Goat Wise | Meat Goats, Feeding Goats, Goat Fencing, Livestock Management

Today I want to tell you how our goat market evolved from sale barn auctions to direct-to-consumer meat sales to something I stumbled into sort of by accident that turned out to be a much better fit for the goats we've been raising. There's a mental block I had to work through in there too, and I think a lot of producers run into the same one. Let's get to it.   Mentions: Idaho Goat Grazers (Zak)...

Back in Episode 46, I talked about early versus late banding of buck kids. We went through the full debate, the urinary calculi argument, the research, all of it, and I reported on a small test group we'd banded at birth. I said I'd follow up when we did it at scale. We've now done it at scale, and this is that follow-up. Let's get to it.   Episode Mentions: 46 | Early Banding vs Late Banding in B...

This is a question I get asked a lot, and honestly, one I've wondered about myself for a long time. Freemartinism is something every cattle producer knows about, a female born twin to a male that ends up sterile. But you almost never hear about it in goats. Today I want to get to the bottom of why that is, because the answer isn't that goats are immune to it. It comes down to anatomy, and it's act...

Our NoFence collars showed up on Friday, shipped all the way from Norway, and they've been sitting in boxes since they got here. Today I want to talk about why we finally pulled the trigger on virtual fence after years of waiting, what it opens up for us, including over two hundred acres of brush ground we've barely been able to touch with goats, and how it fits alongside the electric netting we'v...

We are one week into kidding season. Forty does have kidded, seventy-eight kids on the ground, two sets of quads, four sets of triplets, and we have not assisted on a single birth. Not one. Today I want to tell you about day two, when four does kidded in a rainstorm, and the harder question that was sitting underneath all of it: how do you know where the line is between trusting your animals to do...

We've spent the last two weeks on how our kidding system evolved and what it took to reshape the herd through selection pressure. Today is Part 3, and this one is for you. We're going to walk through the factors that actually determine your kidding system, genetics, weather, business model, predator protection, and labor, so you can stop second-guessing your setup and start making decisions that f...

Last week we started this series with the story of how our kidding system evolved — from show goats and January barn kidding through commercial Boers, and then the Spanish goats arriving and refusing to work in the system we'd been running for years. Today is Part 2, and this is where we get into what that shift actually took. How do you move a herd that's been bred for intensive management toward...

Today we're starting a three-part series on kidding management, how a system actually works, why it matters which genetics you're running, and how to build an approach that fits your operation. Part 1 is the story of how our system evolved from show goats and January barn kidding in twenty-below weather, through commercial Boers, and then the moment the Spanish goats arrived and showed me somethin...

This year we went out on grass almost six weeks earlier than we ever have, and right after we did, it started freezing hard again. Today I want to talk about what that actually looks like operationally, specifically what happens to electric netting stakes in a hard-freeze climate, why that matters, and what we changed to make it work. I'll also tell you what the does look like on pre-kidding green...

  Two years ago, I hit publish on the very first episode of this podcast, not really knowing if anyone was going to listen or if I'd make it past ten episodes. Today we're marking that — 50,000 downloads in 115 countries, and I still have days where that doesn't feel real. In this episode I'm going to talk about what these two years have actually looked like, what shifted and what I learned, a con...

Today we're talking about the financial comparison between goats and cattle, done in a way that's actually fair. Most of the comparisons I've seen don't account for feed consumption, and when you leave that out, the math just doesn't work. I'm going to walk you through the framework I put together using real numbers from our operation and this last selling season, and I'll show you how to drop you...

Today we're getting into the physical setup for watering goats, what you put water in, how deep, how many, and the specific problems that can kill kids and trap horned goats. I covered the big picture in Episode 9, water as the most important nutrient, monitoring intake, why goats are picky about water quality, and how we haul water for rotational grazing. This episode goes deeper into the actual...

