Posted July 13, 2007:
Raising meat-goats is one of the fastest-growing sectors in agriculture
today. Immigrants keeping the tastes and traditions of their homelands
have driven goat-meat sales to the point where the United States
now imports a half-million carcasses each year to meet the growing
demand. Despite goat meat being the most widely consumed meat on
the planet, only in the past 10 years has commercial meat-goat production
emerged in the United States.
As more and more farmers began raising specific meat-type breeds,
they realized there were significant differences in husbandry as
compared to many of the dairy and fiber breeds. Consider the differences
between a Holstein and an Angus in the beef industry. Not only are
there physiological differences between the breeds to consider,
but the traditional dairy and fiber goat business models were not
congruent with profitable meat-goat operations.
While large production herds, mostly in the Midwest, have set the
foundation for much of the meat-goat stock, farmers and hobbyists
throughout the United States and Canada are raising meat-goats today.
With only a couple publications aimed at this trend, Storey Publishing
has recently added
Storey's Guide to Raising Meat Goats by Maggie Sayer to it's
already popular series which includes guides for raising chickens,
dairy goats, sheep, beef cattle, pigs, rabbits, horses, turkeys,
ducks, poultry and llamas.
As do all of Storey's guides, Raising
Meat Goats delivers comprehensive “how-to” information
for those new to raising meat-goats. Sayer covers the history and
description of all meat-goat breeds as well as a general overview
of goat characteristics and behaviors such as myotonia (fainting)
and the flehmen response (lip curling), which new goat owners may
Unlike many publications geared toward meat production in ruminants,
Sayer’s promotes a forage-based diet that avoids stuffing
animals full of grain and fillers. She explains the digestive system
of both adult goats and kids, provides easy-to-understand examples
of rumen chemistry, and includes a basic guide to purchasing and
Illustrations enhance health care
The chapter most likely to become bookmarked and dog-eared by those
who purchase this book is “Keeping Goats Healthy (and What
to Do When They Aren't).” Sayer lays out the common health
problems associated with goats with a description of symptoms, treatment
and prevention, accompanied by drawings. Countless inexperienced
goat keepers have lost goats to Bottle Jaw (severe parasite infestation),
thinking that it was either the goat's cud or that the animal was
stung in the face while grazing. The picture provided will clearly
show goat farmers what is wrong with their goats when they see it.
The following chapter, which deals with parasites, will help meat-goat
producers to understand an issue that is rapidly becoming a serious
problem in the industry. Most meat breeds originated in dry, hot
environments. When they are reared in humid, wet and confined conditions,
debilitating (and fatal) worm loads can rapidly develop. Unfortunately,
the indiscriminate use of chemical wormers has led to parasites
now developing a resistance to most of the major wormer classes
available to small ruminants.
Sayer explains a management method developed in South Africa called
FAMACHA which uses the inner eyelid of the goat to determine the
worm load of the predominant parasite in goats that causes anemia.
The introduction of this method has greatly reduced the amount of
chemical wormers used by producers and is now taught by many of
the meat-goat researchers throughout the country.
Sayer includes numerous producer profiles of people actively raising
meat-goats, identifying good goat keepers. This is important, because
newcomers to the Boer goat world are frequently told to purchase
stock from reputable and experienced breeders—traits that
are increasingly difficult to find in the meat-goat industry.
While the book provides a wealth of information and an extensive
collection of resources in a single publication, it fails to deliver
the meat that many experienced goat producers need to advance their
success. Sixteen pages into the book there is a shaded box entitled
“Choosing Not to Sell Goats for Meat” and later in the
marketing chapter, Sayer touches only briefly on selling goats for
meat prior to launching into using goats for packing and carting.
Even though the meat-goat demand is being driven by ethnic communities,
Sayer only dedicates a few pages to this market in the front of
the book explaining why meat goats are becoming popular. This information
is stale and fails to state that people who eat goat meat would
do so year-round—and not just on holidays—if there were
Marketing focus is missing
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 35 million immigrants
in the U.S., many of whom would regularly consume goat meat if it
were available, yet many authors, including Sayer, continually expound
most on the advantages of raising meat-goats for breeding stock,
show animals and working goats—leaving out serious information
on actually selling meat goats for meat. (Even “Storey's Guide
to Raising Chickens” by Gail Damerow in 1995 included a chapter
Also disappointing was that there was no mention of using goats
for prescribed grazing and brush control—a rapidly growing
sector in the meat-goat industry. Recently, the New York Times featured
a story about how the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, has its own
herd of goats to control the rapidly-growing noxious weed, kudzu.
In California, there are several companies who rent out goats for
brush control in fire-prone areas. Additionally, farmers are increasingly
running a seasonal herd of meat-goats with their grass-based dairy
and beef cattle to help keep down forbs and woody plants in their
pastures. They are learning to turn their weeds into dollars instead
of spending money and time applying expensive herbicides or trying
This guide is an excellent choice for beginning and small-scale
breeders or for reference material, yet it offers little assistance
to commercial meat-goat producers who are already scrambling to
figure out how fill the demand for goat meat in the United States.