Kinder Goat Breeders Association

KGBA

Jean Jajan

Meat yields on the dual purpose Kinder Goat

by

The Kinder is a dual purpose goat used for both milk and meat.  The meat aspect has been neglected by many breeders.  Our beloved Kinders have become more dairy in type sacrificing meat production for milk production.  While for many milk is all they want, a breeder needs to keep in mind the fact that usually about half the kids are bucks.  Not all bucks should be kept as bucks.  On average only 1 out of 10 is truly buck quality.  What do you do with the rest of those darling little fellows.  True, you can wether them and sell them as pets or brush clearers but that market saturates fast. 
In our area there are a couple of meat goat buyers.  They pay by the pound and their price depends on the type of goat.  Dairy kids bring less per pound that meat kids.  I have worked on my marketing with the meat goat buyer I use and he knows that my kids pack meat.  I am now getting the same price per pound for my Kinder boys as he pays for the Boer kids. 
If you are planning on slaughtering any kids this year please keep records and let me know what the live weight, carcass weight and actual meat weight wrapped is.
The chart below will show some of the yields that come from well bred Kinder kids.
Kinder goat carcass yields
Live wt. lbs
hanging wt lbs
boneless meat lbs
Doe SH
120
59
33
Doe SH
140
71
41
Doe SH
134
62
32
Wether SH
61.5
30
18
Doe SH
135
67
39
Doe SH
138
68
39
GJ Wether
82
41
23
GJ Buck 17 mos
170
90
45
GJ Doe 18 mos
99
47
30
GJ doe 9 mos
95
43
26
GJ Crytorchid 6 mos
92
51
35
GJ Buck 7 mos
89
49
32
GJ Wether 7 mos
80
44
30
GJ Buck 7 mos
70
39
23
For more information on Kinders as meat goats look in the blog archives in 2012 October Kinders as Meat goats.
Jean Jajan

Kinder Goats for Meat

by

Selling, Butchering and Processing Your Goats

By Jean Jajan

With winter coming on, many goat breeders thoughts turn to what to do with those excess young males or cull kids.  We don’t want the expense of wintering too many non productive animals.  There are many options open for the breeder. 
The first and most common is to advertise that you have goats for sale.  This can be done in the paper, through a sign on the bulletin board at the feed store or an ad on Craig’s list.  Also depending on the area you live in you might try to post a sign in the ethnic grocery stores.  This way you can target the Hispanic population or the middle eastern population depending on your area.  One thing to remember though is that usually the middle eastern population wants a completely intact male only.  This would mean only buck kids that have not been castrated or disbudded.  They do not take females.  There is a member on the Oregon coast who sells her wethers to the Hispanic population for $100 a piece for the weaned kids and they go like hot cakes.
When I sell an animal for slaughter I do not allow it to be dispatched on my place and I know many other sellers that don’t either.  This is a personal choice as I don’t know what technique they use and would rather not be present.  While I hope all the animals I sell for meat are dispatched with a properly executed gunshot, I know that many have their throat slit and are bled out.
The second way to sell off those meat kids is to take them to a sales barn.  Many rural areas have a livestock sales barn and you can consign them there.  When I did this I dropped them off and preferred not to remain.  They tend not to handle the animals the way we do and I prefer not to see it. 
The third option is becoming a member of a meat goat association.  These associations help members market their goats.  The association I was a member of had a livestock buyer come to a central point and weigh and buy the goats.  There was a pool coordinator whom the member would call and commit their kids to the pool.  When there were enough committed to fill a truck the sellers met at a location with a scale and the buyer weighed and paid for the kids then and loaded them up and took them to the slaughter house. 
There are also livestock buyers that have a schedule of coming every few weeks to a public livestock scale and buying livestock.  Check with the local feed stores as they might know of one that does this.  I take a lot of my kids there as I know I only have to wait a few weeks and I call him to find out what he is paying.
My favorite way of getting rid of my excess kids though is to put them in my freezer.  Why not put your great hormone free, antibiotic free, low fat, low cholesterol meat on your own table.  If you are a hunter you might want to dispatch the goat yourself and dress it out like you would a deer.  The preferred way to dispatch a goat is to use a gun with a 22 long rifle hollow point bullet.  The proper way is to place the barrel of the gun right behind the poll or horn area and angle it toward the front of the lower jaw.  This will instantly kill the animal.  A goat should not be shot through the front of the head as the skull is very hard and dense in that area.
There are several web sites that show how to butcher an animal.  One that I find informative is http://www.ozarkjewels.net/homebutchering.htm. 
For those of you who, like me, do not hunt or feel that they can’t dispatch one of their own goats here are a few good options.  One is a full service butcher who runs a slaughter and will do the kill and cut, wrap, and freeze.  All you have to do is drop the goat off the night before or early morning of the butchering and pick up a nice box of frozen goat meat ready to drop in your freezer a few days later.  Check with feed stores and custom butchers.  In our area it runs about $120 per goat.
The second is to contact a mobile farm butcher.  Ours has his ad in the paper several times a week and is booked weeks in advance.  A mobile butcher will come to your farm and slaughter the animal there.  He will skin and dress the animal and take it to his butchering facility or possibly one you choose in his refrigerated truck.  He cleans up and hoses the area down afterwards and leaves almost no trace.  My farm kill truck charges $60 per goat for the kill and takes it to any of the several custom butcher shops in the area.  The cut and wrap costs about another $60. 
How you have your goat cut up is all a matter of preference.  I like meat in something, so I generally do not have chops or steaks cut.  They tend to be rather small and a bit dry.  I will have one or both hind legs done in a boneless rolled roast.  I have the loins and tenderloins taken out from the spine and packaged.  The ribs I have cut from the spine and packaged.  The rest of the meat I have half of it ground and half of it cubed.  I have the butcher crack the neck bones and shanks and package them for soup stock.
If I have an older buck slaughtered I have him packaged separately and the packages marked.  Some tend to be a bit tougher and a little gamey so I want to know which is which as I use a more tenderizing method of cooking and more seasoning. 
As for how to prepare goat, I don’t feel there are any specific goat recipes.  I use my favorite recipes for stews and casseroles.  I use the loin meat for fajitas or something that I need the most tender cuts for.  Braising with its lower temperature, moisture and covering during cooking is the secret to cooking with goat. 

