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An Overview of the Dairy Goat Sub-Sector 
by John Borely

The dairy goat industry is a small, committed, quite distinct farming system. It consists of a small number of commercial farmers or dedicated hobbyists and a larger number of subsistence goat keepers who rear animals based on home needs.

Dairy goat farmers are a fairly homogenous group and have many other things in common. They are generally characterized by the following:

1. They keep specialized milk breeds of Swiss/English ancestry.  The most common is the British Saanen but the British Alpine, British Toggenburg and Anglo-Nubian are also used. But no records of pedigree and performance are kept.
2. The farms are small, landless or backyard operations where farmers have to rely on harvesting poor quality roadside grasses and expensive “bag feed” as their principal feedstuffs.
3. The farmers keep their goats intensively housed in small wooden pens with slatted flooring and have no specialized dairy or milk handling areas. The designs of the pens, however, lead to inefficiency and wastage of labour and time.
4. Farmers employ no special marketing, processing or upgrading strategies to sell or improve their products (whether it is milk, breeding stock or stud services). They sell their milk to a population largely ignorant of the quality of goats’ milk but aware that it does have some benefits but that it “tastes bad”
5. Farmers have a high turnover of stock. Goats are often culled before they are 5 years old so farmers have to keep a relatively high number of non-producing replacement stock compared to the milking herd.

The result is a situation where dairy goat farming, despite its potential, is not perceived as a business with real economic value and is characterized by the following points:

 

1. Poor quality of milk due to improper milk handling and dairying technique and facilities.
2. Low milk production due to non-existent herd improvement schemes, poor housing and nutritional management and inadequate marketing for goats’ milk to create a consistent demand.
3. High costs of production because of rapid turnover of milking animals, poor utilization of pen space as replacements have to be kept for soon-to-be-disposed-of producing milkers, and high labour costs associated with finding feed and cleaning pens to meet the standards for residential districts.
4. Poor returns from trying to sell foul tasting milk to an increasingly discerning consumer who demands both quality and presentation.
5. Inability to access loans or to expand their businesses as resources such as land for pasture or pen space, as well as good quality milking and breeding stock, are limited.

 

All is not lost for the dairy goat farmer however, as the prospects for success in goat milk production have never been better.

The economy is stronger and consumers are spending on high value products. Goat cheese, a culinary delight, is a common sight on grocery shelves. Imported goat milk is seen, time to time, in gourmet shops. The population is aware that goat milk has reputation as a health product.

Farmers can capitalize on this potential by becoming more efficient producers, maintaining high standards of  cleanliness in their processing and investing more time and resources in presenting and marketing their milk.

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