Heading into fall...the buck is in rut. The girls want nothing to do with him and I play match-maker. We have a fabulous buck this year...The Springbrook Smash. He looks like the bucks from the A.I. pages and he's only one this year but much bigger than my three year old doe. Kidding season will be very exciting!
I did a presentation at the school with my goats and the research that it required was fun and informative. I did a comparison of cows vs. goats. It is astonishing how quickly goats add up! If you bought a calf it would cost about $1,000. You could buy two really nice does for that. According to the ADGA, the average doe gives about 2400 lbs of milk per year and she will start at around one year of age. I talked to a farmer who breeds at 3 years with his cows and another who breeds at 2. The average cow gives an astonishing 17,000 lbs per year...but you don't see a drop until the third year when she calves.
By this time your two does will have given 4800 lbs the first year and, considering you should have one more doe to add to your little herd, 7200 lbs the second year. The third year, when you have five does milking you will have 12,000 lbs...plus what you got the first couple of years or 24,000 lbs. The other astonishing thing was that cows cost a whole lot more to feed--about $8 per day compared to $1 per day per goat. Since it takes 7 goats to make as much milk as a cow you still save a dollar in cost. AND goats browse so they'll be able to eat many more varieties of plants than a cow--which needs pasture.
We did the comparison for Heifer International...when you look at milk production for cows in other parts of the world it gets really interesting. Cows in the UK produce an average of 14,000 lbs while goats produce the same as in the US. In countries struggling with poverty an animal that can eat brush would be very valuable because it would cut feeding cost.