Today we’re talking about why people quit goats – and I mean the real reasons, not just “it was too hard.” There are two things that send people to the exit almost every single time, and both of them are preventable. We’re going to talk about fence, we’re going to talk about genetics, and we’re going to talk about what it actually looks like to build a system you can stay in for the long haul.   L...

Today we're wrapping up the four-episode series on goat health supplies, and we're finishing with medications — what's on the shelf, what's in the fridge, and the single best storage hack I've come across that costs almost nothing. I'll walk through the full list: what I actually reach for, what I keep on hand but rarely use anymore, and some things that are worth understanding before you need the...

Today we're back in the health supply boxes for part 2B of this series: Eye care, disbudding, first aid, wound care and injury prevention, a few rarely used kidding supplies, and the storage systems that hold it all together. I've got a couple of stories in here too, a prairie dog hole, a stick coming out of a goat's chest, and a dog that made a decision it quickly regretted. Let's get to it!   Ep...

Today we're opening up the goat health boxes, the ones I actually reach into on a regular basis. Last week we talked about the philosophy behind low-intervention management and the must-have supplies. This week we're getting into the working kit, what eight years of goat management looks like accumulated in boxes, and what actually sees regular use now versus what I used back in the show goat year...

Today we're starting a three-part series on your goat medical kit, what actually needs to be in it, and why the most important item isn't something you can order from a supply catalog. In this first episode we're covering the foundation that makes everything else work: observation, your vet relationship, and then the supplies for diagnostics and supportive care. We'll also get into basic treatment...

One storm after another, and we're managing through it. Today I'm sharing what we did last week when our night trap pens had no dry ground left anywhere for the goats to lie down — what we did, the thinking behind every decision, and just as importantly, what we didn't do. Plus: why over-intervening in tough weather conditions can actually work against your animals' long-term resilience.   Mention...

The goat industry doesn’t look like the beef industry — and that difference may be an advantage. For years, many producers have viewed the lack of centralization and formal structure in the goat industry as a weakness. But recent history has shown that highly efficient systems can also be fragile. In this episode, we look at what decentralization actually means and why flexibility may be more valu...

Breeding decisions, feed calculations, replacement standards, and herd focus all shape profitability but rarely in dramatic ways. Most goat herds don’t fall apart overnight. They slowly lose momentum because of small management decisions that compound over time. In this episode, I walk through five mistakes that can quietly erode profitability in a goat herd. From breeding does too early to failin...

Efficient chores aren’t about moving faster — they’re about deciding the order once so you don’t have to rethink it every morning. When chores feel chaotic or take longer than they should, it’s usually not because there’s too much to do. It’s because there isn’t a clear system in place. In this episode, I walk you step-by-step through my winter morning livestock chores — not just what I do, but wh...

Raising goats successfully isn’t about having more animals or fewer animals — it’s about having management that matches your goal. Too many people jump into goats with good intentions, only to feel overwhelmed, frustrated, and eventually sell out because their goats, systems, and goals were never aligned. In this episode, I break down a pattern I see over and over: people either start with too man...

Self-sufficiency looks different for every family, yet many people feel stuck trying to follow generic food storage lists that don’t reflect how they actually eat or live. Over time, I’ve learned that the most effective food and household storage plans aren’t built from someone else’s checklist — they’re built by paying attention to what your family already uses. In this episode, I share a simple,...

Fast growth is something we’re genuinely excited about on our ranch. This winter, a stretch of unusually mild weather reduced maintenance energy demands, allowing our weaned goat kids to put more of what they were eating toward growth instead of staying warm. As a result, they’re running 15–20 pounds ahead of where we’d normally expect them to be this time of year. In this episode, I walk through...

Winter chores don’t have to take all day, but they do require good systems. In this episode, I’m sharing what a typical winter day looks like on our ranch, how we divide chores, manage water in freezing temperatures, and keep winter from turning into constant crisis mode. I walk through what’s happening on the ranch right now, from breeding season updates to moving chickens into the barn, and how...