Hi Julian
Our goats absolutely loved the beets! To begin with in late summer I was pulling a few each day, feeding them the leaves (which they scoffed) through the fence and then chopping the rest up and putting down in their troughs in the evening. Someone told me we spoiled them and should just chuck the beets in whole, if we did that they would walk away in disgust, apart from the fact that they wont pick stuff up off the floor, they will only eat food that will fit in their mouths. Its a bit of a pain as every afternoon throughout the winter we have to spend some time chopping veg for the goats. On the Victorian Farm she threw them into this contraption which chopped them up for her, wish we could find a modern version small enough (they've ruined the blade of my food processor!)
The first batch we picked for storage, I made the mistake of washing and topping and tailing and packing in straw in crates. They went mouldy! After that I just brushed off the mud and stored them in potato sacks hung up in the cool outhouse, they kept really well.
This year I am going to sow them carefully in drills and thin down so they can grow nice and big, some of the big ones we got last year were huge! Good luck with your beets, I would definitely recommend them.