Milking goats thrive on troubled land

Press, 29 January 1982, Page 14

Milking goats thrive on troubled land

A fanning. enterprise where the Government provides land, house and -buildings and the stock thrive on practically all the worst weeds and plants which poor land can produce sounds like some farmer’s pipe dream. It is no dream for Miss Sheila Ramsay of the Washcreek Lands and Survey Settlement at Waipara in North Canterbury, although her good fortune does seem like a fairy tale. Miss Ramsay has a milking goat herd at Washcreek and has just begun supplying the Christchurch market with goats milk. ■ It is frozen in 600 ml sachets and is reportedly finding a ready market because up until now all that has been available, particularly for people who are allergic to cows milk, has been goats milk powder. She is presently milking 25 Saanans, British Alpine goats, and their crossbreed, called Chamoisee, is running 42 altogether with the dries and immature does, and plans to expand to a milking herd of around 60.

The production from the brand-new dairy at Washcreek is about 400 frozen sachets a week which are at present being marketed mainly through Christchurch health food stores.

But Miss Ramsay and her personal adviser, Mr Tom McClurg, field officer with the Lands and Survey in Christchurch, have plans to lift production to 1000 sachets a week and serve health food shops, supermarkets and dairies, . The Crown Lands Comissioner, Mr E. J. Davies, has described the goat milking venture as a worthwhile diversification.

Sheila Ramsay’s goats could return to the Lands and Survey Department at the planned maximum production, over $BOOO a year gross from 14 hectares of the poorest land on the Washcreek Settlement. That gross return of over

$6OO a hectare is the department’s 40 per cent share of proceeds under the 60:40 sharemilking arrangement it has with Sheila.

The proceeds of any sales of goats, at present bringing very high prices, would be split 50:50. Sheila’s return from peak production is estimated at $13,000 gross, with any sales extra.

Although she is a very practical goat farmer, Sheila gives the impression that she is very pleased that she can earn that sort of money for caring for her beloved goats. Only a few months ago she, and they, were without a home. ■ ,

Sheila has owned goats for 12 years and knows a great deal about them, but she had only been sharemilking them for a living for a few months when the Barrys Bay dairy company at the cheese factory in Akaroa Harbour ceased operation. During that production period she was milking for butter fat for cheese but she has always been aware of a demand for goats milk if a suitable farm, dairy and distribution system could be found.

Mr McClurg in his work as a field officer had helped Miss Ramsay prepare an application for a Land Settlement Board loan to try and establish a milking operation as a sharemilking arrangement with another farmer, but that did not eventuate. At the IOOOha Washcreek Settlement, which runs mostly sheep and cattle, some Angora goats were proving a profitable sideline but they needed a goat farmer with specialist knowledge. Also at Washcreek is an old shepherd’s cottage, some shelter trees, some very steep clay cliffs and 14ha in two paddocks of poorer soil, most of which is at the bottom of a depression which gives shelter on all sides. Mr McClurg proposed Sheila as part-time manager of the Angoras.

Around s3o,ooohas been spent on constructing the dairy, another building to house dry feed and the goats when it is wet and necessary plant to run the milking operation. Sheila and her goat family moved in and she has been milking commercially since before Christmas. Her tenure is secure, the venture certainly looks financially viable and she can even look ahead to some future time when Washcreek is returned to private farmers and she can apply for her own holding. Washcreek became Crown Land when nassella tussock proved such a menace that viable private farms could not be maintained in that area.

The nassella problem has been largely overcome and some of these Crown Land blocks are being returned to private ownership. The. goats are certainly at home among the crags and terraces of Washcreek, running on a pasture of red clover, fescue, timothy, prairie grass and cocksfoot. The gbats’ fondness for thistles would gladden the heart of any farmer. A thistle disappears like a stalk of celery down the throat of a goat and they will take any scrub that is around also.

They are a browsing animal and actually prefer the drier, more woody plants and wheh these are available will leave good clover alone. Goats can be restricted to run on improved pasture and their milking yields will show improvement but it makes good sense to run them on what they prefer, on country where little else would be profitable, than try and compete with dairy cows on improved pasture. Sheila’s goats have been tested- t0..7,5 litres of milk in a 24 hour period and she says that one has given 9 litres in a day. When working out the budget for the enterprise Tom and Sheila used an estimate that each goat would pro-

duce around 800 litres of milk each year. Goats can stay in milk production for most of the year and they do not have to be mated, or be “kidded”, to give milk. Sheila has some milkers in her herd which are only one year old and will not be put to the buck until March or April this year. Production does vary with kidding and to spread production more evenly throughout the. year Sheila says she needs to find bucks that are fertile in the spring and does which will kid in the autumn.

