Our Meat Goat Breeding Program
Our goal was to breed better Boer meat goats for efficient goat meat production on the rugged pastures of the Arkansas and Missouri Ozark Mountains.
Our breeding program emphasized hardiness and resistance to internal parasites. These are very important traits for commercial meat goat producers. Goats make great pets and are fun to show in livestock shows. Unfortunately, people who raise goats for pets or for showing have a tendency to pamper their goats too much, thus, developing lines of goats that are not hardy enough to use as commercial meat goats.
The two most economically important traits in meat goats are hardiness and fertility. These two traits have the highest priority in our breeding program. We do not pamper our Boer goats. From early April till late December. our goats receive no feed other than pasture, salt, and minerals. When the acorns start falling, in mid September, our Boer goats get extra nutrients from the acorns and pasture, encouraging rapid gain and multiple births. We are able to average 2 kids per doe using this system.
We do not use any medicated feeds or vaccines. We depend on the goats' natural immune system to ward off diseases. Boer goats which are not able to ward off diseases are culled. We recommend this practice only if one is producing breeding stock selected for hardiness and one can afford to lose a percentage of ones kid crop to diseases that can be vaccinated for.
We have also been breeding Boer goats for good meat conformation and rapid growth under economically sound pasture conditions. We have looked to the show goat industry to find bucks that can improve these traits. This hasn't been easy. Most of the show bucks we purchased have had to be culled without using because they were not hardy. We have finally found a top quality show buck that transmits rapid growth and good conformation. He is SGR Cattilac Style. In our breeding program we have used five outstanding daughters of Cattilac, many of his grand-daughters and one of his best buck kids, Critter Ridge Catt Star.
Recently, we have used WNDY Spot, He transmits hardiness and resistance to internal parasites. He also transmits correct two-teated udders which are rare in full blood Boers. SGR Cattilac Style transmits excellent meat conformation and very rapid growth. We have been line breeding to both Cattilac and WNDY Spot, keeping our coefficient of inbreeding to 12.5% or less. Our goal is to produce a line of full blood Boers that breeds true for each of these very important traits. Kids out of WNDY Spot are pictured below.
