Harvesting a beloved goat

Hello community

Last week our goat gave birth to triplets. Soon after she gave birth she became very tired. I figured this was normal and i spoke with a fellow goat owner on island and she told me this is normal and it can take a while for the goat to rebound. Well about 36 hours later she was dead. I had started to think it would happen so i prepared myself for it when i went to bed. Next morning is when i found her and it took me a few hours to buck up the courage to butcher her up.

She was a wonderful milker, wonderful friendly goat. She was the herd queen and she was social. It was easy to be around her and she was fun. It is all of the walks with her that i will miss.

I had a huge cry skinning her and taking her organs out. It was hard to cut the head off.

Here she is while giving birth to the second baby.


Here she is hanging, she was heavy!




butchered up.



It turns out she was way overweight, her cavity was filled with fat... needless to say it turned into lard, using the slow cooker.


So i decided to try and take some of the hair off of her head before i make it into stock. I thought why not use a small rocket stove made from bricks.



Here is her head

Burning the fur off




I decided to do the feet the same way


After about an hour of turning her on the fire and scraping. And after washing/scrubbing her in the sink i have a much cleaner head to deal with. Now into the stock pot!




So not only did she feed me with her yummy milk when she was alive, now she is feeding me with yummy fat and nice bone broth. Along with meat for the freezer.

Momma you will be missed.

I'm sorry for your loss of a good milking goat. Looks like you have respectfully made use of the gifts that are left. That is an amazing amount of nourishing fat.

Is butchering a goat that's been dead for a few hours very different to butchering one that's just been slaughtered?

hey thank you kate for your kind words.

In all honesty, i like doing them while they are dead for a few hours. One thing is the flesh is harder, along with the fat being solid. Now if i could kill them and than bleed them out, and than butcher them once the carcass has cooled down that would be the ticket!

The body is stiff though it usually straightens out when it hanging.

Otherwise when the body is fresh the head moves around,the legs are limp. Doing it while it is cold the legs/head are stiff and move around a lot less when you are skinning it up.

Oh I have always done it with the animal still warm! Actually it is also a question of working before the flies do... You were not afraid she died from an infection? Being fat would not be enough of a reason...

I would find it easier to decide to kill than having the animal dead. But you took the right decision in my opinion.

Actually I do not find it normal that an animal is tired after giving birth, because usually they are not. How are you doing with the 3 kids and for them to eat?

I feel for you.  It takes someone stronger than I am to butcher their animals.  I have a lot of animals and it crushes me when I lose one.  I'm sorry for your loss.

Xisca Nicolas wrote:Oh I have always done it with the animal still warm! Actually it is also a question of working before the flies do... You were not afraid she died from an infection? Being fat would not be enough of a reason...

I would find it easier to decide to kill than having the animal dead. But you took the right decision in my opinion.

Actually I do not find it normal that an animal is tired after giving birth, because usually they are not. How are you doing with the 3 kids and for them to eat?

Yea i am relatively new to goat keeping(only 2 years) and the previous births had been no problem. She became despondent and was very weak. She would drink water but just barely and very slowly. She was stellar during the birth and paid good attention to the kids. Though right after she was as described previous.  

By fat i mean her cavity was stuffed with fat. Her heart had extra fat on it, kidneys had the most fat i have ever seen on an animal. The fat was stuffed everywhere. I would have never guessed. When ever i ran my hand along her spine it was bony..

So last year i thought she was pregnant and i fed her accordingly. It turns out she was not pregnant just fat. So she ended up getting pregnant last fall and she honestly would eat everything. I mean she is pregnant why would i not feed her!
So yes she died due to a overweight birth complication in my opinion.
Yea i would not leave the carcass had it been summer. It is still hovering around 4*C here and the carcass was cool.

She ended up squishing one of the baby goats. So now their is only 2 baby goats. I have been able to get some goat milk from a neighbour. I also purchased some 2%organic cow milk along with org cream to make it closer to 3.5% And i also purchased some goat milk replacer.
I have one goat in milk right now who they are also getting milk from.