pros and cons, page-108

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DAIRY
Dairy goats push button for milk producers

SIMONE SMITH, The Weekly Times
February 14, 2018 10:34am
Subscriber only
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CHRIS Lamin often fields two or three phone calls a week from people inquiring about the dairy goat industry.​

As the Australian Dairy Goats secretary these sorts of calls were not unexpected, but it was who was calling that has the industry excited.​

“The vast majority in the past 12 months have been cow dairy farmers looking for other options than to milk cows,” she said. “Some do it as a side business, some sell (their herd) and swing straight into goats.”​

Dairy goat farmers have noticed increased interest in their industry, although this hasn’t yet been reflected in official statistics.​

According to Dairy Food Safety Victoria’s latest annual report the number of licensed goat, sheep and buffalo farmers had dropped from 33 to 31.​

An Australian Government Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation report on the Australian dairy goat industry in May last year said the industry was growing but was still relatively small and fragmented.​

It said there were 68 licensed dairy goat farms in Australia in 2016. The national commercial milking herd was 30,550 and 46,152 in total, producing 16.9 million litres of milk a year.​

The annual farmgate value was $20.2-$26.9 million. This was a lift from 2009 where previous research estimated there were 65 dairy goat farms with 12,000 goats and total annual production of six million litres.​

According to the report, 60 per cent of the milk goes into cheese, 18 per cent into milk and 4 per cent as powder.​

Victoria has the most dairy goat farms at 37 per cent, according to DFSV.​

“At the moment we are sitting on a ledge,” Ms Lamin said. “We can either just keep going along or we can go up.”​

A lack of goats and manufacturing amenities was a challenge. Some dairy cow farmers were looking at goats because of the higher farmgate milk price, about $1.40 a litre, with estimated production costs of 45c a litre.​

The interest from bovine farmers has triggered a need for the industry to offer the same services as the dairy cow industry, such as artificial insemination forums. The industry wants to develop its own breeding values this year from 30 years of herd recording data.​