Dairy Goats in Wairarapa!

Hi,
I am trying to set up a dairy goat farm in the Wairarapa. Does anyone have any equipment they'd like to sell? If anyone would like to give me advice or tips and stuff, anything.....feel free! Yes, I do know that the co op dont come down to pick up milk here. If Mohammed wont come to the mountain, the mountain must go to him!

Welcome elfinbug! Keep an eye on trade me and in the AgTrader paper (which is also online) for milking gear, as there is sometimes used stuff available there. There's also a fellow in Palmy N area who does up used gear, and sells for both cow and goat set-ups. In the past he has advertised in the AgTrader, and hopefully still does.

Good luck with your venture! Hopefully if more people in your area produce goat milk commercially, the co-op will extend the area it serves.

Welcome. How many? 2 will be different than 20 different than 200. What are you planning to do with the kids? With 200 does you will have 400 kids to get rid of, and I would suggest and suspect that the sale of live kids won't be an option in Wairarapa.
Have you done goats before? If not, remember that they are much less hardy than sheep are, and have very different needs.

If dairy goats are certified disease-free, then they are quite valuable for live export as youngsters. Last couple of years around here they're gone for $300-350 each, and in the NI they go for even more. You have to work with MAF on this, but there is a market for live doe kids. The male kids can possibly reared for the domestic goat meat market, though I don't know the ins and outs of that industry.

Greetings Elfinbug
We now have a small dairy goat herd in Martinborough - send us an email and we can get together and nut out some things if you like. Be warned, if you haven't had goats before, they do tend to take over your lives - addictive little critters

Wow, thanks for all that. Just got in from three days of it all in Hamilton. I,m shattered. I will talk more soon. You are very helpful. Hopefully this is the start of something for the Wairarapa.

Andrea, very interesting, thanks. I guess that the kids would have to be 15 to 20 weeks old though, so that would entail share milking?

200! Never dreamed of comparing them to sheep:-)

Dairy goat farm Wairarapa cntd.......
As it happens I know the ins and outs of the domestic meat market for goats myself Andrea. Thanks for your helpful input. Dairy goat kids are few and far between ( as we all know) at the moment with the growth of the co op shareholders. Still so determined to get my lovely dairy goat kids and get started on my milking herd. I have so much to learn and already have taken in so much from the great goat people out there!

LongRidge;428844 wrote: Andrea, very interesting, thanks. I guess that the kids would have to be 15 to 20 weeks old though, so that would entail share milking?

Or kid-rearing, just like calf-rearing. I have a friend in the NI who does it on contract every year, 200-300 doe kids.

Hmmmm . Yes, I know that goat milk composition is more like cows milk than sheeps milk. The kids that we rear on An-lamb seem to do far better on An-lamb than the lambs we rear on An-lamb. Thus if An-lamb is cheaper than taking some of the goat milk from the vat, then that would make economic sense.
elfinbug, have you explored with the " government authorities" whether it is legal to sell unpasteurised fresh goats milk? I would think that pasteurisation of goats milk is not necessary, as the main reasons to pasteurise cows milk is to reduce the risk of cow diseases being caught by humans. Goats do not carry these cow diseases, thus pasteuriation may be unnecessary. But I think that plastic might taint goats milk more than it taints cows milk.

Oh. I'll look into it. Sitting here studying all the RMP stuff as it happens! That's an interesting point. I was going to truck the milk up to Hamilton myself.

A dairy farmer in Golden Bay has installed a drink dispenser that can be set to deliver a set volume when the money is put in. That way he can sell unpasteurised cows milk at his gate without having every person and their dogs coming to the house to buy his milk. If you are not too far from a decent sized town, that might be a consideration for you.

LongRidge;429804 wrote: A dairy farmer in Golden Bay has installed a drink dispenser that can be set to deliver a set volume when the money is put in. That way he can sell unpasteurised cows milk at his gate without having every person and their dogs coming to the house to buy his milk. If you are not too far from a decent sized town, that might be a consideration for you.

Now that's sensible. Never heard of that before.