We used to have a couple of goats, but not for food. But transport, you bet! I have a first generation Scion xB that has transported goats and chickens. :)
Ever since I hit a deer with it and pocketed the repair money (cosmetic damage only at 155k miles) it’s been my pseudo “light farm truck”. My wife refuses to drive it...
I love goat cheese. We may get goats again. We’ve thought about cattle (the previous owner of a 20 acre part of our property kept cattle on it), but like you say, they are a lot of work.
We’ve got 14 acres but not much of it is flat enough for cattle and as of now, most of it’s still forest. I’m slowly clearing the flatish areas and will thin out the steeper parts. Goats are doing a good job on the short stuff so at least I don’t have that to wade through or trip over. Gonna take years as I don’t want heavy equipment used. Don’t have enough money to do it all at once like that anyway. Not enough timber value to pay to have it cleared and we heat strictly with firewood. I’ll just keep cutting a dozen medium sized trees every year.
My wife works the graveyard shift and is evidently a deer magnet. 4-5 of them have run into or in front of the F150. I pounded out the left fender three times. Then she lost traction and overcorrected in the snow once close to home here. Only going 20-25 mph but hit a pine tree hard enough to trash the front clip and blow the air bags. Retired the truck for a couple of years til I found a parts truck with a good front slip for $300. Truck has 270k miles so it wasn’t worth spending big money to fix and since no other vehicle was involved and it happened right here on the gravel road, we didn’t bother making a claim.
I’ve known people to toss a couple of small goats in the trunk of a car to transport them.