Here Is A Link To One Of My Podcast Episodes Discussing Our New Pig As Well As Multi-Species Grazing:
Over 65% of the red meat consumed in the entire world is goat, but in the United States we mostly turn our noses up to this great meat.
Why is this? This is largely untrue for cultural groups only recently making their homes in the U.S. as well as folks with Latino roots. However, I am of European ancestry, and I never ate goat until I raised one for myself. I would venture to state that Idahoans with European ancestry eat more deer and elk than they do goat. There has to be an answer to this riddle.
Creating A Demand
We have a wonderful farm in Kuna that produces nicely for us. And, it is a good size farm for the area in which we live. Even with that being the case it does not provide enough income to support the farm payment and the household. So, both my wife and I bring in income that is not generated directly from the soil on our 25 acres.
The income I produce comes through entrepreneurship in the form of a couple different business ventures. One of those is a podcast that I created and host called “Off-Farm Income“. This show is all about small business and entrepreneurship in agriculture. As such, I study a lot about entrepreneurship. One of the hardest things to do in business, I have read, is to create demand for a product.
Well, creating demand for goat is exactly what I am trying to do. I am stubborn in that way. You see, I never intended to raise goats. But now that I am, I am determined to teach everyone else what I have learned and make customers out of all of you!
I have mentioned before that my degree in agriculture from Montana State University was focused on production agriculture in the United States. There was no mention of goat in any of the classes that were available to me. There was no “goat production” course for me to take. And, with all of the cowboys and cowgirls that I had the honor of taking classes with, there was a stigma to goat. Goat farming was looked down upon, or at least that is the impression that I got. So, I never intended to raise these curious creatures. However, this all changed when I finally was able to become a farmer.
When we first purchased our farm it was completely undeveloped. There was a house and 25 acres of weeds – that was it! There were no fences, no irrigation was set up and no pasture was growing. The question became, “what would eat the weeds”. Of course, everyone knows the answer to that is goats. Goats eat anything right? Even tin cans?
(The answer to that is actually – they do not, but we did not know any better)
My wife and daughter decided that they wanted goats for our place. So, we purchased some temporary fencing and started looking for goats. This was in 2011, and there were still a lot of foreclosures and short sales of homes going on the Treasure Valley. As it turned out, people were losing their places and putting their goats on Craigslist “free to a good home”.
We received our first two goats for free from a gentleman in Boise. They were named “Lars” and “James” after the two frontmen of the metal band, Metallica. We brought them home and put them to work on the weeds.
After our friends found out that we had the two goats, they started telling us about other people who wanted to give away their goats. Then it really started. People began giving us goats. Pretty soon we had a herd developing, and it was time to get serious about these animals.
I found myself in the goat business, and I got a bit more serious about this. This led me to four discoveries:
The Bible Does Not Prohibit You From Eating Goat – I don’t know if this matters to you or not, but if it makes a difference I have researched this. Why did I research this? Well, my step-grandfather (one of my earliest mentors in farming) was devout and would sing Christian Hymns all day and talk about the Bible. For some reason he had a fondness to telling me that you were not supposed to eat goat, and I believed him. Not wanting to break any rules, and being a Biblical novice, I researched this when we decided to raise our own. It turns out that he was mistaken, and to my chagrin it was pork that was prohibited! However, as long as you subscribe to the New Testament, you were alright with pigs too. Even as a novice on these things, I was feeling pretty relieved.
Multi-Species Grazing – Goats eat different things than cattle. Since raising cattle was my primary goal, when I learned about multi-species grazing I was thrilled. This meant a healthier pasture for the cattle, filled with more plants that cattle like to eat and less to no use of herbicides to eliminate the plants, forbs and shrubs that cattle did not like to eat. There is a lot more information on multi-species grazing of goats with cattle in a previous blog post. You can find it through this link if you would like to know more.
Taste – Goat tastes very good! I try very hard not to be a hypocrite. I also try very hard to not convince people to do things that I would not do myself. So, I figured that I had better eat some goat if I was going to sell goat to people for consumption. I picked out what I thought looked like a tasty goat from our herd, and I butchered it. It is delicious meat, and it was easy to butcher, just like a deer. I was thrilled with what I had discovered.
Nutritional Value – I also found out that goat is very good for you, especially in light of beef, pork and chicken. Check out these statistics about goat meat:
- One, 4ounce serving of goat contains only:
- 124 calories
- 2.6 grams of fat
- 0.8 grams of saturated fat
- 64 mg of cholesterol
- That same 4 ounce serving contains 25 grams of protein!
- It is lower in fat than chicken
- It is higher in protein than beef
- It is lower in calories, total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol than traditional sources of meat in the U.S.
- It is high in iron
- It has large quantities of B-Group Vitamins
- It contains the healthy type of Omega-6 vitamins called “CLA’s” which:
- Improve immunity
- Improve inflammatory functions
- Improve bone mass
- Improve blood sugar regulation
- Reduce body fat
- Better maintains lean body mass
- It contains dietary potassium, which can help your blood pressure
- It contains low levels of dietary sodium
How To Buy Goat
This is a good news/bad news kind of topic. One of the reasons we do not consume more goat in the U.S. is that it is not readily sold at major grocery store chains. This a chicken and egg argument, because if the demand existed grocery chains would surely carry it. However, if they carried it, I do believe that people would be more apt to try it and demand would rise.
