The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Goats => Topic started by: Roxy on June 25, 2014, 01:33:36 pm
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This morning I had a call from the man who buys all my surplus cockerels. He is wanting to buy this years male kids, who are intact. To be honest, as they are pure bred Anglo Nubian, and the others are x AN and looking like they will make good males, I was hoping they would go for breeding.
This man bombarded me with questions about how heavy they would be live,and then dead weight. How do I know that!! Then we got on to price, so I quoted what I thought was big money, but he was not put off -said he is finding it hard to find goats. I doubt he would want them now, but is thinking of waiting until they are 7 or 8 months old.
I nearly told him to do one, but as he is going to come and collect all my surplus cockerels, thought better of it.
Does anyone know how much an AN male would weigh when they are ready for slaughter, and how much I could charge him, that's if I went down this route, which I do not really want to, but if I cannot sell them, then maybe its the only option!!
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I asked the price for us and a friend- from an anglo nubian breeder-for males for meat (they would have been castrated and disbudded though) and she said that breeders charge about £50 for them once weaned,(between 8 and 12 weeks) like you I have no idea what dead weight would be and surely it would also depend what they were fed, I have seen what I call usual sized nubians and then I have seen nubians that you could put a saddle on and ride!! Although if he is waiting until they are 7-8 months it seems like he wants you to pay food costs to fatten them up so should be alot more money! Goat meat is in demand, when we bought our billy we were told of a butcher that would take as many goats as could be supplied.
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I have just sold 4 castrated males, not disbudded, to be fattened for £55 each at 4 months. If you waited until 8 months they are worth at least £120 each in a box so deducting slaughter costs you should get at least £90 back.
I would sell for at least £75 at 8 months but if good breeding stock would go for £100+. Surely pure pedigrees are worth a lot? My Boer who is pure bred was over £400 at 9 months!
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Two days after my kids were born, a friend asked if she could buy one when they were slaughtered. Her husband is Jamaican and they eat goat a lot but have been having lots of trouble accessing it. He is driving into Wales every so often to buy one - a round trip of five hours. I am going to look on some websites of butchers that sell goat meat to get an idea of prices.
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Our local butchers, who is also a sheep and cow farmer, has a sign outside his shop, which says goat meat is £12 per kilo. I get a lot of Indian gentlemen stopping when they see my goats and asking about buying them. They are adamant they are having to travel great distances to buy even one. One man had been offered a billy in Scotland for £110 - but his fuel from the Manchester area, and back again would push the price up a lot. He was willing to travel though.
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Our local butchers, who is also a sheep and cow farmer, has a sign outside his shop, which says goat meat is £12 per kilo. I get a lot of Indian gentlemen stopping when they see my goats and asking about buying them. They are adamant they are having to travel great distances to buy even one. One man had been offered a billy in Scotland for £110 - but his fuel from the Manchester area, and back again would push the price up a lot. He was willing to travel though.
Surely you aren't selling to individual Indian (or other Asian) gentlemen coming past and wanting to buy a live goat? Can you not sell them through your local butcher? Really the only safe way ensuring that they are killed according to your beliefs (and I do not want to into the whole religious slaughter debate at all) is to have them done at your local abattoir yourself and eat them yourself or sell/barter the meat.
I would have castrated them though...
In all honesty there are very few billy kids that are good enough to keep entire and use/sell as breeding stock. Unless yours are registered and you have official milking figures for the dams I doubt any will sell to a proper breeding home (even though the buyer may tell you that they are to be used for breeding)..
I won't sell any of mine for breeding and also not as companion animals anymore, safer to eat them myself.
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It is £12+kilo in this area, around £5 kilo for liver etc, sausages/mince just under £9 kilo, half a goat is around £70 and whole is £110+
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I agree that unless you are confident about the home I would not sell alive. Again not wanting to get into a religious/racist debate I will not sell to certain areas. I will sell to anyone if they allow me to take to abattoir and they can collect the meat.
You can usually tell what the outcome is likely to be and sell accordingly but depends if you can live with knowing they might just get their throat slit in someone's back garden. I couldn't.
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I said it would be a last resort - not something I would do. The man who wanted them, does actually use our local abattoir - and I have checked and he does. But, the only thing he will get from our place is the 14 cockerels. I love my animals and their welfare is forefront in my mind.