by

Summer came to the Rogue Valley on June 21st. That was the first nice day that we have had all year. Last week we still had the risk of frost so my garden starts have been sitting in their pots waiting for the ground to dry up and warm up. I finally got them all in and hope they get to growing.
Our Kinder kids have really started growing too. The boys are all banded and I put two sets of twin bucklings into the weaning pen. Finally I get that great Kinder milk for myself. I have two large freezers that I put the one quart plastic bags of milk in for my soapmakaing. The rest is for cheese.
I love to make a soft spreadable cheese for toast. Heat one gallon of milk to 170 degrees and add 3/4 cup of lemon juice let sit for a few minutes until a fine curd forms. Pour the curds into a cheesecloth lined colander to drain. Tie the four corners of the cheesecloth into a knot and hang the bag to drain for a couple of hours. The cheese can then be salted a little or have herbs added. My favorite is to leave the salt out and use one of the Ms. Dash seasonings like the chipotle, herb and garlic, or spicy hot.
As you increase the temperature up from 170 toward 180 the curd will become a bit tougher and larger and you can actually press it into a log shape and slice it. If you heat it to 180 and use 1/4 cup of vinegar in place of the lemon juice you will get queso blanco . This cheese can be cut and used in salads, soups and stir-fries.
There are a lot of great cheese and meat recipes in the book “Goats Produce too! The Udder Real Thing Volume 2 by Mary Jane Toth. It is well worth the $13 price tag.
One of my favorite recipes is for Cajeta which is Mexican caramel candy.
3 qts goat milk
3 C sugar
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp baking soda.
dissolve the corn starch and baking soda in 1 cup of the milk to get out all the lumps then add it to the milk and sugar in the pot. I use a very heavy large pot for this as it will foam up and boil over in a small pot. Cook the mixture until it is thick and creamy like caramel sauce. It can be poured into jars and refrigerated. It is great on ice cream. If cooked to a soft caramel stage it is delicious on graham crackers.
Jean Jajan
Gray J Ranch

https://kindergoatbreeders.com/2010/06/26/631/

“Oh my gosh she is big”

by

My friend and I sat down and planned out my breeding schedule to work around hers. I was to take her beautiful caramel buck to breed to my spotted brown Nubian. Then I would return him and take her dark grey agouti buck to breed my black doe. My young Nubian would wait a few months and then be bred to a second caramel buck she had. Perfect, three does and three different bucks.
The love nest was set up and everything put in order. A private corral and barn and just to really make it easy I set up my folding leg milking stand on a down slope. When I held the doe backed up to it the buck could just walk out on the stand and do his business. He did not even have to jump up on the stand. What could be easier. The handsome suitor was named Major Force. The doe came in heat and Major let us know with all his romancing. We backed the doe up to the stand and Major would walk out but not mount. We backed her up to the bank beside the stand so he could reach and he still would not do it with that big doe. This doe stays in heat for about thirty six hours so we tried every few hour all day into the cool night and early morning and nothing. It seems that Major Force was a Minor Farce.

