Generally speaking.. Market prices and or auction prices are generally lower than private providers. I have seen some at local auction go for low as 35 clams.
Depending on age, breed, sex or if the private owner is not desperate to sell.
Kinda like when I sell Chickens. I sell them only young. The majority of my calls people are looking for EGG LAYERS for $5 bucks a piece. I tell them buy a chick for $3.00 and 6 months later and $60 in feed and you will have your egglayer.
Same when we sold Goats, doelings/weathers.. just weened a lesser price than something I emptied my pockets into. Bob chases the tire kickers away.
On the the other hand. (You can find desperate sellers) A neighbor friend bought out a herd from a uneducated goat owner. Their hoofs were foot rotted, their hips were poking out of their hind legs. All sick and major scours. 3 out of 9 died the first week. She got a deal on them.. some deal.
Around here, young bucks flood the ads around march/april. CHEEP. Folks don't know how to band duh balls and they are dumping the boys off, post haste.
Young pygmy doe's average 80-150ish..
MEAT GOATS boer's about 200-and max at 5ish.
Crosses of boer far less.
We stopped breeding. Until next Fall. We wish to purchase a new Buck for a fresh blood line. Our Buck is retired from our nannies but we stud him out periodically.
Winter is coming.. We will be at the mercy of the Hay Bale companies once again...
Those are good points. I sell my sheep privately to a buyer. He's one of the buyers for sheep in the area. I like that it's private and my sheep never get sold publicly for a few reasons:
1) Price is agreed upon ahead of selling
2) No dockage because I delivery right to his scale.
3) No hinky business. Right after Katahdins were popular...Dorpers became HUGE and sold for thousands. Some breeders jumped on that bandwagon. I had a previous Katahdin breeder proposition me to sell my line of prolapsing ewes to her for breeding price and she'd cover them with Dorpers.
Obviously I said no and instantly lost a lot of money (8 ewes X about $500/ewe)...BUT I kept my problems from being someone else's issue and controlled how they were sold. I couldn't believe someone could even think of doing that, let alone actually carry through with propositioning it. They were registered breeders. Unconscionable! You just don't do that.
There are ethics!
How can one live with themselves?
Anyways, I covered that prolapsing line and any less than perfect ewes with a Suffolk and sold 100% of the lambs for direct slaughter...so I eventually broke even and made money with that line. I delivered sheep Saturday and they were loaded later on the truck to head east where they were slaughtered on Monday.
That lady who offered me that deal sold sheep to a neighbor. Unfortunately I didn't know until they were lambing and they approached me to give me the entire flock. 100% of the females prolapsed on them.
They gave the sheep away to another guy. I couldn't risk bringing disease into my flock. So again...no hinky business.
Why don't people just learn how to castrate for wethers? It's so easy peasy. I used to castrate, but they don't dock prices or seemingly care so I stopped. But it's easy to grab a scalpel again if need be.
Here a lot of people seem to keep dwarf wethers as pets. At least if I can go from that spring/fall small animal sale. There seems to be a demand for "cute stuff" since the sale. But on a large scale boer meats were what was popular in selling 7 years ago. There is a fall sale at the auction mart...but I haven't been to one in years.
) but I think that this one is really exceptional
sorry i missed you 
wondering why I brought so many children into this world at the moment. you/.?
