Want to Bring Cash Flow and Profits to your Homestead? Give Goats a chance!!!

in #homesteading7 years ago

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Living on a homestead is a dream that many of us have. One thing that I feel holds many people back from jumping into the homesteading lifestyle is finances. Whether we like to admit it or not we all need at least some cash flow to pay bills and provide certain things for our families. Money can be a major concern when moving out to the country or starting a homestead. I have been a full-time farmer/homesteader now for almost five years. It has not always been easy but I would not trade it for the world. I would like to talk about the profitability of raising goats. Even on just a few acres I believe that goats can add some much needed cash flow to any homestead.

We have been raising Kiko goats here on our farm/homestead for over eight years. We currently have 82 mamma goats and five Billy goats. Our herd has been as big as 150 mamma goats, but a few years back we sold about 60 for breeding stock and have been trying to build the herd back. Goats are amazing animals and I hope that after reading this post you might consider adding them to your farm or homestead.

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Let’s get down to goat business! By far the most important success factor to having goats is starting your herd off with quality mama goats. Cheapest is not always best when it comes to livestock. Goats get a very bad reputation for being hard to handle, hard to keep in fences, and all around destructive. My experience with them has been all good. If you keep them where they have lots to eat, they are easy to care for, stay where you fence them, and are not destructive at all.

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Below is an example of a goat budget that comes right from our farm accounting books. This assumes that you already have land and fencing.

A good breeding doe (Female goat) will cost on average $200. Now there are many different kinds of goat breeds out there. I have tried about all of them and can tell you from experience the Kiko breed is by far the hardiest and lowest maintenance. That is not to say they will make you the most money. Do your own research and see what breed suites your environment the best.

A female goat will have on average 2 kids a year (generally goats have twins…a lot of times they do have triplets but for this example we will stick with twins). Let’s say she has one female and one male. Five months after having the kids they are ready to be weaned and can be sold. The female is worth $200 and the males sell for $150. That is a total value of $350 from that one breeding female. Sadly, you will always have expenses: feed, water minerals, vaccination, shelter etc. It cost us on our farm an average of $50 a year on average per goat to maintain it. That means the original cost of the goat $200+$50 maintenance is $250 total expense for that goat for one year. You have an income of $350 - expenses of $250 equal’s $100 profits or 42% return on your money the first year. The next year, since you have already expensed the purchase price of the breeding goat, your profit will be around $310 per breeding doe.

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This is when everything works out perfectly and you do not have any catastrophes. When raising any livestock there can be catastrophes such as predators getting in and killing livestock, sickness, bad weather etc. From personal experience I can say that even your best laid plans do not always work. It can also go the other way. Last year every baby goat that we tagged the day they were born survived and made it to weaning.

Now that you can see the numbers above, the next question a lot of people have is… how much land does it take? The answer is how much do you have? A general rule of thumb is that for every cow your land can support you can support seven goats. Again, this is a general rule of thumb. Here in central KY, the great thing about goats is they eat weeds and bushes before they will touch the grass and clover. This means they graze alongside our cattle and do not compete for the same feed. If you live in the Midwest I would say that for every acre of fenced land you could have 3-6 breeding age goats. Again this is just a general rule. If you have land that is full of brush and small trees then you could have more goats. They thrive in that kind of environment.

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Key concerns when raising goats are feet problems and internal parasites. This is why I really like the Kiko goat breed. They are known for good feet and parasite resistance. We trim our goat’s feet and worm them once a year. Other than those two problems a good fence is key.

Now that all the facts are out there let’s take a small homestead as an example. You have 10 acres of fenced land. This 10 acres can support 20 breeding does. With the numbers from the budget above your average profit per breeding doe is $100 that first year. You just made $2,000 dollars. Not too bad! But look what happens the next year after you have expensed the breeding does. Your profit per goat jumps to $310 per goat. Let’s say though you lost a breeding goat to predators and you lost four babies goats to bad weather. You are left with only 17 breeding does that produced an average of two babies. You still made $5,270 dollars.

I hope this will encourage any homesteaders or anyone living out in the country with a few extra acres to consider adding some goats to your land. You will not get rich, but they do add some great cash flow to your farm/homestead.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this long post. Hope it was helpful!

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This answered a few questions I've had about raising goats.

Glad it helped

Where would someone look to sell the goats?

We sell a lot on Craigslist and word of mouth. There are also livestock auctions you can take them to

Thank you for sharing this information. we want to add goats to our homestead and was really wondering if we should or not. Now with this information i will be thinking differently of waiting too much longer. Im going to upvote this blog so others can see the benefits of owning goats.

Thank you. Hope you get the goats nd they do great for you

I'm also farmer (coffee farmer). goat farm is my dream in the future.

Coffee farming. That is interesting. You would have some happy goats if you have them the coffee beans

Yes I'm coffee farmer but I'm also love goat. We have problem in this year because the impact of climate change so the production is low,

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I hope the weather changes in your favor soon

Thanks for your financial analysis of raising goats. It is something we have been considering for our property for awhile now.

We love our goats. Wish you the best of luck

what do you feel when caring for your goats? is that a nice thing? or is it a difficult thing?

IT is a nice thing. I really enjoy it

Good friend, good luck for you

I have a sad question, what do you do with goats that die?

We take them to the top of a hill and let them decay. That way all the nutrients go back into the soil

Wouldn't leaving an animal to decay attract predator animals? You don't want those around I take it?

The predators are around no matter what. We put them far away from where the livestock are at the time.

Your goats are beautiful! And this is great advice for the beginner. I feel that homesteading is not homesteading without goats! We've been here 6 years and I can't imagine life without my precious goats! Although, we still have our couple "fence breakers" they remain my four legged kids

Yes we do not know what we would do with out them

This a great article for anyone that has not already realized the value of goats on a homestead. Up vote and resteemed. We only have 2 dozen of so right now but will be adding a few more breeders this season. Have you looked a boer goats mixed with your kiko? I agree kiko are the lowest maintenance for hoofing and parasites compared to commercial boer goats that need a lot of attention but a kiko sire will sort out a lot of the boer problems in that area. This is our half kiko half boer sire and he hardly ever needs to be hooved and is very low maintenance but has good size and is great if you are selling for meat.

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We took him and breed back to a boer female for a 75% boer 25% kiko and we got this beast who is now breeding some ladies.

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You would not know he is not full boer and his size is impressive but he is much lower maintenance the our other boer we have handled in the past. Great article though I'd love to get some of those kiko ladies to breed back to my sires.

Agree with the quality of the cross breed. We crossed Boer with Saanen and, on our semi-desert homestead, they are far more hardy while still being great milkers. Our problem is they are also the naughty goats breaking in wherever they shouldn't be!

YOu have some beautiful goats. Yes I have tried boer cross. I still like the pure kiko the best for here in Ky. It looks like you have figured out a good combination though

Thank you I am hoping this season all my males produced will look like my boer sire. He was 150 lbs at a year and if I can produce that consistently I would be happy. I only started playing with the goat breeds after I realized my half wild hog male produces the fastest growing hybrid hogs ready for butcher in half the time my pure breeds are. Would still love to get some of your kikos bred into my lines. To bad your in KY

I believe here I have been told by people raising lamb that they clear $3500 an acre compared to the $500 an acre they clear on cattle. I think the goats are very close to that selling for meat depending on cost.

The farm is doing real good and love seeing all of those goats out in the pasture. Those kids seem to really be enjoying homesteading too...Good luck to you and your family.

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THank you very much!