Project Overview
Different Goat Breed Crosses to Find the Best Tasting Meat
Commodities
- Animals: goats
Practices
- Animal Production: free-range
- Education and Training: extension, farmer to farmer, on-farm/ranch research, participatory research
- Farm Business Management: market study
- Production Systems: integrated crop and livestock systems
Summary:
For this project, we looked at both the birth and growth rates of different breeds of goats. We then compared the taste of the different types of goat meat to see if there was a stronger or milder taste for the different meats.
Project objectives:
The first objective of this project was to compare different breeds of goat meat to find the mildest tasting meat. I hypothesized that it would be easier to encourage customers to buy and eat goat meat if it was as mild as possible.
The second objective was to compare birth weights and growth rates in the four different crosses of goats: Angora/Nubian, Angora/Boer, Nubian and Boer.
The ultimate question that we were trying to answer was: is there enough of a taste difference in Angora-crossed goat meat to make the slower growth rate worthwhile and financially viable compared to the pure bred, larger typical meat breeds?
Surprisingly to me, there was not enough of a taste difference to warrant raising the slower growing Angora crosses.
Challenges for this project primarily were the weighing of the newborns and then the three-month olds. Three-month old kids are very active and agile, and some of the weighing was done in the snow and cold.
