What are the easiest goat breeds to raise?
You may be thinking of buying a little farm – or you already have one – and you are considering what domestic animals you should keep. If you’re thinking of having goats – first, you need to consider their products, and keeping conditions about which I would like to give a summary to you now.
Nowadays the goat milk and its meat are not consumed by too many people because they don’t possess the necessary knowledge about these animals. We shouldn’t neglect this kind creature, for its keeping is economical; its products are extremely delicious and last but not least very healthy! What’s more keeping goats is an exciting experience! There is no other farming animal that would give us such a diversity of products with only little investment and under modest keeping condition like the goat. Comparing its body mass to its milk production ability, goat stands at the first position among our dairy animals; for example, while a cow gives 5-6 times as much milk as its body mass, the goat produces about 10 times as much milk as its body mass. It’s remarkable, isn’t it? What’s more, the protein content of the goat meat (in proportion to cows’ or sheep’s) is high while its fat content is smaller. Its benefits come from not only the meat and milk, but from its leather, fur, and dung as well.
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A goat generally likes the bushy, weedy, rapid slope grazing-ground so it can utilize those fields that other livestock don’t really prefer. What should you know about its milk? First of all that it is the healthiest one among all the milk-producing livestock.
The greatest advantages of goat milk are: it can be digested easily, those who have a milk allergy can consume it because it lacks the protein that causes milk allergy, it is excellent to feed tots with goat milk, and as tuberculosis is very rare among goats, this milk is TBC free! Then, I shouldn’t forget about mentioning goat milk soap! It will make your skin so smooth that after one bath you won’t consider changing it ever again.
After all these fantastic and superb pros I really can’t mention any cons of it, maybe only one thing – if you have a go at buying your first goat you will get the second and third one too! Otherwise, there is an extremely important and essential fact that everybody has to know about goats: they are definitely social animals, therefore they need the company of other goats – or at least other livestock’s presence – as keeping them alone is a very cruel thing.
If you never tried goat milk and are afraid that it would taste/smell bad, do dare. Because when you try it, you will most probably exclaim surprised – “Oh, it is delicious! Wow! It doesn’t have any strange and bad taste!” Well, no, it really doesn’t have bad taste. If yes, it is only the result of keeping the animal under bad circumstances.
There are more and more people – perhaps you too, dear reader – who decide to lead a more natural life and to buy a small farm in order to start keeping animals. If you are interested in other livestock around your house, we kindly recommend to you our previous article on 7 Easiest Farm Animals to Raise for Profit.
All right, all right, you may say – but how can you decide which breed to buy? Well, it all depends on two things: where you want to keep them (in the mountains, or in a flat countryside) and what you want to get as a result. Therefore, the question you should ask yourself is: do you want dairy, meat or fiber breeds? In other words – what kind of products you would like to gain from raising goats? In order to help you with making a decision, we ranked the three most popular breeds from all the three types and a number one breed which is perhaps the most appreciated one in the world. To have the adequate answer we watched Goat breeds on Department of Animal Science. We checked and compared all the breeds regarding their features, like how much milk they give, what their best attributes are, how much land they require, and so on. We need to be honest though; we relied on the personal experience of raising goats, familiar with the fact that the most popular goat breeds are also the easiest goat breeds to raise. So, let’s see those beautiful breeds that are easy to take care of!
