Relating to the taste thing, confining the goats for a while before slaughter, feeding hay, maybe a bit of grain, could have the meat with no “off” taste.
I do believe goats, along with lamb meat, need to be cooked quickly, in very short times, or the meat is dry and overdone. During Fair, the food center had a specialty meat of the day. I only did goat once, found it very tough and without good taste at all. Of course this is doing quantity meat in roasting pans, for shredded meat sandwiches, so probably not a good test. All the other folks LOVED those sandwiches, which is why I tried it. Sauce on the meat was no help. They just cooked all the food to death and most folks attending Fair cooked home food the same way.
You might also want to consider how much meat in return to live weight you will get. A 50# goat, is not going to give you much meat after processing. If you get 15#, with bones out, I would call that good. Times two, that is only 30# of meat total, for the cost of kids, processing expenses, divided to know how much a pound it cost you. Most of the folks buying meat goats at our Fair, had them just cleaned out for roasting the whole goat over a barbeque for a dozen folks during a picnic. Just not much to a kid goat, even a big breed.
We always have had lambs, and for some meat production using the right breeds, you get LOTS more meat. We raised ours on pasture, small amount of grain in your hand, so they would go in the stall for nights, safer for them. Starting with young lambs of 30#, they gained incredibly! We have good grazing, not much in weeds because I mow often. From April to first week in August for Fair, lambs would gain between 80-100 pounds. Market weight goal is 130#, with ours usually weighed over that.
With the lambs live weight at 140#, we would get back about 90+ pounds of meat. Breeds of sheep were Suffolk, Hampshire or crosses of these breeds. Smaller sheep breeds are available, you can graze them until almost a year old, before getting them processed, for a bigger meat return. For us, using those small breeds, you pay more per pound for processing, which makes the meat more expensive. If you process your own lambs/kid goats, you save the money so it would be much less of a factor in choices of breeds. There are sites that show meat return to weight of animal, so the processor is NOT SHORTING you of the meat you get back. Bones and inside stuff takes up a lot of weight on any animal. Lambs have been a good animal for us, grow the most meat for the least investment, so we are not ending up paying premium meat prices when you eat it.
