Jersey calf for meat???

[farmerjan]

I didn't realize that goats were on a 305 day production record like cattle. Only had one goat herd on DHIA test for about 6 months as she wanted SCC counts and butterfat results. She wasn't purebred and I think it was the "idea" of having "official" results that lured her to testing. Then she wound up selling them and they moved so end of that.... There are a couple of people here that I know of that milk goats for themselves but not on test, so I don't have alot of experience with that. Interesting to know that obviously the better dairy breeds will hold production that long....my limited experience was that most milked them for 4 or 5 months.... Thanks for the lesson/knowledge. I assumed that on a goat dairy that you would have them kidding at various times to keep a steady milk supply or that you would be more seasonal... See "assuming" made the a** out of only me!!!
They say that calves do real well on goats milk; one of our milk testers in a county north of me raises a bunch of calves on milk from her milk goats but I don't think that she milks them for 305 days, so that is probably where I thought they weren't milked for as long a lactation.

 

[farmerjan]

Heard from the dairy farmer on the Jersey bull calves? Did you decide what you wanted to do? Since you plan to have a goat dairy, the goats you have should be pretty good milkers, so you would probably do real good with them on goats milk. Since jersey's in general usually have a higher butterfat than say holsteins; running in the 4.5 to 6 % range, they ought to take to the goats milk. I realize that it is naturally "homogenized" so is pretty easily digested, but isn't their milk pretty high in butterfat too? Just wondering how things were looking for you.