What Do I Do With Bucks?

Depending on how you run your homestead, you may start to realize that your male livestock and poultry don’t have a long life span. Or, maybe you aren’t used to the livestock way of life and are really struggling with the idea of butchering the males. Either way, you are probably asking yourself, “What do I do with bucks?” And the real answer is one that you may not like or it may not fit with your ideals. But I’m going to tell you what I do with my bucks.

What Do I Do With Bucks?

Well, this entirely depends on your homestead goals, philosophies and needs. And that is something that you need figure out BEFORE you start breeding. Seriously, don’t get livestock or poultry and then not know what you are going to do with the animals. You will end up in a world of hurt. Ask me how I know.

Some of the ways that we handle the bucks on our farm is selling, castrating, and butchering.

Selling Bucks

We always try to sell any bucks that we don’t need for next seasons breeding cycles. But there are two very important criteria that have to be met before selling an uncastrated buckling. One, he has to come from good, hardy, proven lines. Two, he has to have good conformation, size, and disposition. If he doesn’t meet those criteria, he is castrated.

We do everything in our power to only sell uncastrated males that hit those criteria. The reason why those criteria are so important to us is the heavy losses we have sustained on our farm due to unhealthy kids and weak genetics. We don’t want to spread that to other farms. It has taken years for us to finally get our herd genetics figured out and sending out weak goats isn’t something I’m interested in.

If for some reason, we cannot sell a solid and healthy buckling by ten weeks, he is castrated.

Castrating Bucks

If we cannot use a buck on our farm, we cannot sell him, or he doesn’t meet our criteria, he is castrated. We do this by banding around ten to twelve weeks and putting him in the buck pen. If he met our criteria but we couldn’t sell him, then we attempt to sell him as a wether or pet. Unfortunately, bucks and wethers are not as sought after as does. So this happens a lot.

I don’t want to sell any inferior goats. Goats have become increasingly fragile for a lot of reasons like; overbreeding, poor genetics, breeders just trying to make a dollar, and overuse of medical interventions. Because of all these things, it’s really hard to guarantee the health of a goat. Weak goats don’t make it through winter and you are stuck digging a hole in the frozen ground.

So to keep from spreading weak genetics, we are very strict when it comes to who is leaving our farm.

Butchering Bucks

Unfortunately, we cannot afford to feed a bunch of goats that don’t have a purpose. It’s the reality of farm life. And it HURTS! I didn’t grow up like this and I still struggle with the idea of culling members of the herd. But it’s part of responsible breeding and, PLEASE, breed responsibly. Goats are so fragile to start with and irresponsible breeders are out there just selling kids to make a dollar. That’s not doing anything to improve the situation.

When it comes to deciding who gets butchered and who stays, we have made it easy on ourselves. Well, as easy as this decision can be. If the buck doesn’t meet our criteria, he is castrated and will be butchered. If we are not using him for breeding, he gets sold. If we can’t sell him by ten to twelve weeks, he is castrated. If we cannot sell him as a wether, he is butchered.

Unfortunately, this is the life we lead.

Our Does Get The Same Treatment

And just so everyone is clear, this is the same criteria we use for our does. Just without the castration part. If a doe requires deworming, we don’t breed her and she will go to the butcher. If she is sickly, she gets butchered. We don’t try to sell our does as a rule. The main reason is we want the milk.

If she doesn’t fit our requirements, there’s a really good chance she isn’t a solid goat and we don’t want to put out inferior goats. Maybe in a few years, when we have our established lines and have enough milk goats, we will think about selling our does. But for right now, we are standing by our standards.

Dealing With The Emotions Of These Decisions

I will say it again, we didn’t grow up like this. We were taught from a young age that you care for animals. You don’t kill them because they don’t “meet your criteria“. You get your meat from the grocery store like everyone else. I talked extensively about livestock are not pets in this blog post, and it’s very hard to stand by these criteria and make these decisions.

This whole situation and subsequent conversations, can create a very difficult and emotional rollercoaster ride. But I have found that when you pick a goal, set perimeters for that goal, and measure EVERYTHING against that goal? It makes these decisions a LOT easier.

But don’t get it twisted, it’s still hard.

Since getting into goats, we lost at least two goats a year until we implemented this criteria. We lost beloved pets because we didn’t want to make the hard decisions. We bred for milk, not for healthy kids. We thought overusing medical interventions was normal.

We did it wrong

Since making the decision that we were going to breed for hardiness first, then milk, then meat, we have had a lot less death on the homestead. We have placed beloved goats on the cull list, and it’s a hard decision to make. It feels terrible to take them to the slaughter house, but I will NOT sell inferior goats. Because I will not be part of the problem.

What’s more heartbreaking? Losing a goat to the cold because she wasn’t strong enough to survive it or butchering a goat that was raised in a healthy, happy, loving environment?

Is it better to perpetuate a vicious cycle of over deworming or only breed hardy, parasite resistant goats?

Is it better to make a dollar on any kid, or only produce top notch animals that don’t require medical intervention?

These are all decisions that you will HAVE to make if you are getting into livestock that will have a purpose. I’m not going to say that either side is right or wrong. I AM going to say that when we are making decisions on our farm, these are some of the questions we ask ourselves.

Because we are tired of sickly goats that don’t survive winter. We are tired of digging new holes in the pet cemetery.

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