09/11/2025
Farming goats is one of the simplest and most rewarding agricultural ventures. It is far less complicated than fish farming or other specialised livestock projects.
To begin with, a goat is a goat; whether it is a hardy Mashona type, a Boer goat, or a Kalahari goat. The fundamental principles of breeding and management remain the same across all types.
Secondly, when people buy Boer goats, they are not buying them to slaughter and eat. No one spends US$1,000 on a one-year-old goat just to have it for dinner. That would be a complete misunderstanding of the investment.
A Boer goat is capital, it is an asset purchased to improve your herd, increase productivity, and generate long-term returns.
To understand why, consider the weight comparison. An adult male Boer goat weighs about 120 kilograms when alive, while a typical Mashona goat weighs around 20 kilograms.
If you buy one mature Boer goat for US$1,000 and use it to crossbreed with your Mashona females, the resulting offspring will weigh between 50 and 70 kilograms when mature. That means, through a single breeding exercise, you have dramatically improved the quality and market value of your herd.
For example, if you have 100 Mashona goats weighing 20 kilograms each, that gives you a total live weight of 2,000 kilograms. Now, by introducing one Boer male into the breeding mix, the offspring from those 100 females will each weigh an average of 60 kilograms. That gives you a total live weight of 6,000 kilograms. It is a threefold increase achieved simply by introducing better genetics.
If we assume a selling price of US$4 per kilogram, your Mashona goats would have been worth US$8,000 (2,000 kg × US$4).
The crossbreeds, however, would bring in US$24,000 (6,000 kg × US$4). You have spent only US$1,000 to buy the Boer goat that made this transformation possible. That single investment has tripled the total value of your herd.
This is the essence of Boer goat farming. You are not spending money for the sake of owning an expensive animal; you are investing in genetics that multiply your returns and strengthen your business.
The goal is to improve live weight, meat yield, and ultimately profitability. Goat farming, when approached with such a practical understanding, becomes not only simple but also highly lucrative.
I am a journalist by training, and I have earned a great deal from my work in journalism. However, I can confidently say that most of my wealth came from Boer goat farming. Unlike many ordinary farmers in Zimbabwe, I specialised exclusively in breeding Boer goats for sale to other farmers—particularly commercial farmers who understood the value of quality genetics.
At the height of my operation, I sold six-month-old Boer goats for about US$450 for males and US$400 for females. I rarely sold females because they formed the backbone of my breeding programme and long-term sustainability. The females are your factory—once you sell them, you weaken the foundation of your business.
Since relocating from Zimbabwe, I no longer farm the goats myself. Instead, I now focus on sourcing top-quality Boer goats from farms in South Africa and supplying them to farmers in Zimbabwe. I travel to farms in areas like Nigel, carefully select the best breeding stock based on genetic quality and health, and then arrange for transportation to Zimbabwe. A full truckload of Boer goats goes directly to my clients—farmers who want to improve their herds with superior bloodlines.
Interestingly, this model has turned out to be even more profitable than when I was farming them directly in Zimbabwe. It reduces overheads, eliminates local operational risks, and allows me to operate at scale while connecting buyers and breeders.
But when I was farming in Zimbabwe, it was never just about profit. It was also about community upliftment. Even today, the few Boer goats I still keep at my rural home are used to help local villagers improve their herds. They bring their females for breeding, and this has helped strengthen the quality of livestock in the area.
So, while I now treat Boer goat trading as a business, at heart it remains a passion and a contribution to rural empowerment. And commercially, as I have demonstrated before, it remains one of the most viable agricultural ventures when done properly and strategically.
People who say that Boer goats are overpriced simply do not understand the business, and they are not the target market for it. Those who do understand quietly buy the goats, improve their herds, increase their yield, and make substantial profits.
Ironically, some of the same people who attack me politically on social media are my biggest repeat customers on the ground—politicians and their surrogates who publicly call me a sell-out but privately buy goats from me. That is how hypocrisy works in our societies; they criticise what they secretly admire and benefit from.
Boer goats can sell for as much as US$500,000 per male, depending on the quality of their genetics. The buyer paying that amount is not being extravagant—they are investing in superior breeding potential. That goat’s s***m can be sold repeatedly, generating a massive return over time. It is only those who know little or nothing about livestock genetics who will say such a goat is overpriced. In reality, it is an asset, not a liability.
Every living creature has a different value from another that might appear similar, even human beings. Our worth is determined by what we have invested in ourselves—our knowledge, our skills, and our discipline. Likewise, the value of a goat depends on the quality of its lineage, its breeding record, and its potential to multiply value for its owner. In both life and business, knowledge and investment define worth.
