Episode 8

For the Love of Goats

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If you’ve heard that meat goats need to be finished on grain, you’ll want to hear this interview with Jennifer Miller, a small animal veterinarian who raises meat goats with her husband on their small farm in central Illinois. Although Jennifer doesn’t work with goats as a veterinary professional, you’ll see that she has put a lot of research into their decision to raise their goats on pasture and hay. We talk about how they got started with goats and why they decided to raise them on pasture and hay. She also discusses their experiment with spent brew grain from beer breweries in her area and corn.

She also does the math and explains how a pound of protein from hay costs much less than a pound of protein from grain, which costs less than a pound of protein from a protein tub. She shared this formula for “Calculating Cost of Complete Protein,” which means, figuring out how much you are paying for a pound of protein for whatever you are feeding.

For more information

Jennifer’s farm — Rush Creek Farms

Book mentioned by Jennifer — A Compilation of the Wit and Wisdom of the Goat Man by Dr. Frank Pinkerton