There are various options for raising meat goats. How you will manage the goats will impact the profitability of the goat enterprise, the demands placed on your family, and the resources needed. The converse is also true; your goals for the goat enterprise and for your whole farm (which includes your family) and the resources available may determine the method of raising goats.

Extensive – range or pasture/woods, not handled much

Keeping goats on a large tract of pasture or rangeland and leaving them to fend for themselves is one time-honored way to raise goats. Under this system, the producer expects the goats to forage for their food and care for their young with no assistance. Goats are very good foragers, and if given access to enough land, they will be able to survive and raise progeny with very little labor or feed cost. On the other hand, this does require a large tract of land, and some form of predator protection must be in place to prevent excessive losses. Because of predation and lack of intervention at kidding time, fewer kids may survive to weaning. This reduces the income from the enterprise, but lower expenses may offset that. Goats raised with little human contact (as in this extensive system) will likely be wild.

Pastured and rotated – managed intensive grazing

For more control of stock and better management of pasture resources, producers may choose to raise goats under management intensive grazing. In this system, pastures are cross-fenced into “paddocks” so that goats can be restricted in an area and moved to fresh pasture every few days (or even more frequently). This rotation allows the producer to allocate feed to the goats depending on their needs, prevent over-grazing of a given area, monitor the intake of the goats, and make frequent observations of the goats’ health, growth, and behavior. Goats raised in this way will be tamer, their health problems can be more easily noticed and solved, and feed cost is still minimized, as in the extensive grazing method. Grazing goats in a restricted area helps reduce predator problems, as guardian animals can more effectively patrol a small area, and electric fence can also be used to advantage. However, this method demands more time and attention from the producer, fencing costs are much higher, and the producer must learn how to manage pastures.

Pastured but not rotated

Of course, it is possible to pasture goats without using a management intensive grazing system. Some producers choose to take a short cut by keeping the goats on pasture but not rotating them. This saves initial fence costs, time, and labor, and it is easier. However, goats that graze and re-graze the same small area will eventually develop problems with internal parasites. Furthermore, pastures abused by over-grazing will not be as productive. As pastures and animals both decline in health, feed costs go up. Therefore, while this method may seem cheap and easy, over time it will create its own problems and be less profitable or sustainable.

Dry lot; fed purchased hay and grain

Some producers forego pasture altogether and keep the goats in a dry lot (where there is no growing forage), feeding them all purchased feeds. This system has many drawbacks.

First of all, goats do not convert feed efficiently, and they naturally waste a lot of hay. Feed costs under this system will exceed returns of the kid crop, unless the kids are sold as high-priced breeding stock. But those animals do not know how to graze to maintain themselves economically, and a buyer is likely to be dissatisfied with such expensive-to-feed animals. This system also demands more labor and time to provide feed and manage manure.

Goats that don’t get enough exercise are likely to be overfat, which leads to kidding problems. And goats kept confined are going to have more fights (as bored children do) and become aggressive toward less-dominant animals. At feeding time, this may be particularly noticeable, as the dominant goats drive off the timid ones, resulting in over-fed bullies and smaller, under-fed animals.

In short, from the standpoint of goat behavior and of economics, this system is not a viable choice.

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