Goatsherd?

Question

How many would you need to have a average herd to produce milk for a small family?

The bred would be nubians!

Or would another bred or llamas or something else be better?

Answer 1

The five major breeds of dairy goats in the United States:

Alpine, LaMancha, Nubian, Saanen and Toggenburg.

You can read about the qualities of each breed at:

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~pazzani/4H/Dairy...

Breed            Milk yield lbs/year                                                                                       % fat

Saanen                 2077                  3.52

Alpine                   1990                   3.56

Toggen-burg        1915                   3.38

Am. La Mancha    1712                  3.29

Nubian                   1572                  4.61

This works out to around .71 gal/day for the highest producing breed and .54 gal/day for the Nubian, so you can figure from that how many goats you would need to meet your family's need.  It's worth noting that the Nubian's milk is higher in milk fat than the other breeds.  You may consider this an advantage or a disadvantage depending on your use of the milk.  The following link will give you a lot of information on raising and caring for dairy goats as well as help on deciding which breed is better for you.

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/DS134

Answer 2

For a small family, a couple of producing Nubian does should be enough. More if you will be making cheese.

Answer 3

depending on what you consider small 1-2 nubians should produce enough milk for a family of 1-4. You would need a male to keep them bred as they will only produce milk after they have kids.