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Living on a homestead is a dream that many of us have.  One thing that I feel holds many people back from jumping into the homesteading lifestyle is finances.  Whether we like to admit it or not we all need at least some cash flow to pay bills and provide certain things for our families.  Money can be a major concern when moving out to the country or starting a homestead.  I have been a full-time farmer/homesteader now for almost five years.  It has not always been easy but I would not trade it for the world.  I would like to talk about the profitability of raising goats.  Even on just a few acres I believe that goats can add some much needed cash flow to any homestead.

We have been raising Kiko goats here on our farm/homestead for over eight years. We currently have 82 mamma goats and five Billy goats. Our herd has been as big as 150 mamma goats, but a few years back we sold about 60 for breeding stock and have been trying to build the herd back. Goats are amazing animals and I hope that after reading this post you might consider adding them to your farm or homestead.

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Let’s get down to goat business! By far the most important success factor to having goats is starting your herd off with quality mama goats.  Cheapest is not always best when it comes to livestock.  Goats get a very bad reputation for being hard to handle, hard to keep in fences, and all around destructive. My experience with them has been all good.  If you keep them where they have lots to eat, they are easy to care for, stay where you fence them, and are not destructive at all.

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Below is an example of a goat budget that comes right from our farm accounting books. This assumes that you already have land and fencing.

A good breeding doe (Female goat) will cost on average $200. Now there are many different kinds of goat breeds out there.  I have tried about all of them and can tell you from experience the Kiko breed is by far the hardiest and lowest maintenance.  That is not to say they will make you the most money. Do your own research and see what breed suites your environment the best.

A female goat will have on average 2 kids a year (generally goats have twins…a lot of times they do have triplets but for this example we will stick with twins). Let’s say she has one female and one male. Five months after having the kids they are ready to be weaned and can be sold.  The female is worth $200 and the males sell for $150.  That is a total value of $350 from that one breeding female.  Sadly, you will always have expenses: feed, water minerals, vaccination, shelter etc.  It cost us on our farm an average of $50 a year on average per goat to maintain it. That means the original cost of the goat $200+$50 maintenance is $250 total expense for that goat for one year.  You have an income of $350 - expenses of $250 equal’s $100 profits or 42% return on your money the first year.  The next year, since you have already expensed the purchase price of the breeding goat, your profit will be around $310 per breeding doe. 

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This is when everything works out perfectly and you do not have any catastrophes. When raising any livestock there can be catastrophes such as predators getting in and killing livestock, sickness, bad weather etc.  From personal experience I can say that even your best laid plans do not always work. It can also go the other way.  Last year every baby goat that we tagged the day they were born survived and made it to weaning.

Now that you can see the numbers above, the next question a lot of people have is… how much land does it take?  The answer is how much do you have? A general rule of thumb is that for every cow your land can support you can support seven goats.  Again, this is a general rule of thumb.  Here in central KY, the great thing about goats is they eat weeds and bushes before they will touch the grass and clover.  This means they graze alongside our cattle and do not compete for the same feed. If you live in the Midwest I would say that for every acre of fenced land you could have 3-6 breeding age goats.  Again this is just a general rule.  If you have land that is full of brush and small trees then you could have more goats. They thrive in that kind of environment. 

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Key concerns when raising goats are feet problems and internal parasites.  This is why I really like the Kiko goat breed.  They are known for good feet and parasite resistance.  We trim our goat’s feet and worm them once a year.  Other than those two problems a good fence is key. 

Now that all the facts are out there let’s take a small homestead as an example.  You have 10 acres of fenced land.  This 10 acres can support 20 breeding does. With the numbers from the budget above your average profit per breeding doe is $100 that first year.  You just made $2,000 dollars.  Not too bad! But look what happens the next year after you have expensed the breeding does. Your profit per goat jumps to $310 per goat.  Let’s say though you lost a breeding goat to predators and you lost four babies goats to bad weather. You are left with only 17 breeding does that produced an average of two babies. You still made $5,270 dollars. 

I hope this will encourage any homesteaders or anyone living out in the country with a few extra acres to consider adding some goats to your land.  You will not get rich, but they do add some great cash flow to your farm/homestead.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this long post. Hope it was helpful!