We are seriously looking into buying some goats/rams and putting them on a friends 500 acre HF ranch. It has a 30 acre lake and several creeks along with about 250 other exotics . We where wondering if the property could hold and grow a starting herd of rams and goats starting with about 15 and hopefully growing.

Sounds like you are already over stocked.

You might think so but every animal taken off has a huge set of antlers and is very fat and healthy. We thought that that might be a problem but it didn't affect the population at all.

I'm with Don, sounds like that place is way above carrying capacity already. I would not want to pay that protein and feed bill.

No one likes hearing that they are 'overstocked' and there are different degrees of overstocking, and obviously different opinions, but hard to imagine a scenario where an animal per 2 acres can exist without heavy browse lines and august football field grass unless you're raising all muntjacs, duikers, and such.

If you do the math, the common species of sheep & goats don't make sense if you're having to primarily feed them. A sheep will eat about $0.25 worth of protein feed a day, so almost $100 per year. Then figure what you'd get for them at a sale - it quickly becomes a loosing proposition.

Depends....

He hasn't said what part of the state this ranch is in. If it's in Kerrville, then yes.....it is probably overstocked. If it's in east Texas....not necessarily. Or they may have 100 acres of irrigated fields on the place....who knows??

Taylormade....care to tell us more info about the property??

Absolutely,( sorry I'm not that much help, I am
New to this and only 16) the ranch is located in Huntsville Texas and does have about an 75 acre irrigated field

They have has the property for 7 years now and still haven't had a problem with starvation except when we had a huge drought two years ago where they lost about 5 animals

With that many animals on that amount of acerage what do they do about parasite control?

If they had an issue during the drought then damage was done to the habitat. The damage was not repaired with that many mouths on it. So the next drought that number is multiplied. I would still want to see pics of the animals or the land before I made a judgement though. One thing you have not mentioned is what are they doing with animals at this point? Just raising them to look at, sell breeders/stocker or hunting?


This ^^^^^^ with that area being damp/wet enviroment it is going to be an on going battle, with a possible train wreck in the future. The 2 species you are introducing will only be the most vulernable or worst host species on the place for parasites.