08/07/2025
I get messages like these all the time. Identifying breed. Asking questions. Mostly, Im fine with it. But if you are not serving your animals well, you should not be breeding them. If you do not know them well, you should not be breeding them. $150 is our starting price for babies. We will not go lower because of the level of care we provide. I dont want our goats flipped. I dont want them sent to aution houses. I'd much rather them be tacos than used and abused and treated like cheap livestock is often treated. I put a lot of time an energy into our herd a d want the beat for them ♡
Person in my inbox: “how much are your Nigerian dwarves?”
Me: “$150.”
Person “that’s too much I found some for $25 on Craigslist”
Me “that’s fabulous. Enjoy your goats!”
Person 2 weeks later “hey what do you think he’s mixed with?”
Me “lots of things.”
Person *list goat baby for sale “this is a Nigerian dwarf”
Me “that’s not a Nigerian dwarf please stop listing it as such…”
Person *blocks me*
Person later *unblocks me* “hey girl I have a huge emergency, my goat is in labor and idk who else to call it’s stuck”
Me “well, that baby is too big because that buck wasn’t a Nigerian dwarf, looks to be part saanan, and the mama looks to be ND or stocky with some Pygmy, but udder says Pygmy. So.. they shouldn’t have been bred”
Person “well I need to sell the babies.”
• • •
This is a slight variation of more than 5 conversations I’ve had over the last few years and it’s a massive contribution to the downfall of good goat lines for dairy or meat.
I know the market has taken a massive hit, but having mutt and mixed goats with poor genetics being repeatedly bred is going to cause just all the more problems. I get some of us do love our silly mutt mixes, but this is going to harm the dairy goat programs even more.
Selling goats you are declaring to be a dairy breed to unsuspecting farmers or new farmers is yucky behavior. It’s happened to me, its happened to my friends, but it won’t happen to my buyers.
If you want to get into goats, I fully suggest buying goats at a decent price, so you know what you are getting.
There is a saying in any husbandry program “breed the best and eat the rest”
If you don’t eat goat, then fine sell it for a cheap goat or purchase cheap goats. Please stop buying cheap goats to breed and to sell.
I know you might love your mutts, I love Priscilla and Desiree as much as the next, their poor udders and all, but they are at this point ornamental and money pits rather than beneficial to the farm.
Anyway, I’ll hop off my soapbox for the moment. I just woke up to another message asking me to take some goats they said are a breed that they certainly aren’t, and saying I “can have them for cheap if I promise not to eat them” and I’m frustrated all over again with the saturated goat market.
Photo of a very opinionated doeling named Sunshine.
