posted 4 days ago
Hi Tori,
If you choose not to band, the meat quality is better with a somewhat earlier/younger kill, avoiding adolescence. If you think you might not get around to it before they go through adolescence, banding will buy you time. A wether goat (castrated buck) can also be used as a pack animal if trained to it, but while some friends of ours have gone this route, we have butchered the male kids. We have kept a buck for breeding in the past, but it's easier to cycle through different bucks to keep the bloodlines good. Letting one of our own bucklings mature would require new doe genetics, which is more of a hassle.
If you have really high quality bloodlines, though, keeping the best one as a sire-for-hire could be a path.
Congrats on the successful kidding, and good luck!
Mark