How To Butcher Your Meat Goat

We need to back track a bit with the story. Sunday I called my good neighbor to ask if he still planned on raising heritage turkeys this spring, we wanted to do a little dealing with him so that we could skip turkeys this year, and raise geese. With those plans made, he asked about our previous squatter, who is now out of jail. The squatter had called and said he planned on being out here on Monday, and Good Neighbor wanted him to butcher his 2 Boer kids for him. "we can do that."

Monday the good neighbor came over, it was decided that if the squatter wasn't here by 2, that we would go ahead and do it ourselves. The squatter didn't show, and a few minutes after 2pm, we heard a gun shot.

To kill your goat, separate him out from the rest of the animals, distracting him with a pan of food. While he eats, place your gun close to the back of his head, right below the horns. Goats skulls are hard, using a hammer or just hitting him, might knock him out, Good Neighbor used his .38.

Next throw the goat into the back of your truck and drive over to our house. Not sure why these things must occur on our property, and that we can't come to their property. It's not like every one already thinks were odd or something.

Now we need to hang the goat. We have a wood rack, without wood, that we flipped, reminds you of monkey bars, and hung one leg, tied with rope, on each side. Slit the goats throat to allow it to bleed out.

Then pose with the goat for a photo opt. This Boer kid is not a whether, and is 9 months old. I have read that it is normal for a goat to be butchered between the ages of 5 months to 9 months.

Once again I run into the problem of no one agreeing with how long to allow the animal to hang before doing everything else to it. We decided on twenty minutes.

Starting at the top of the upside down goat, you want to cut the skin, without cutting into the meat, around the genitalia, then down his chest. Of course this takes 2 men to do that part of it.



But do you know what only takes 1 person to do? Cutting around the anus of a goat, pulling it out and tying a bow around it. And do you know who gets to do that part? Correct, the girl!

Good neighbor couldn't breathe he was laughing so hard, and he took this photo,

Yes, that would be my finger inside of a goat butt. Hey, in my defense I was trying to keep hold of it as I cut the bottom (no pun!) side of it.

You need to use a piece of twine to tie the intestine. Of course the boys, I mean men, didn't hand me a piece of string, so I tied a bow.



We discovered that it takes a bit of time to skin a goat. Maybe that is why there is no notes on how long to bleed one out.


This is a project that should be started in the early morning and not in the late afternoon.

Once you get the skin down to the neck you can either cut the skin off there, or continue on, depending on what you want to do with the hide. We decided to stop at the neck.



Next you step back and stare at it, while the horror freak mentions that this reminds her of a scene from HellRaiser. . .

Then all the boys tell the girl that she needs to cut the umm...scrotum off the carcass. Said girl gives boys the evil eye, then using a pair of field dress scissors, to cut the scrotum off, while the boys make all kinds of crude comments about how the girl didn't even hesitate on doing that, and ouching at certain times. Flip the scrotum sac inside out and pop the testicles out. Throw some salt inside the empty sac, and you have a coin purse to remind those boys that you have a pair of field scissors and ain't afraid to use them. Next you remove the penis. This is the simplest thing to remove (no pun) start at the belly, snip underneath it, then cut all the way up. We discovered that this part doesn't come out with the innards, so snip it off. No photos because boys are wusses.

Remove the head.

Now you want to saw open the aitch bone. (H-bone)



As you can see here, this is like the pelvic bone. It is rather tough, saw is the best way to go. BE CAREFUL!!! You don't want to rupture anything inside, that would be yucky. At this point the goats belly is bloating up ~shiver~ If you hear a hissing noise, that means something has ruptured and it will stink once you open your goat. No worries however, this doesn't spoil the meat like it does with birds.

Carefully slit the meat from the aitch bone, between the ribs, down to his shoulder.


Here is the point where one of my customers arrives. The poor guy, every time he comes over he has a new story to tell the family. Lucky for us he is a hunter and has dressed out a deer before. If you have dressed out a deer, you can dress out a goat. He just happened to have a specialty knife in his truck. It was called a skinner, has a hook at the end of it. This helps with the splitting immensely. He also stayed and helped with the rest of the dressing out.

Once you have your goat open, gravity is suppose to take over and the innards fall out. HAHAHAHA! Those of you that read this blog know by now that things are never as simple here as they are in the books. There was no falling out.

The men grabbed the front legs and lifted the goat, still nothing.



Now, can you guess who the boys volunteered to reach inside of the goat Correct, me! No pictures of this maneuver. Reach inside the goat and start breaking the membrane, just like you do with your chickens. The stomach is pliable, so don't worry about breaking it, that is unless you need to use a knife. There was still some meat attached to the innards, so a knife was used for a brief moment. As you are breaking the membrane, feel around for the throat. Once you find that, pull, and pull hard. You might slip and fall, landing in goats blood, but hey, those jeans of yours could use a little more color.

Use a garden hose to rinse the inside and out thoroughly. Next hang the goat in a cool dry place.



We hung ours in the garage. You can age it for a few days as long as your temperatures are not going to be over 45F. Since we were expecting 50F the next day, ours only hung over night.

Here is your gratuitous Rocky Moment.



He's single ladies.


The next day, take your goat down and move it to your butchering table.


We placed our chicken chopping block under the legs, to prevent too much damage to the table. Chop the legs.

Good Neighbor wasn't wasting time, and used a 3lbs ax.

With all four legs removed, you can now cut off the meat, but in this, our first time, we decided to leave it whole and roast it in celebration this weekend. Wrap with newspaper and deli paper and of course paper tape.



Happy Birthday!

Luckily for us, not too many things went wrong, everything that did go wrong on that day was in yesterdays' post. How's that for a nice full day?

Ask, if you have any questions. I tried to be thorough here, but I can be a bit absent minded.

(hide: we will be keeping the hide for a hat, or so good neighbor has informed me that is what he wants. Once the hide is removed, clean off as much of the none skin junk as you can, use regular table salt to cover. You can never use enough salt. roll up the hide and place it out of the sun, for 7 days. We will get back to this on a later post)