Goat is available in stores like the Boise Coop and Whole Foods as well as ethnically based meat markets. However, it is going to be expensive! That is kind of the bad news about buying goat.
The good news is that if how the livestock is raised is of importance to you, the lack of demand means that anyone raising goat is probably doing it in a way that you agree with. Since the demand for goat is lower, you don’t see large goat feedlots or mass produced goat in different food items in the freezer aisle or at fast food restaurants.
If you want to get serious about adding goat to your diet, you are going to wind up purchasing it from a producer like Grass Fed Boise. I mentioned multi-species grazing before. This is a bit of a misnomer because goats are browsers. However, they get to exist as naturally as possible on our farm because we exclusively graze them. We barely even give goats hay during the winter. This is not to be cruel. It is because they are so easy to raise and require so little compared to cattle (just 3-5 lbs of hay per day for a fully grown nanny).
Goats also have great personalities which means that producers make their lives even more enjoyable. If you are driving out in the country and you see goats in a pasture, and you see a children’s play set out there with them, that is for the goats to play on. No kidding!
So, we strongly encourage you to try out this great meat and of course, we want you to buy local. Buying from a local producer like us is going to be your best and easiest option. We suggest reaching out to a local producer and asking if you can come see their operation. You can set your eyes on the herd and see how cleanly goats live and how happy they are. If a producer won’t allow this, we suggest moving on.
Whomever you purchase the goat from should help you to get set up with a local butcher who will do a fantastic job of processing the goat for you. Then you will pick up your goat meat, cut the way you want it, from that butcher and pay them their fee. Between what you pay the producer and the butcher you won’t be out that much, and your savings compared to buying it at a specialty store will be significant!
How To Cook Goat
I am no chef or master of the barbecue, but I can manage to make goat taste very good. Plus there a million recipes out there to do just this. Remember that 65% of the world consumes goat as its main source of red meat. There literally are millions of recipes from Middle Eastern to Asian to Jamaican to South American to African to Mexican. Enjoy the adventure of trying all of these out!
Do you not have an Instant Pot Ultra 6 Qt 10-in-1 Multi- Use Programmable Pressure Cooker, Slow Cooker, Rice Cooker, Yogurt Maker, Cake Maker, Egg Cooker, Sauté, Steamer, Warmer, and Sterilizer
Do you like to make stew? Especially in the winter when the weather outside calls for hearty meals? You can make an excellent stew with goat meat while cutting down on the calories, giving great flavor and adding all of the health benefits of this meat.
Let’s talk barbecue’d goat for a moment. I mean a plain old barbecue, not a luxury Traeger. A lot of recipes call for slow cooking or stewing goat, but I am here to tell you that just a few minutes on a barbecue grill can yield delicious goat meat. Let me do this through a story.
Two winters ago when we had below normal temperatures and above normal snow fall, I sold a lot of goat meat right off of our farm during the holiday season. Several of our customers were refugees from Africa, and they wanted goat meat to celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years.
A lot of these folks are caught in a catch 22 when it comes to eating goat. They do not have the funds to purchase the quantity of goat that they require for a holiday party from a specialty store. And, they also do not want to pay to have a butcher shop process the goat. Prior to coming to the United States they would do this themselves, and they don’t want to pay the extra expense. However, they frequently live in an apartment and have nowhere to do this.
For the first few years we sold goat off of our farm I had several requests for people to butcher their goat here. I was hesitant and refused for a long time. However, I started to see it as a way of doing something good for our customers because they were really in a bind. This was even more of a problem for our Muslim customers because the goat needed to be processed a certain way for religious reasons, and there are no butchers doing that. So, I finally decided to allow customers to process their goat at our farm, and I felt great about doing that.
Back to the bad winter. During Christmas break of that year I got a call from a woman with an accent asking about purchasing goat for a New Year’s celebration. She wanted to buy four goats and butcher them on my property. We made arrangements and she and her family were going to come out on the following Saturday.
That Saturday was cold with a bitter wind. I was wearing insulated bib overalls and a heavy jacket to do chores that morning, and there was about 6 inches of snow on the ground.
At 10am, as scheduled, the woman and her husband arrived. So, did three other men and their wives, and all of their children. They were all from Africa originally and wanted to roast goats for the holiday party they were throwing. They picked out four goats that they wanted, and proceeded to start butchering them at my place. Nobody was dressed as warmly as me.
Before I knew it they had pulled a small barbecue out of the trunk of one of the cars and had the charcoal flaming. Then they put on some Swahili rap music and got out a six pack of Heineken beer. They were having a butchering party, just like I would do in a hunting camp. I was fine with this, and after I got them all set up I headed back to the house.
About 30 minutes later I received a text message from the woman I had been speaking with on the telephone. She asked me if I had any salt that they could have. I poured some salt into a plastic baggy and walked it down to them. There were several cutlets of goat meat on the grill, and of course they were very fresh.
One of the husbands sprinkled some of the salt on one of the cutlets and handed it me. I ate it down, and it was delicious. It was so simple too! Just flipped once on the grill, thoroughly cooked and sprinkled with salt. So, goat can be barbecued to perfection. I think the secret is to keep it simple!
Try Some Goat
We hope you will all give this great meat a chance. And of course we hope you will source your locally farmed goat from us at Grass Fed Boise. You will enjoy every bite!
Are you wiling to try this great source of protein recognized throughout the rest of the world?
Articles About Goat Meat
Health Benefits Of Lamb And Goat Meat
Goat meat is healthier than beef and chicken — here’s how to cook it