Instructions
Locate your market by visiting retail food stores that have a large number of Hispanic customers. Contact Muslim mosques and Jewish temples and offer to supply their needs for goats. Offer to sign a contract with the party, who you feel will make the best customer.
Write an accurate description of your potential customer's product expectations including animal weight and age, number of animals needed and desired delivery dates. If you cannot fulfill the number requirement from your farm, form a partnership or cooperative with other goat-raisers.
Breed your bucks and does so that their offspring will be at the desired age on the agreed-to delivery date. You will need enough breeding stock to produce offspring throughout the year for a steady supply to your customer.
Use breeding stock that have the genetics to produce offspring with a good rate of gain. This requires continual, rigorous culling of animals that don't perform to expectations.
Design a nutritional program that allows your goats to obtain their maximum production levels. This helps ensure that the dams produce the quantity and quality of milk to produce desired offspring growth and that the does and bucks breed on schedule.
How to Raise Goats Under Contract
When we discuss raising goats under contract, we are referring to meat goats, primarily the Boer and Spanish breeds. Demand for goat meat in the U.S. is greater than the supply due to large populations of Muslims and Jews who consume goat on their religious holidays. Goat is a preferred meat of the growing Hispanic population as well, which adds to the demand. Although the demand is high and it is easy to sell goat meat, there are advantages in contract marketing. When you market under contract, you have a guarantee of how much you will sell and at what price.