Here's How We Wean, Fatten, and Butcher Goats on Rimfire Ranch

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Although we're now settled on a small spread in New Mexico, this particular back-to-the-land family actually learned to butcher goats about five years ago when we lived on a little farm in Missouri. We bought two milk goats with two kids apiece that spring . . . one of those kids was a buck . . . and that buck was destined for the pot from the beginning.

TO CASTRATE OR NOT TO CASTRATE

When folks "who knew" heard about our plans, they all told us that we should castrate the buck if we planned to eat him. So, when the kid was about three months old, we had him clamped. This is an operation performed with a huge pair of pinchers that crush the cords linking the testicles with the body. (Once the cords are pinched in this manner, the testicles gradually atrophy during the next couple of months.)

Clamping certainly seems to cause a buck a lot less pain than I had feared, and I highly recommend this form of castration over "cutting" (which is the actual removal of the testicles with a knife, a method that carries the attendant twin risks of blood loss and infection). On the other hand, we now know that there's no need to castrate a buck goat at all if you plan to butcher him before he matures . . . which is the way we've learned to handle the situation.

WEANING AND FATTENING UP

The kids were already six weeks old when we bought them, and they'd been nursing all that time. We knew that weaning was going to be a problem and we lost no time in getting started on the job.

For a month we allowed the kids to nurse only at night and kept them separated from their mothers during the day. After that, we fed the young goats a little 16% dairy ration and milk to supplement their pasture . . . and kept them away from the does at all times. Their nursing habit was so strong, however, that it was a total of four more months before they could be turned back in with the mothers without trying to suck. Moral: If you plan to wean your goats, wean them early.

So many people told us that we should fatten our butchering buck up before killing him that I finally performed a rough-and ready feeding experiment on the animal. For three monthsstarting when he was six months old-I fed him three times as much grain (half corn and half dairy ration) as his twin sister received.

Both goats were about the same size at the beginning of this rather heavy-handed test. And, after consuming 1-112 quarts of grain a day for 90 days (while his sister was being fed only onehalf quart of grain a day), the buck was noticeably stockier than the doe. Then again, he certainly wasn't enough heavier to justify all the extra grain he'd eaten. Dairy goats, in shortjust like dairy cattle-have (obviously) not been bred for meat production and you're largely wasting your money when you try to push pounds onto such an animal. Pour that extra feed to a hog or a beef cow if you want to see real results. Or quit raising livestock altogether and just eat the corn, wheat, oats, etc., yourself.

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