Process them!

We finally did it. We worked up the nerve to slaughter our first kid goat. Saturday we thought out our list of supplies. A sharp new knife. Rope to hang the carcass. A bucket of water for rinsing hands and knife. A hose to wash off the inevitable hair. A fan to control flies. A wheelbarrow full of hay to catch blood and entrails. The .22 rifle and 4 cartridges (after my taking 3 shots to kill a raccoon last fall I wasn't about to depend on my marksmanship).

While feeding the goats a special meal of hay and oats, I snuck up on my victim. I this case it was 12's kid. He was the biggest of this years kids. 26" in girth, which translates to roughly 61lbs of goat it's amazing he was only born in January. A lot of milk grass and hay went into that goat.

While he was nibbling at some oats with the other goats, I grabbed him by the rear leg, picked him up and carried him to a stall. Many of our goats are used to being handled. He wasn't one of those. So he fought and struggled. Somehow he gouged my arm drawing blood. The first round goes to him.

I locked him in a barn stall for later. Our plan was to get up at about 6 and do the deed while it was still cool. Cool means 77 degrees at dawn in Texas this time of year. So naturally we got started at the crack of 10am. We had watched a few YouTube videos about goat skinning. This helped prepare us for what was to come.

We lured the herd to the driveway which needed trimming, one of the few areas we have left where there is come green grass, and locked them in. They are used to this, we do it several times a year so I can avoid mowing it and they get full bellies. A win win for everyone. So with the goats out of the way I was free to proceed with:

Step 1. Kill a goat. This is something I had never done before. Well, not intentionally. It required some thinking through. How would I immobilize the kid? Since he doesn't like to be handled, he isn't likely to stand there while I put a bullet in his head. I opted to snap a collar on him and tie a lead to the bars of the stall. Then I put down a dish of grain thinking he would bend down to eat the grain while doing that I could take aim. However, he was too nervous to eat. Making sure that Kristi was safe in case of an errant shot, I aimed and fired while he was in a quiet moment. The first shot was a good one and he died instantly. I loaded him on the wheelbarrow and took him to the back yard for:

Step 2. String him up. I had prepared an area for the skinning by throwing a rope over a suitable tree branch. I used an old broom handle to mount the carcass. A cut is made between the bone and the Achilles tendon and the broom handle is inserted into that cut. This makes it easy to spread the goats legs and make all the parts more accessible. The pole is then tied up at the ends to the rope and the goat is raised to a good working height. I positioned the wheelbarrow under the goat to catch the blood and offal. That will make a good addition to our compost.

Step 3. Bleeding the goat. I made a cut in the goat's neck and fortunately I got the jugular on the first try. The blood began to drain into the hay in the wheelbarrow. I removed the head and let it fall into the wheelbarrow too. A layer of hay went over this.

Step 4. Skinning the goat. This takes some time and since this was my first time, it took a while. We didn't look at the clock before we started, but by the times the photos were taken, the whole process took from about 10 am to 11:07 to complete. Not bad for a couple of newbies!

I used a new, very sharp Chicago Cutlery 5" boning knife. This knife has a high carbon blade which holds an edge better and is easier to sharpen than a stainless steel blade. This is the knife that Chicago Cutlery made its reputation on. First thing I did was cut all the way around the anus.

I pulled out a few inches of the colon and put a tie wrap around the tube. I cut off the anus itself and put it in the wheelbarrow. That part has a lot of bacteria and could taint the carcass. With that done I can proceed to skinning. I cut up the inside of the legs under the skin, taking care not to cut the meat. Then across the bottom through where the anus was. I removed the tail.

At this point I could alternate pulling downward on the skin and loosening with the knife until I was basically turning the goat inside out. There was some fiddly work at the legs and neck and then the skin was off. Kristi was spraying the carcass with water to help remove hair.

Step 5. Disemboweling. This is another one of those processes that isn't really fun, but it's a part of home butchering. Working from the hole where the anus was, I slid the knife in between the anal opening and the membrane and slit down exposing the innards. There were a LOT of innards. This was a well fed goat. working along the backbone I cut and snipped all the spots that were holding the viscera in place. Suddenly out it all came PLOP into the wheelbarrow. I had to reach way down inside to cut through the trachea and a couple more snips and it was all out.

Aside: We are very interested in making our own goat cheeses. There are age-old stories about shepherds storing the mornings milking in goats stomachs and, by the time they're ready to drink the milk, all they get is a fine liquid substance (whey). As the shepherd traveled he would notice that the milk turned to chunks. The chunks tasted good and the love of cheese was born. Goats stomachs contain natural enzymes that comprise rennet. Rennet supplies bacteria that helps an unweaned kid goat to digest his mothers milk. Rennet is necessary in cheese making. What this is leading up to is that when the stomachs (4) of the goat were removed we collected a nice piece of the fourth stomach to be made into rennet for our cheese-making. At this moment it has been cleaned and is heavily salted in a bowl to dry. When the stomach piece is dried, the whole thing will be rinsed and then placed in whey or with vinegar to create a whole bunch of rennet, with which we'll make (Uh, Kristi will make) cheese.

Step 6. The carcass was once again hosed off and is now in a cooler with ice to rest for 24 hours. Once the meat has relaxed, we'll cut it up into usable pieces and run it through our vacuum sealer for freezing.