I was recently asked if you can make a full-time income off of raising goats. My answer . . . not likely, but also not impossible. It comes down to many factors including demand in your area, your personal finances you need to pay for, how big or small you live, whether or not you have good natural browse for feed your goats for free most of the year . . . It can be challenging enough to just break even each year, let alone make a profit. But with the right stock and sufficient demand, you can at least come out on top. It’ll take a lot of work to show the quality of your animals and prove how reputable you are.
Common Expenses
You’re going to have some startup costs and ongoing costs.
Start Up Costs:
-Enclosures With Sturdy Fencing
-Shelters
–Hay Feeders
–Water Buckets
–Mineral Feeders
–Hoof Trimmers
-Goats: $200-$2,000 each
–Milk Stand
–Bander (if your banding males yourself)
–Disbudding Iron (if your disbudding yourself)
-Optional: Things To Jump On (DIY platforms, tires)
–Livestock Guardian Dog(s) (or other form of protection from predators)
Ongoing Costs:
-Hay (ideally you have natural pasture for them to ease the cost)
–Loose Mineral Supplement
-Chaffhaye, Alfalfa Pellets, Grain (Optional Depending On Purpose)
-Annual Disease Testing – Many potential clients want to see this
-Annual Vaccination Against CAE, CL, & Johnes (I just stick with testing)
-Disbudding and Banding Males (if someone else is doing it for you)
-Straw for kidding season and winter bedding if you get below 20°F
-Your Time
Unexpected Costs:
-Treating Disease (can be prevented good husbandry practices)
-Treating External Pests Like Goat Lice
–Treating Scours In Baby Goats
-Treating Injury
-Baby Bottles, Nipples, Milk Replacer For Orphaned Babies
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Ways To Make Money With Your Goats
First, you’ll want to figure out what the demand is in your area, and what kind of goats you want to raise. There are meat goats, dairy goats, and goats for fiber (cashmere). Try to get an idea by asking local goat owners what they do and how well they are doing. The following are some ideas to help you get started. Ideally, you’re able to apply multiple tactics to make better money.
Selling Performance Goats
Selling cheap goats will almost certainly not be very profitable for you. It costs the same amount to feed a cheap goat as it does for an expensive goat. But there’s a big difference between getting $200 per baby vs $800-$2,000! Note that doe kids are more highly sought after and more profitable than buck kids. So, it can be frustrating if you have a kidding season that has a lot of bucklings’.
Making Goat Soaps
This is a popular one which can make it challenging to stand out in the crowd. But find a way to stand out from the rest and effectively market your brand to become successful.
Stud Services/Leasing A Buck
If you own bucks, you can earn some side income by offering them up for stud services. There are a couple types of stud services. #1 Driveway breeding’s where someone brings a doe in heat to your doorstep for servicing. And #2 Leasing your buck. This involves transporting your buck to someone’s house for about a month to service does on their home turf. HOWEVER, you’ll want to make sure prospective does are disease free. This way you don’t introduce unwanted illness into your own herd. Either test your bucks regularly or require that prospective does have proven test results that they are clear of disease.
Mitigation/Land Restoration
This one requires a degree of travel. Some people will rent out goats for mitigation to clear brush and weeds in hard-to-reach areas where heavy equipment can’t get to. The goats remove invasive weeds, fertilize the ground, get free food, and it help restore the land. You just need a way to transport the goats from job to job. An extreme example of this is a lady with her dog and 500 goats. You can find that video here.
Pack Goats
Pack goats are a popular option for hunters that travel where horses can’t get to. Goats are more equip for climbing rocks and steep ledges. You can train and rent them out, and/or breed and sell them to people looking to own their own pack goats. You’ll want to do your research on what the most desirable pack goats are. Often times they are mixes between the larger dairy and meat goats. A great resource to find out more about pack goats is Mark Warnke with packgoats.com.
Petting Zoo
I view this as more of an additional side income. You may or may not have a variety of other animals. But you can at least advertise your goats (especially babies) for kids’ party events and such. You’ll want to make sure your goats are comfortable with travel and with strange people touching them.
Offer Services
Another side income. Many people don’t want to do some of the basics for their goats. This can be from inexperience, physical disabilities or being squeamish about it. Become the local go to person for other goat people to come to for services such as disbudding, hoof trimming, banding young males, or maybe even drawing blood for disease testing.
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Milk And Meat Shares
Some people don’t want to or can’t own their own goats. But they still would love the benefit of having a good source of raw goat milk or pasture raised meat. With milk, you’ll want to make sure you have some good milk goats to supply the demand, as well as have desirable tasting milk. Not all milk tastes the same from different goats. Some breeds have better tasting milk than others. And even then, it can vary from goat to goat. Also, look into the local laws in your area for meat and milk shares so you don’t get into trouble.
Set Up Goat Classes
You can set up and host different kinds of goat classes. This could be yoga classes with baby goats, how to makes goat milk soaps, how to show goats, how to milk a goat, or just about goat care in general. This will take owning goats for a while so you can get your own baring’s before sharing your experiences.
Goat Influencer
Regardless of what you choose to do. Starting and creating a successful YouTube channel may be the ultimate way to increase how you make money with your goats. It gets your name out there and creates a personal following. A good example channel would be “Blue Cactus Dairy Goats”. They started out with informative “How To . . .” videos. And now that they have a following, they do more vlog-like videos. People become emotionally invested and want to support the channel. Viewers from around the US wait anxiously to buy their high-quality Nigerian Dwarf show goats. As well as well their handmade goat milk soaps. You can bet that without their successful channel they would not be as well-known, and therefore would not sell baby goats or soaps as well.
I hope you found this article helpful. If you have a passion for goats, they can make a wonderful hobby. And in most cases, they will be just that . . . a hobby. But if you can find just the right niche and audience, they could become profitable. If you’re looking to just get into goats for money, don’t do it, because likely it’s the goats that will suffer. And the goats deserve to be well cared for regardless of what your end game it. Good Luck!
*Other Helpful Goat Posts Can Be Found Here
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