Milking Goats in New Zealand – Indoor Farming

Farming milking goats – Saanen and Toggenburg goats. Outline of indoor dairy goat farm operation.

1100 Saanen and Toggenburg milking goats are housed in six 80m x 9m sheds alongside one another with plenty of light for the indoor herd. Each shed, though they actually lack walls and are probably more accurately called covered pens, separates year old does from pregnant ones, and kids from older goats and so on. Pens are separated by feeding troughs and surrounded by wooden post and rail fencing.

Milking Goats

Dairy milking goats each produce 3-4 litres of milk a day and will continue to do so for approximately seven years. They are milked twice a day in a large shed very smiliar to a bovine dairy operation, except that more goats than cows will fit into the average milking shed, and only two, rather than four cups are required. Most of the goat’s milk is purchased by a goat milk co-operative which sends it to a plant for conversion to infant formula.

 

Goat Farming

Because they are kept indoors, goat farming is intensive, since food needs to be brought to the animals, and their floor coverings (shavings) need to be changed up to twice a week. This farm uses eight full-time and one half time employee to operate efficiently. Men work on silage production, grass-cutting, land and building maintenance, and feeding the animals.

Women do the miking, and rear the kids. In the southern hemisphere, after a gestation of five months, kidding occurs throughout July and August. The sprightly, exceptionally cute kids weight up to 1.5kgs at birth and are reared to replace older stock. Almost 25% of pregnant does will deliver triplets and a significant number, twins. The kids are separated from the does immediately and bottle-fed in fully enclosed sheds for two days before joining their fellows in a separate shed alongside the adults. Once in the main shed, they are fed from a cafeteria.

Indoor Goats

Milking goats are easier farmed indoors because they don’t pick up worms from the ground. Once they get worms they have to be drenched but drenching contaminates the milk.

Indoor goats are always dry making them easier to keep clean, but they’re also easier to manage in confined areas. In fact, because they’ve been hand-raised and know nothing else, these placid goats, if put in a paddock, would collect themselves in one corner and wait to be brought back inside.

Goat Feed

They are fed a combination of fresh cut grass, brewers grain, maize silage and silage. It’s something of a fallacy that goats eat anything. In a milking farm situation they’re fussy and will only eat top quality food, although it has to be admitted that they’ll eat anything for amusement. A car left on the route to the milking shed had all the stickers chewed off it, and several patches of paint gnawed off. They managed to leave a significant number of tooth dents while they were at it.

 

Goats have observable individual personalities and love to amuse themselves. A goat-proofed enclosure will only be goat-proof until they find find a new way to get at something. Be particularly aware of electrical cables which are a fine source of entertainment.

Copyright