90% of all bulldog pups are delivered by c-section because of the big head and wide chest. Many breeders believe the Boers need a big, wide head to indicate the body will be big and wide. More and more breeders are saying their does are having difficulties in kidding and need assistance in delivering them. The Tennessee State University study had results that Boer does weaned fewer kids than does from other meat goat breeds. Every kidding season, we get calls from new breeders that have does with difficulties in kidding on their own. We constantly hear about Boer breeders needing to have c-sections for some of their does but we never hear that from breeders raising other meat goat breeds.

Does the wider chest add more meat to the carcass & does the wider body affect the ratio of useable meat weight to live body weight?

Look at the picture to the right. This shows when you get passed the ribs, there is no other source of meat inside the ribs. All of the meat in the rear, are in the back legs. There is a back bone that has the loin associated to it however the back bone width may not be associated with a wide chest. The ribs will possibly be spread wider because of the wider chest. However, that wider cavity of the carcass will be filled with internal organs. Will that cause more waisted weight when the carcass is evaluated for percentage of useful meat vs. bone, internal organs, etc. I Think it might but I can't show any facts about that at this time.

Look at the picture below of the goats carcass and the cuts that come from it. Notice the cuts that come from the chest. I don't see anything either. This is a formal chart of a goat carcass to educate people about the type of meat that comes from a goat and it doesn't show anything for the chest. That is a good indication to me that there is little valuable meat that comes from the chest.

I processed a two buck kids this week-end for the first time. I have never really seen where the meat is and is not on a carcass and believed it is critical to have some of the knowledge. We decided we needed to process and cook some goat meat to better understand the features under the hide and to determine if we can take the word of judges when they describe the qualities they think make a top quality animal. I have decided to not listen as closely to them after I processed the two buck kids. .

The first thing I wanted to see was how much more meat can an animal produce if they had a wider chest like the judges are bragging about these days. The answer I found was "little to no extra meat from a wider chest". There is little to no meat there. There are two pictures below of a carcass we were processing. It is the same picture except the one on the right has some lines drawn to show where the first three cuts will occur. I did the cuts according to three DVDs I watched. The first one was a meat scientist/university professor showing how a goat carcass could be cut up. The next one was a well known chef/deer hunter showing how to process the carcass and cook it. The third one was a deer hunter showing the processing. The goat and deer are closely related.

The first cut removes the neck and I was surprised at the amount of meat that is on the neck. The meat scientist also commented on the amount of meat the consumers can get from the neck. However, breeders breeding for long, thin giraffe necks will be losing that for no reason other than to make the animal look longer and more feminine. The next two cuts are to remove the two shoulder areas. After they are removed, there is little to no meat left in the front area. If you look at the picture on the left, you should see a thick white strip running down the from the neck, through the center of the chest. That is a thick strip of fat covering the sternum bone that ties into the ribs. It is similar to the sternum on humans that is right in the center of your chest. If you feel there, you will basically just feel bone (or cartridge... I am not sure which it is. I just know it is not meat). It seems to me that breeding an animal to be wider in the chest will buy you nothing other than a goat that waddles like a bulldog when it walks. I am now a believer that wider chests on goats can not be financially justified.

The goats I processed were around 6 months old and 65 lbs. Consumers like to buy carcasses from kids that are between 3-9 months old and 25-80 lbs generally so our carcass is typical of what is going through processing plants daily. The wide chests on grown bucks and does may look impressive but that means nothing in the meat goat industry because grown animals are not the preferred size and age to slaughter for the consumers buying goat meat. I believe that, even on a grown animal, there will be little to no meat in the chest area but it will contain fat. Fat is a no no in the consumer's mind.

The next time you hear a judge bragging about how wide an animal is in the show ring, think about these pictures and that sternum covered with a thick strip of fat covering it.

Does that wide tracking cause any issues?

Here is the big mystery that we can't get a good answer from anyone. If you breed Boers to have a wider chest and stance, why do they still leave a narrow path where they are walking? The picture to the right shows a narrow path on our farm where 70-130 animals travel many times a day. It seems that goats naturally want to walk in a more narrow path and when they are bred to be wider, they still want to walk with their feet more under the center of their weight. When you watch a very wide chested animal walk, it is not a smooth gait at all. It looks like a bulldog walking, or a waddle. That is not good. One of the main things we like to evaluate with our animals walking is how smoothly they glide along. The smoother the walk, the better balanced the body is and the more efficient it is working. The less efficient the walk, the more energy they are using and the more nutrition they require. I truly believe it will be much more difficult for wide chested animals to travel around large pastures.

Is there any potential issues in the shoulder blades when the legs are much farther a part?

There is a piece of an article to the right. The article was describing the reasons behind the Boer standards. Look at the concerns that are listed related to breeding too much width in the chest.

"A wide chest floor and a long canon bone may be good predictors of growth capacity.  Care should be taken not to have too much width in the chest floor as scapula problems and front-end assembly problems can arise where the shoulders do not tie in correctly with the body creating a bulldog like appearance.  This is sometimes called extruded scapula.  Structural weakness eventually produces an animal that breaks down under pasture conditions."