How big do they get?

I've talked about the joys of owning livestock before but I feel I must talk more. As I've mentioned we have just a few outdoor animals consisting of two miniature horses and two goats. I bought one horse then decided he needed a friend and bought him a baby goat and then did it all over again with another horse and goat. I admit I didn't know a lot about goats when I bought the first one but I learned quickly. One thing about goats (and all livestock) is that they need to be wormed regularly. No problem. All you do is figure out their weight and then give them a wormer based on that weight. I, being the animal saver I am, bought myself meat goats (boers) because I wanted to save them from being eaten. I go to pick up this baby boer goat from a breeder and ask the large man "how big will he get?" The man replies (between large spits of tobacco) "he'll get as big as you want him to get, just butcher him when he gets large enough." I give him this horrid look and tell him that the goat is a companion animal for a horse. This large redneck fellow looks at me like I have two heads and says "well, I don't know how big they get...never kept one around that long." Great.

So back to the worming. I have to figure out how much this full grown goat weighs, so I just ask hubby to pick up the goat and stand on the scale. Then just subtract his weight from the total to get the goats weight. Doesn't seem like that big of a deal right? My husband, the six foot tall 180 pound man, picks up this large goat (with a great deal of grunting I might add) steps on the scale and proceeds to break the scale. The scale only went up to 300 pounds so the goat was well over 120 pounds...at a year old. Needless to say I'm guessing its weight these days.

They are entertaining animals. I complain about them but I really enjoy having them. Going out and scooping manure and grooming them is my alone time every day, my de-stress time. Everyone has to have that, don't they?