As it happens, yesterday I had two people view the male kids. They, like most of us breeders, have daughters of their stud billy ready to be served this Autumn, and need a new non related male. There are goat keepers, like me, who are not interested in showing, milk yields, etc. We just keep ours for the milk, so obviously have to breed, and this year have more boys than girls. Perhaps my boys are not of the high standard some of you want or need, but I am confident that with the level of enquiries I have had, they will all go to breeding homes. Anyone who has bought an animal from me vouch that I do vet the new owner, and am pretty good at judging them. I just say no if I think the home is not right, and would rather lose a sale.
As to why I kept my males intact - surely that's up to me. I have kept goats for many years, and like to think that after 40 years I do know what is what, although sometimes the rather offensive and rude comments that come up on the goat section make me think otherwise!! One lady advertised her female goat for sale - it was her first post on here, and she got upsetting posts because she had a horned goat. She said she would not be doing it again, if that's the way members were treated.
Oh, and for the record, my male goats as well as being intact also have their horns. So if you want to yell at me for that as well, then go ahead. My vet charged me £51 per kid for disbudding, and I would have been bankrupt once I paid for the females, had the males been done too. She told me to leave them horned.
Rant over ;) :)
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They wouldn't be much use for breeding if they weren't intact so I can understand why you do. :roflanim:
Personally, I think it's better to have goats disbudded, but they're your goats and, I agree, it's up to you what you do with them.
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i love the horns on my goats, the billies horns are so long, they can scratch their bottoms with them, and one sleeps with his horns in the mud, with his face up to the sky, it looks like he is dead so gets my heart going everytime :roflanim:
is their a reason why you dont kill your own cockerals? im just wondering as it might solve the stress factor.
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Stick to your guns Roxy - horns all the way here - personally I like them but do think each to their own.
None of us are perfect - wish I Was and strive to be but at least we're trying :thumbsup:
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I also like the horns and had some badly disbudded this time so won't be in a rush to do it again. Having said that some were sold to farm parks and they need to be disbudded.
I also don't show or milk seriously so I would be happy taking a good looking male if it was what I liked and reasonably priced. It is a personal thing castrating and space dependent. I only do my male kids because I am limited with space and not sure how long I will keep them so takes the stress out of it. Lambs on the other hand I quite often leave as I know they will go in autumn and can manage them until then.
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If I paid £51 disbudding per male goat, plus the rearing costs, plus worming etc I would be at a loss when selling. This is the first year the males have remained horned, but due to the probable loss of my husbands job, I cannot justify spending that money. Incidentally, my intact AN was disbudded, and he now has horns, and one of my older castrated males has horns that have grown back, and curling down towards his eye. The vet has said if they go any worse she will wire them off. I have found the bigger boys are a lot quieter and do not use their horns, whereas the pygmy kid has pronged me a couple of times up the backside when he thinks his milk is late - and he may have little horns but they are pointed!!
I do think the boys look a bit strange with horns though.
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£50+ to disbud a kid.....Thats daylight robbery! especially as they make such a crap job of it, but then they have the monopoly don't they!? >:(
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Can't remember how much I paid to get our wether disbudded but it wasn't cheap - he now has 3 horns and looks completely daft, not to mention how easily his head bleeds each time they get knocked off >:(
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Last week I was told £70-£80 per kid by 1 vet!! Told them they would have to sharpen their pencil, then rang back and said they would do 2 for £80. I didn't go there! I got 2 disbudded, ear tagged and male castrated for £62 I didn't think that was bad and the disbudding looks very neat at the moment but the vet I used is an experienced goat vet. I had to get mine done because of children if we keep them and also if they go to slaughter the local ones will not take goats with horns. If it was just myself and OH keeping them I probably wouldn't bother
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also if they go to slaughter the local ones will not take goats with horns.
really? that wasnt something id considered but there are many sheep here with horns in both species so maybe its specific to your area. what is the reasoning behind that? i understand the limitations of slaughtering long horns etc as they dont fit through the races.
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No idea. My friend who wants the goats for meat takes animals in regularly and has seen sheep with horns going through but asked the question and they said no horns on goats. He is going to check out a couple of others but I had to get mine done just incase it is the same at the others. I can't understand it as all the boer meat farmers on t.v that I have seen have horns on all their animals for slaughter.
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that's about what we are charged - abit further south than Roxy.
