| Answers from Byron Tumlinson:
I love rabbits. They are really tasty,
but down here they are a little hard to raise because of the hot weather
and fire ants. If a fire ant stings a buck, he is infertile.
So for no one has found out why this happens, but it does. The
meat is delicious.
I have raised turkeys and chickens, and chickens are the choice for me
hands down. Turkeys in the wild are very intelligent birds, but
tame turkeys invented the word dumb. I have seen them stand in a
rain storm looking up until they drowned. Meat wise, turkeys
produce more meat than chickens at much less cost.
Goats are great for meat. We have raised them for meat and milk.
I do not think you can find a finer animal for bar-b-que.
I prefer goats fresh though as they do not taste as well if they are
frozen. If you would like to have a dual purpose animal, goats fit
the bill 100%. They give wonderful milk, delicious meat, and also
are great lawn mowers. A word of warning though, they will eat the
vegetable garden if they get in it and also the flower beds and branches
off of trees and shrubs. They are also great climbers. I
have seen them up in trees in central Texas calmly eating leaves.
They love to climb fences also, so a good goat proof fence is a
necessity if you are going to raise them. I built my fence out of
hog wire with 2 strands of barbwire at the top. They still got out
sometimes. A nanny is really easy to train to milk and will hop up
on the milking stand for you to milk her. There is a really good
plan for a milking/feeding stand in the archives of Mother Earth News on
the internet. I have found goats very easy to raise, and when the
little kids arrive, they are sure cute to watch.
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