I don't know anything about goat milk, but I luuuuuuuuuv goat cheese!

I can share our experiences.

1. I have had chickens. Raised for eggs and raised for meat. The work that goes into a meat bird and the processing is a lot so you need to really be super committed. I decided the meat bird thing was more than I wanted to deal with. I still have hens for eggs. I don't have roosters currently and you don't need them unless you want to raise chicks. Hens lay without a rooster around.

2. Goats. I raised them for several years but never for milk. TBH, i think even goat cheese tastes too "goaty" for me. I understand that the strength of the smell/taste can be dependent on how close you keep the male goats to the female goats. However, even the best storebought goat cheese has that barnyard tainty smell to me. It smells like very strong sheepy smell.

They are fun animals though and the babies are KYOOOOT!

They can be annoying to keep up. You would think they will eat all the weeds but tended to attack my fruit trees and flower beds or get into the neighbor's fields. Good fencing is needed!

Any specific questions? (raised pigs too and a steer.. and have gardens on and off depending on my time.)

UGH the people that we bought our house from had goats and chickens and while they were in the barn some, I think they pretty much let them all free range around the property... so every last flower, bush and shrub had been decimated by the goats. They also chewed the stall doors in the barn and anything else they could get their teeth on. And don't even get me started on chickens. Chickens are nasty they stink, their shit stinks and they shit EVERYWHERE! I had one of my horses at a trainers once and he had a bunch of free range chickens and they drove me bonkers! Every time I'd go to get the wheelbarrow, there'd be chicken shit all over the handle, everywhere you walked etc. I guess maybe it's different if they are contained in a coup?

When we moved in, we paid someone to entirely clean out the barn, put new stall walls and doors in and removed all the chicken cubby things and powerwashed the room that the chickens had been in. I wanted zero traces of chickens in my barn!!! lol I will tell you that he took a ton of goat poop out of the barn and the next spring we used that manure in our garden and it is a wonderful fertilizer. Way better than horse or cow poop.

I used to have a pet goat when I was a kid and I loved him! Goats are cute and fun don't get me wrong, but can also be VERY destructive!

I have a small farm. And I won't have goats, ever.

FWIW, a lot of people have this idyll of one day living in the country and owning goats. I thought about getting a few, but was warned not to, thank goodness. Then I got a new neighbor, a single woman who - you guessed it - had always wanted to move out of the city and own goats. The learning curve has been a bitch for her, as she was pleasantly surprised at how many goats she was able to get for free. }:) She ended up with group of behaviorally challenged goats that no one else wants for very valid reasons. One of them has been rehomed THREE times, and is always returned. They are destructive, expensive, and even dangerous.

I say if you must have a goat, get a mini. Train it as a pet, and buy your milk at Whole Foods. You'll still be way ahead financially.

My family has large farms in Costa Rica but I don't think that's what you're asking about.

I do organic permaculture in my backyard (I'm on 3/4 of an acre) so I have a whole buttload of fruit trees, berry bushes, herbs, and perennial vegetables (asparagus is great, and dandelions aren't weeds anymore.) I had both chickens and ducks before but had to give them away because some animal ripped a hole in the side of my shed that was being used as a coop and killed 1/4 of them. I'm going to do poultry again this year.

Personally, if you're not going to butcher the chickens, go with muscovy ducks (and NOT the mallard derivatives.) Ducks lay eggs much longer than chickens do (most people butcher the chickens at 2-3 years old because their production goes way down), their poo do not smell much, and I find them sweeter--always rummaging through my pockets when I'm working in the garden. Don't go with the mallards (like the white peking ducks) because they are LOUD. I used to have to hide in my own kitchen because the foolish things would start quacking up a storm if they saw me and they'd storm the deck and my doors looking in. Muscovy ducks ALSO eat mosquitos and flies--so a fly issue that would occur with chicken poop is not there because the muscovies will chase them motherf'ers down. The one con to ducks is that they don't eat EVERYTHING the way chickens do--chickens will eat ANYTHING, like I had them gobbling up old chicken bones and pork ribs to nothing. My ducks were strictly veggies and bugs.

I liked having a flock of mixed chicken and ducks.

Also, yes, the eggs taste the same as long as you don't feed the ducks any fish derivatives and duck eggs are heavenly for baking--they make the cakes super fluffy because their protein structure is slightly different.

goats milk is disgusting regardless what breed of goat...... and they can get very aggressive, bumping head etc.

have you looked in to Alpaca's - only draw back is not allot of milk, and well not allot of studies on it, but they are cute

unless you get dwarf goats or fainting goats...