Yes... most of our kids stay horned, depending on what their future is.
our goats, our sales, our money, our choice!! ;)
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Well said, Little Blue....I agree completely :) .
Our old vets were cheaper, but the young vet who did the disbudding made a right mess. She overdosed 4 female kids when knocking them out, and nearly killed them, then had the gas burner too high, and nearly caused a fire. One kid had a hole in its head, and would have died had it not been for Wytsend suggesting my vet spoke to the BGS vet for advice. as she was at a loss what to do.
At least the vets we are at now, did a good job and we had no problems with the disbudding. So I suppose forking out the money was worth it.
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a lot of ours have had scurs - just little curvy-over bits of growth, thankfuly no "proper" horns.
Our vet sounds better than your last one Roxy!
Have to transport them to the "main" surgery though, half an hour away... rather than two minutes up the road.
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Personally I think its Disgusting we are FORCED by law to pay over the odds for a crap cruel service (The last time I had kids done it was not done by a vet,they were done at home,they were not stressed out took a minute and out of a group of over 10 NOT ONE had a problem or even a scur!!!!)
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Why is it that it seems ok for a local farmer to go round disbudding calves at other farms. He does use something to numb the area round the horns. He also castrates large calves. Yet, goat owners have to have their kids dehorned at the vets, and castrated within a week if done at home!!! I have to say, if our goats were out in the wild, they would all be intact,and have horns - and no worry about costs!!!
Some years ago an elderly female goat came to me, with enormous horns which curved back. I was so worried she would hang herself on a gate or fence, but she was an old hand, and knew how to extract her head from iffy situations - she lived to 17 years with those big horns.
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I'm always quietly impressed with how Cesar can scratch his back with his horns - how does he judge it so carefully, with something that is always growing?!
(I'm constantly biting my own tongue / inside of my cheek - so I'm not half as clever!!)
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MY babies were disbudded at just over a week old when Cassi had already started sprouting a horn bump. Now, six weeks later, the areas are nearly covered in hair and absolutely no sign of horns. It's the best job I've seen.
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Why is it that it seems ok for a local farmer to go round disbudding calves at other farms. He does use something to numb the area round the horns. He also castrates large calves. Yet, goat owners have to have their kids dehorned at the vets, and castrated within a week if done at home!!!
Calves/cows are not goats (or sheep for that matter).
Goats' horns grow at a completely different rate, as in MUCH quicker. So disbudding has to be done as early as possible. Also the skull is much thinner for goats, so a bit of care has to be taken, and as most of us know goats (and especially kids) don't do pain and it is much easier to have them completely still while their are out of it.
If you are planning to keep a quality stud billy it pays to have him disbudded TWICE (and yes I can hear you moaning about the double cost), but my now 14 months old buckling has absolutely NO regrowth. He came to me disbudded and when soon after he was 6 weeks old his scurs appeared he went back in for a second thorough disbudding. Complete success! Just much easier in the long term, and as he is going to stay for life with me anyway, so this initial cost was no issue.
I think we have to stop of thinking goatkeeping as cheap. It is now on par with horses... but we can drink their milk and eat them. so they are no pets.
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Well, seeing as my stud billy is, according to some comments, not quality (and presumably the rest of my goats) then I will not bother wasting money on having his second growth of horns removed. He is exceptionally quiet, and has never used his horns on me, or another goat, so he can stay as he is. He had been disbudded when he came to me, but none of the other goats from the same farm as him have had horns grow back.
No, goat keeping is not cheap, and as I have horses, I know that isn't - but, many of us do not have a bottomless pit of money and have to do things as cheaply as we can (I am not saying that is the correct way!) with regard to worming, feeding etc.
A goats looks are not always the only thing to go on. I had many years ago, a BT female. She was tall, long coat, and nothing to look at. But we got 11 and three quarters pints of milk a day off that goat at her second kidding. Such a shame she had twin billies every year- and one set of triplet billies. Sold her and she had twin nannies.
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You shouldn't have to pay twice Roxy,if the vet didn't do the job properly they are supposed to do it for free (Although in my opinion if they can't do it properly the first time why should the goat have to go through it again when it is older and it is much more stressful!)
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Jinglejoys, the male came from Devon, so its a bit far to travel him back and demand they remove his horns for free .....the fuel bill may be a bit ....well, steep :roflanim:
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Get them to send you a credit for your vet to do it ;)