Smart Purchasing

Tfw you learn that responsible breeding also means responsible buying!

This is something I brought up recently but vaguely in a previous post. Its time to elaborate just a little bit on that.

To start, we are ALL aware of chicken math. Three chickens turns into thirty. Its very real, most of us have experienced it first hand. My six starter chickens turned into literally 200 in my two years. Yep. 200. Is that too many chickens? My final answer on that is a definite "yeah, my bad, that was too many... for me". And remember, the 'for me' part of this is huge. 200 may be too many for ME, but absolutely no big deal to someone else, which is why this conversation is important to keep having.

//IF YOU WANNA AVOID THINKING ABOUT MATH, SKIP AHEAD.

However, to understand what "goat math" is and how they relate to one another, let's think about chicken math a little more. You start with 6 chickens to get a solid half dozen a day. But... it takes about 9 months for them to start laying. Maybe you buy a few laying aged hens to get your household by until your chicks are fully feathered and starting to lay. Now you have 12 chickens. One sneaks off during the day, you search and search and search, and accept that maybe a predator got it. Nope! That chicken came back with a whole clutch of chicks. Now what? Well, you've already got 25 chickens, whats adding in these really cool ones that lay interestingly colored eggs? Well, its the next year, and your chicks from last year are laying, and you want to make sure you have "successors" to ensure you don't have an egg drought in 3-5 years. How about another 30 chicks?

See. The math goes on mathing. But let's think about that. For you to reap the benefits of the chicken, you do not need to breed. Ever. Sure, having replacement hens is smart thinking, but realistically speaking, there is no real reason to have more than a dozen chickens tops at any given time to provide even the largest of households with many, many eggs. Dont argue with me on this. If you disagree, its because chickens are great and awesome. Its not truly because of your household need. If you have a friend with chickens, they are probably bringing you eggs everytime you see each other. Its wonderful. I am not saying its a bad thing.

However, now let's think about goat math. Why do most people buy goats from me? They want to milk. For this example, it is very simply for dairy goats.

To have milk, to get the product from the goat, it does NEED to breed. Goats can have 1-5 kids (lets not invoke the numbers above that), but most commonly in the 2-4 range. Even if you dont intend to be a breeder, to get the product, you will have to play the part of one, every single year. (And yes - you absolutely CAN keep many well bred goats in milk for several years. Even if you change this example to be breeding every 2 years, it doesnt make a significant difference in the end.) So -

I typically see goat first timers start out with 2-3 goats, usually a mix of wether(s) and doe(s) as babies. Let's say its 2 does and a wether. Later on, you cant put off buying a buck anymore. But the buck also needs a friend. So you now have 5 goats. Whatever, thats reasonable.

You breed for the first time. It was great! Your two does gave you an average amount of kids: 4 total, let's say 2 doelings and 2 bucklings. You decide to keep the 2 doelings and sell the two bucklings. If its a regular market year, the bucklings can absolutely be difficult to sell. The options are to wether and use for meat or sell for pets, or to keep intact as bucks, but a starter herd is very rarely going to have the genetics established to have good, highly desired bucks. Can it happen? Of course! Is it likely to be everyone's experience? Definitely not.

Still, you manage to find homes for the two. Now you have 7 goats. Your 2 does are producing well, but you want to get into making your own butter and cheese, so youll need a bit more production. Maybe along the way you see a lactating doe for sale, and decide to hop on that. You wonder if you should add in a new buck for the babies. Now you're at 8 goats.

The next year, you have 5 does kid, for a total of 13 kids, and now a total of 21 goats. You find homes for some, but the market is worse this year. You sit on a few that are promising but not quite keepers. You get that number down to 15 goats. Might as well breed the ones you have, to get some production records and DHIA and LA numbers on there, right? Wait, theres a really cool goat from that breeder you adore available and they come as a bonded pair...

Suddenly you're at 40 goats.

//IF YOU WERE ANTI-MATH, RESUME HERE.

