Did you know that goat meat is one of the most widely consumed meats in the world? Yup, somewhere between 60% – 70% of all the red meat consumed worldwide is goat meat. In researching my facts, I also learned that more goat’s milk is consumed worldwide than cow’s milk. Wow!
Goat meat has less fat than any of the red meats consumed in the US, so just how healthy is goat meat?
|
Calories |
Fat Grams |
Sat. Fat |
Protein |
Iron |
| Goat |
122 |
2.58 |
0.79 |
22 |
3.2 |
| Beef |
245 |
16 |
6.8 |
23 |
2.9 |
| Pork |
310 |
24 |
8.7 |
21 |
2.7 |
| Lamb |
235 |
16 |
7.3 |
22 |
1.4 |
| Chicken |
120 |
3.5 |
1.1 |
21 |
1.5 |
Sources: (1) USDA Handbook #8, 1989 and (2) Nutritive Value of Foods, Home and Garden Bulletin, #72, USDA, 1981.
If you would like to read more about goat meat, click on any of these links:
Agriculture Alternatives
Boer Goats Home
Felix Farm: US Meat Goat Industry
I finally uploaded a few pictures that were taken around the farm. Some are from this summer, then a few during December kidding, then the rest were taken this afternoon. You can either click on link to the left under “Pages” called “Pictures” or just click here.
Please feel free to leave some comments, I would enjoy reading what you think about the site so far.
Yesterday’s move went really, really smoothly, almost too smoothly. I’ll try to give you an idea of what we accomplished by painting a verbal picture for you. For simplicity’s sake, we have 5 pastures we use for our animals. When we started yesterday morning, this is how the animals were situated:
#1 – full blood bucks
#2 – pigs & cows
#3 – pigs & cows (the gate was open between pastures #2 & #3)
#4 – full blood does
#5 – commercial does
What I wanted to end up with is the following:
#1 – bucks
#2 – pigs
#3 – empty & resting
#4 – commercial does
#5 – full blood does & cows
The tricky part about this was the dogs that live with the commercial does and the dogs that live with the full blood does have never met face-to-face, only through the fence and I didn’t want to risk them meeting on the same side of the fence and a fight breaking out. So, we had to plan the moving activities in such a way that this wouldn’t happen. We started out by closing the gates between pastures #2 and #3 and moving the pigs into #2. We have a small catch pen between pastures #2 and #3 so we took advantage of that and caught the cows in there. Next, we moved the commercial does from pasture #5 into #3, then moved the full blood does from pasture #4 into #5. After we did this, we moved the cows from the catch pen into pasture #5 and finally opened the gate between pasture #3 and #4 to allow the commercial does to move into there. After the moving was done, all we had left to do was move around a few feed troughs and put out some fresh bales of hay.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, everything went as planned. The lesson learned from the day is to plan out something like this a few days in advance. While I never wrote it down on paper, I’d been thinking about it off and on throughout the week, then I presented it to Jody and Greg in the morning so that everyone was clear on what needed to be accomplished and how we were doing it. In the end, Greg, Ben and I had finished moving the animals even before Jody came out.
A few days late, but I wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year anyway. Not much new going on around the farm, except having a few frozen waterers with this cold weather we’ve been having. Tomorrow (Saturday), we’re planning a big move. We’re going to move the commercial herd to a smaller pasture, then move the full blood herd of does into the larger pasture along with the cows. This will be the first time we’re putting our cows, full blood does, and some guard dogs together in the same pasture. Hopefully, it will all go smoothly. We’re going to move the pigs to their own pasture as well, right next to the full blood bucks. This will allow us to rest the pasture where the cows currently are located. While I realize the grass isn’t growing, we’re starting to see a lot of manure in that pasture, so moving the animals off of it, hoping for some rain and/or snow, then the spring thaw, will hopefully get it in condition for animals come late spring. I’ll try to take some pictures tomorrow during the “big” move and post them and our adventures in the next few days.
