will need a lot of milk. For butter you will need a mechanical separator to separate the cream. Goat milk is naturally homogenized which means that the cream does not separate like cow milk.
Whether or not you are keeping a lot of goats or just a few, you will need
predator control. Wild and human predators will take your goats. You do not want you or your children going out to feed and finding some of your pets eaten, killed, crippled, or missing. Predator control is essential particularly for the smaller breeds. This ranges from special fencing, electric wires, barb wires, and Livestock Guardian Dogs. LGDs cost big money to fence in and feed, as well as a whole other skill set in training. They are not normal dogs.
Keeping a couple goats for pets or milk is a completely different thing to planning on a breeding and sales program. To produce milk the goat must produce kids. This requires a buck. If you can't find a stud buck that you can pay to use, you will have to buy one - another whole expense in separate fencing, year round feed, etc. You will not want the buck to run with the does because if he stinks during rut it will taint the flavor of the milk. He will also bother the does by wanting to breed them. This behavior can reduce the amount of milk they give.
Since you want milk for the house, Not to mention you will need extra equipment for milking, separating the milk, etc. You will need space for kidding, and housing the kids. Most goats kids without problems, then there is the one that doesn't. Can you identify a kidding problem? Can you pull kids if there is a problem? Do you have someone with experience that can either do it for you, teach you how or talk you through it? You can learn all these things, BUT . . . . .
There are only so many buyers for goat kids as pets, no matter the breed, no matter how cute. Once the kids are old enough for sale - 8 weeks or so, you need to know there are a lot of "pet" goats for sale out there. Not so many buyers though once they find out what sort of fencing, feed, housing, etc. they will need to provide. Can you face selling kids for meat? Once you sell a pet goat, are you prepared to answer questions from the buyer morning and night? Act as their personal unpaid vet for any problems? Are there any vets in your area that actually treat goats? Most small animal or horse vets won't touch them. Are you prepared to take back the goat in a year or so when the buyer decides they are bored with the goat, it is too expensive to buy hay, their children are no longer interested, it eats their expensive landscaping, etc. etc.? Are you prepared to take back the pet goats the buyer returns with bad hooves, ringworm, pink eye, or some other disease - any of which they can transmit to your healthy herd?
Where are you going to buy your breeding stock? Are the breeders reputable? Have they done health tests on their goats? Many goats for sale have health problems, and other issues. Some of these problems are due to bad genetics, others are because they are owned and bred by people with no experience that accidently ruin them. It is necessary to buy your breeding stock from a breeder with health records on her stock.
When it comes t making money, the only people that
have a market for breeding stock are well known breeders who command top prices and usually have waiting lists for stock. They make money on breeding stock sales.
The next people that make money on goats
sell for meat. They run flocks of 200-300 goats. They have hundreds of acres of forage and pasture. They make money on meat sales.
We have 6 acres. We have small flocks. We sell for meat. We don't make any money since our outgo exceeds our income from the flock. Our breakeven comes when our flock eats all the forage on our 6 acres before fire season, leaving us with bare ground around our home. This bare ground policy has saved us from being burned out twice in major So CA firestorms. The cost of human clearance sheep/goat clearance evens out as long as I keep the flock to a certain size. We also put a number of animals in our freezer for ourselves.
We have 35 years experience with small stock, breeding, kidding, doctoring our animals because we have no vet that will do it. Our children showed for years. I have pulled several hundred kids and lambs over the years. We have set several broken legs, stitched up long cuts, replaced and stitched prolapses, both uterine and rectal. Doctored major infections, tubed stomachs, worked on bloat, and put down animals that were terminal, etc.
Get your goats and enjoy them - they are lots of fun. But please learn a lot more about them before thinking you will be able to "breed and sell lots of babies". You won't make back your feed or expense money, it will be a lot of work, expense, and often heartache.
If you want to make money breeding and selling pets, do rabbits. Easier to produce for less money, and you can eat the excess.
Good luck.