It happens a lot easier than you would initially think. When you apply the terms of chicken math to goat math, it always works out that goat math will be higher, because the product always requires you to be breeding and creating more goats. Not to mention, the cost of raising goats is substantially higher than the cost for poultry. You need more pasture. Minerals. Grain for both yes, but goat specific grain is often as expensive if not higher priced than most poultry feeds. Hay is expensive. When i tell you I am ALWAYS on my way to go pick up more hay, you better believe me. Their shelters need to be more spacious. The medications, and C sections, and vet costs, tend to run you a lot more than it does for birds (please dont do c sections on birds...). Every goat you own, even if for a brief time as babies, is going to cost you significant money, and very very few goat breeders EVER make a return on investment, or anything even remotely cutting near it.

This is where Smart Purchasing comes into play. I consider this to be a sort of multifaceted thing.

1. Knowing what your limits are based off of your financial and workload goals.

2. Understanding what YOU want out of the goats.

3. Only purchasing healthy animals from trusted sources that match your #1 and #2.

4. Having a plan (that includes alllll sorts of crazy and wacky scenarios) on what you are mentally, physically, and financially able to do if you go outside the bounds of #1 and #2.

Its not JUST what you buy or bring home, but also having a thorough plan in place to prevent oversaturating yourself with goats. Look, I have 60 goats. And it is a fulltime job. I am not making a ton of money, I struggle, I get shut off notices, I make things work. I spend typically 4 hours every morning doing my morning chores, then 2 in the evening to do my evening chores, and that does not include my time helping clients, making soap and cheese, washing my milking equipment or barns or pens, writing my book, processing the milk, keeping up with the demands of social media that I inevitably have to do in order to exist in all of your heads in some capacity, suddenly having to drop everything for a very sick goat and now do 24/7 intensive care, it does not include when I am sick and unable to do chores but they have to be done anyway, it does not include holidays or weekends or days off because: Those. Don't. Exist.

When you first start out, it is very easy to say "I want more!". My best words of advice is to take it slow. Figure out exactly what sort of workload you are okay with. Budget. Determine your input costs. Think of exactly how many goats you need to accomplish your goal, and what you are going to do with the rest. Are you willing to butcher the wethers that don't sell? What will you do if you have a buck year? What will you do if the market is AWFUL and you cant sell a SINGLE kid? What about when a promising doeling has a deformity that you learn about 6 months into loving and caring for them? Or you finally get called on a breeders wait list 4 years later when you're already at capacity?

Because of all the reasons above, I see first time goat owners quite often get very overwhelmed within the first 5 years of them having goats. And boy oh boy did I see a LOT of this around the pandemic time. Goats often live into teenage years. The oldest goat on record was 22 years old. I am not saying that anyone's practices are wrong, or that you need to feed out your retired does forever, but it ABSOLUTELY is something you need to consider BEFORE you get into goats. What your end goal is. What you want to do and how much time you want to spend doing it. What you morally and physically are okay with doing, and the hard lines you refuse to cross. These plans don't need to be written out, or match ANYONE else's, but they are much more important than a lot of people think.

As far as the purchasing aspect goes, that comes after the plan. Maybe you want exactly 6 nigerian dwarfs that milk out 5# a day and have a pretty consistent lactation record. If thats the case, you want to make damn sure you go to a good breeder with data to back that up. Otherwise, youre looking at 2-3 years of raising a doeling up to find out it doesnt suit your program. Maybe you want 3 does that dont need to be registered or anything special, just something good enough for you and your needs, but you should still make sure that what you are buying fits into that. I'm not saying you shouldn't buy pets or anything that makes you happy, regardless of output. Just include them in your plan and ensure its feasible. Always, ALWAYS, ALLLLLLWAAAAAAYYYYS make sure to either buy solely from a clean tested herd, or have a strict quarantine protocol in place while you draw blood and have them tested yourself. Nothing like being years into it with what you thought were very healthy goats and finding out you have CAE in your herd. I am a big, staunch supporter of "let's get rid of these diseases once and for all", but if you want to run a more rescue-like operation that avoids trusted sources or prior health testing, thats okay! You STILL need to think about smart purchasing and your plan and capacity. There are a LOT of fantastic, well-intentioned folks that get into rescuing, then end up in way over their head by way of pure compassion alone, and as much as I hate to say it, sometimes those goats were better off being left where they originally were or at the sale barn. Good intentions and hard work does not always equate to a good outcome for goats or humans.

I dont have a good end paragraph so uh.... there you go. Thanks for reading if you actually went through all of this!