I said in my last post I was going to explain a little more in depth about why we are going to try to stay away from the popular meat goat that everyone has these days...Boer. I know most of you may not care about this but there may be some people out there who read this who raise goats, are interested in raising goats, or knows someone who raises goats. I think this is important info for people who raise goats and may not realize what the research shows. I like Boer goats fine but there are some things people should know about them if they are planning on raising them because that is what everyone is raising these days. So, here is the research that explains my point.
Researchers at Tennessee State University tested three types of meat goat does against each other in the same conditions: Boer goats, Kiko goats, and Spanish goats. They tested purebred does that were exposed to bucks of their own breed. The does were managed together under semi-intensive conditions and kids were weaned at three months. Only 82% of the Boer does delivered at least one live kid, while 96% of the Kikos and 92% of the Spanish does produced at least one living kid. Only 72% of the Boer does weaned at least one kid, while 93% of the Kikos and 88% of the Spanish does weaned a least one kid. Here is a big one....More than 20% of the Boer does died or were culled for infertility of chronic health problems; Kikos had a survival rate of 99.1% and 93.9% of the Spanish survived. All of the does were dewormed twice a year but based on fecal testing, 54% of the Boer does required additional deworming compared to 10% of the Kikos and 17% of the Spanish. Almost all of the Boer does were treated for hoof problems twice, compared to 58% percent of the Kiko and 79% percent of the Spanish treated once.
I think the research speaks for itself.
2 comments:
Josh,
You say the research speaks for itself. However, if it was actually as clear as you state, why would the "industry" choose the boer goat as its preference. My guess is that there is some economic factor left out in your analysis.
Economics is not your driver, so I understand your decision though.
Boer were introduced in the 1990's. They were a superior meat goat because they were bigger goats than the Spanish. There were not many of them at first and they were very high priced (up to $1000) so everyone wanted to get into raising them to make big money. People did not cull them like they should have when everyone started getting them because of the high price. This left the bad genetics in the bloodlines and they started having lots of health issues and kidding issues because the bad goats were not culled. That led to the problems identified in the research. Now that boer are so prevelent and have the problems that they do, it is not as economically beneficial to have them but people don't realize that. The spanish and kiko command the same price or more than boer from breeders now and don't have the problems.
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