At the moment, all of her herd follow the predominant pattern in the goat world of autumn mating and spring kidding. It is the fertility of the buck, or billy, which determines this pattern more than the receptivity of the doe. Although the buck will have no trouble with libido from June to February, it is only a rare animal that will be able to fertilise a doe during this period. In other aspects of reproduction the goat follows the sheep pattern.. A three-week oestrus cycle is brought on by reduced daylight hours in late summer and early autumn. The gestation period is the same as for the sheep and most of Sheila’s goats kidded in-September. They have a 200 per cent kidding performance, producing mostly twins with the odd singles being counterbalanced by triplets. The does are sent away for servicing because it is alleged that the powerful smell of bucks can be transmitted in the milk produced by does run in association.

Sheila has been hand-rear-ing the female kids, after putting out the male-kids for the slinkvan, and the three breeds grow much more quickly than Angoras. The ' 1981 crop are half grown now and will be as tall as their mothers by the end of 1982.

The enterprise is working towards an even supply of milk throughout the year and in this aim it is helped considerably by the requirement to freeze all the production.

Apart from the extra equipment non-frozen product would require, a much more sophisticated distribution network would be necessary.

At present the milk produced is cooled rapidly in association with chilled water to 5 degrees Celcius, put in sachets, sealed and then frozen in large domestic upright freezers. The speed with which the milk is frozen has some bearing on reducing the amount of separation that occurs upon thawing. Mr McClurg recommends, in contrast, a slow thawing in the home refrigerator for the best result.

Although goats milk will keep without loss of quality for three months frozen, the enterprise expects that most sold in retail outlets in Christchurch will be no more than one month frozen when thawed and drunk.

Many claims are made for goats milk, including its suitability for those who are allergic to cows milk and as a treatment for eczema-suf-ferers, but jt does have a measureably higher vitamin and mineral content than cows milk, including vitamin A, which goats produce from the carotene in their diet. The absence of carotene, found most abundantly in any yellow or orange vegetable, accounts for the pale whiteness of goats milk compared with cows milk. The milk has about 4 per cent butterfat but a higher solids not fat level, at 10 per cent, than cows milk.

Goats milk is naturally homogenised and is not required to be pasteurised because there is no tuberculosis or brucellosis in New Zealand goats.

There is a considerable saving to the enterprise because freezing can occur straight after milking.

It has also been one timesaving factor in a nevertheless long process of getting approval from various authorities to begin producing goats milk for human consumption. “There was a lot of red tape to get through,” said Mr McClurg. “Most people co-operated well on a personal level, but often the problem was that they didn’t have any criteria or guidelines for milking goat farms.” There are three or four other herds of milking goats in Canterbury, according to Sheila Ramsay, but they are either in a very small way or supplying the Waimea dairy factory at Brightwater, Nelson, for the goats milk powder trade. The dairy had to be registered and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries was involved in inspection of the site, design of the shed, stand operation, and hygiene. The county council also took an interest to make sure its health requirements were complied with and the Health Department was also required to authorise the operation under the Food and Drug Act. Construction of the milking shed was of a high standard with considerable attention to easy maintenance and hygiene. The set-up is a small three-a-side herringbone specially adapted for goats. There are no bails or head stalls for the goats. The problem is not to induce them into the shed and restrain them while milking but rather how to get them to leave after the process is finished. They take up their positions very easily, with briskets against a rail at the tight

height and a hock-high rail along the side of the pit. The pit was made to give Sheila a comfortable working height, at a little below waist level.

The plant is an Alfa Laval with the weight which governs operating pressure drilled out to lower the pressure to 11 pounds per square inch. It operates at 50 pulsations a minute and uses special goat-sized cups. Sheila milks twice a day, at 7 a.m. and again 12 hours later during the summer, and milking only takes about 20 minutes while cleaning up means that she is in the dairy about one hour overall. Bagging the day’s production also takes another hour in the evenings. The goats are very clean in the covered circular yard and the pit area. They do not have as much of a problem with mastitis as cows and the udders are usually very clean and healthy.

The Washcreek herd is not free from health problems, however, with w worms and pneumonia the chief among these. Two kids have been lost from copper deficiency which produces deterioration in the spinal column, but Sheila and the department are working on these problems.

Other potential husbandry problems concern the goat’s sociability. They must be run as a family unit, but probably not above 60 in size for maximum production. They all have distinct personalities, a rigid hierarchy, and attach themselves very much to their owner or handler. On the odd occasion that Sheila has been absent from milking a relief milker has found the “old girls” cantankerous. Sheila is lucky to be so closely associated with the Washcreek settlement and to be receiving such detailed help on a one-to-one basis from Tom McClurg and the resources of the department. A great deal of planning has gone into the enterprise and those concerned are justifiably proud of the success so far.

Tom McClurg looked out over the herd during an infection tour by a representative of “The Press.”

“As a farming field officer things like these thistles, which the goats like to eat, make me uneasy. “It is not a model enterprise yet, but it shows a lot of promise,” he said.