Stringcutter- while I don't have any experience training them as pack animals, I can certainly offer advice on how/where to find a good young prospect. My husband and I also raise meat goats commercially, and find them not only easy to care for, but easily trained. While we raise primarily boer goats and boer goat crosses, we find that a boer x nubian gives you alot more leg. As mentioned above, you want to avoid using a dairy breed nanny as their udder can become quite pendulous and will get torn easily (even by the nanny's own hooves when she stands). The best time to get a young kid is in the spring, during the spring kidding season. The market is usually flooded with unwanted "bottle babies" then (usually kids who were orphaned, or pulled off their mothers for other reasons). Most commercial goat producers don't want to bother with the time or expense involved in raising a bottle baby and will let them go for almost nothing. If you only have one or two(and a willing child to help feed), bottle babies are easy to care for needing to be bottle fed only 2-3 times daily and the formula can be made easily from milk, evap milk and buttermilk. A bottle baby will bond to you better than an older kid would, and will follow you everywhere (I've had to quick several out of the living room after they followed me in the front door). If you're seriously interested in finding someone in your area to buy a kid from, there are several goat talk bulletin boards that you could post to. Heck, if you want to drive down to OK, we'll have some this fall and again in the spring that I'd let you have just so I wouldn't have to haul them to the sale barn. (Matt even tried sending a few home with some of our hunters last winter). Let us know how you do!
Steertalker, where abouts in Texas are you? We've got a commercial herd of about 130 head right now of boer cross does,and about 20 fullbloods that are being bred to a Pistolero son as I type this. We're always looking for good does to add to our commercial herd, but there just isn't nearly the selection up here as there is down in Texas.
-Cheryl Napper/Shiloh Ranch