Back he went and I picked up buck number two. Buckeye was an old buck who was getting a touch of arthritis but he was built like a little tank. He was after those two does like an old pro. I would back the does up to the stand and he was out there doing his job in an instant. Success. Two month later we were so excited to see the pygmy type ears in the ultrasound. Both the does had settled.
When it came time in late January to breed the third doe, my friend had sold her second caramel buck and had her fourth buck in breeding her does. Back came Buckeye to the rescue. While my breeding plans had not turned out as I had hoped, at least my does were bred.
Over the next three years I used my buck and three different bucks of my friend’s to get more diversity in my herd. I have crossed the different lines but have never kept a second generation to breed. Last year I decided to keep one second generation doeling and buckling to breed to each other. I finally have a third generation doeling and buckling.

After having raised Boers for so many years, I get excited at the variety of color combinations and spots on the kids. I also love the vigor of the Kinder kids. They are up and about in a matter of minutes not hours like with the Boers.
Next: What to do with all that milk.

Greetings from the Gray J Ranch

by

Many people have asked me how I got into Kinder Goats. The truth is, almost by accident and a long round about way. We had just moved from the city and wanted some goats as our property was covered with brush and poison oak. I saw an ad in the paper for Pygmies and bought a little buck and doe. Then I started reading all I could about goats. Whoops, ran the buck to the vet to get wethered and hoped he hadn’t bred his little sister yet. They were darling and we named them Poco and Poca which means little in Spanish and also stands for for Poison Oak Control Officer and Poison Oak Control Assistant. No way could those two little Pygmies get much brush and poison oak under control.

We needed bigger goats to do the job and I read about all the dairy breeds and the Boer goat. The county ag extension office had their first Dairy goats and friends program which we attended and got a lot of great information on the different breeds and contacts for breeders. I got the address for the Pygmy goat club in our area and we joined. We showed in their first show and I was hooked as I had showed horses as a youngster. We went to the county fair and my husband stared into the eyes of a Nubian doe and instantly fell in love with the Nubians and I fell for the Boers. Some of my new Pygmy breeder friends also had Boers and Nubians so within 5 months of our getting into goats we had two Pygmies, two Nubian doelings, 1 Boer doeling and three bred percentage Boer does and only a small dog house connecting two 10 x 10 chain link kennels.

We decided that would never do come the rainy season and kidding time. There was a nice two stall barn down the hill from the house with a large horse corral near by but no other kind of fencing anywhere on the property and there were coyotes running around at night. We put up a six foot chain link paddock on the front of the barn that was 12 x 30 and field fenced the inside of the wooden corral. Then we fenced off the area between them to make a runway for the goats to go into the corral during the day and come into the barn area at night for safety.
We had our perfect goat barn and paddock area or so we thought. The Boer herd over the next few years grew at one time to over 40 counting the new kids . We fenced more land and built more barns and areas for the bucks and the new kids. I spent most of the summer traveling to shows and helping put them on and making goat milk soap which my husband sold for me at three growers markets a week to support the goats. This was work not retirement.
I was sitting there the night before a big Boer show I was putting on. I was exhausted and frustrated over trying to finish up the show program when it dawned on me that my goats were not going to be competitive for the championships any more. A lot of the breeders were bringing in high priced new Texas stock to the area and I would have to do the same and spend many, many thousands of dollars to remain competitive.
My mind snapped. I told my husband I was selling out while still ahead and we were going to be done with the Boers. Just then the phone rang and it was a late entering Boer breeder who wanted to get his entries into the program. I mentioned to him that I had decided to sell out my Boers and would have them for sale at the show. He told me he would be there at the show cash in hand first thing in the morning. I had one old buck and doe who I didn’t show any more so they stayed home. Well, word got around over night and when I pulled in and started unloading I was getting offers left and right. By the start of the show, I only owned one older percentage doe that I refused to sell and two young bucklings. It was a sad, lonely ride home and a very empty barnyard the next morning.
What to do about freshening my three Nubians? I didn’t want to breed them to my old Boer buck and have percentages I would have to sell for meat. I jokingly mentioned to my Pygmy breeder girl friend that I should breed them to one of her Pygmy bucks and get little Pygnubians. She said that the cross was actually a breed called the Kinder and we researched it. She called Pat and asked her about the breed and getting started. I traded my friend my Boer buckling for a Pygmy buckling and she lent me a mature buck for the first breeding. I was in the Kinder business.
Jean
Next: Getting the important breeding business done. “Oh my gosh she is big”