WELCOME TO MY VISION!

Welcome “one and all” to my little corner of paradise. On my 4ha in the Sherry River area of Tapawera, Nelson I am building a commercial goat milking enterprise. With the approval of the FSA I will be supplying the local Tasman community with my sweet and nutritious goats milk from my beautiful herd of dairy goats for many years to come.

THE HERD

The Everbroke Farm Dairy Goat herd comprises of both Saanens and Toggenburgs (and crosses of these). It is a relatively new and young herd that I wish to build on and firmly believe I have some very nice foundation stock to do this from.

I started with one feral goat in June 2006, that was found by a local hunter as a kid and as she got older she needed a friend and when the “friend” turned out to be unsuitable he was replaced with an old milking doe. When she died I went in search of a replacement and brought home “Raina” a rising 2yr old Saanen in kid and “Sunny” a rising 1 year old in August 2007.

This was the beginning of what I now know as “COD” (Caprine Obsessive Disorder). Now I needed a buck and thanks to a neighbour in Tadmor, Lucky, a boer/feralX came to live at Everbroke Farm and has certainly paid his way in the last 2 1/2years.

Unfortunately Raina died suddenly three months after her second kid was born. This was a huge loss to me but I had already been out and acquired 4 more goats during this time (3 dairy goats and a boer/toggy X). Also I bought some more boerX goats thinking that might be a direction to head in but when I realise in the winter of 2008 that I can no longer drink cows milk the need for goats milk becomes more important.

As you can see the herd starts to exponentially grow and so does the idea to build on this foundation so that I could commercially milk these goats so the farm could “pay its own way”.

As most people will tell you, 4ha is not enough to make a living off unless you find some form of intensive farming. For example free range chickens as my neighbours have done or some form of horticulture like olives or lavender (I don’t do plants so not an option). My plan had always been to make the block self-sufficient financially and after 2 years of breeding calves from my 6 cows and realising that this wasn’t going to do it I needed to diversify. This meant I needed to sell off my excess cows and buy in more goats. This being precisely what I did!!!

Therefore the hunt was on for an affordable but good quality milking goat and some were found in Wanganui. They are 5 unregistered Saanens but have turned out to be rather good producers and are leaving very nice kids. I will try to “classify” these goats this year with the NZDGBA (New Zealand Dairy Goat Breeders Association) so they and their offspring can be recognised nationally as the years go on. Also in this time I was able to acquire 3 more of Amanda Heine’s toggenburg does of various ages from around the district to go with the 1 I had acquired prior to Riana’s death.

If you have managed to follow this you will see my herd is getting up there in numbers by now. I have reached 12 milkers (both Saanen and toggenburg), 2 feral does (hand raised) and 4 boerX does plus 1 buck and 1 rather fat and spoilt feral wether (who is still here by the way) by the spring of 2010. It continues to grow as the Wanganui girls start to kid and I keep 4 of their doe kids as replacements and get given a beautiful black toggenburg buck kid by the lovely Amanda.

The handful (6) of  “meat” goats from my original herd get the privilege of grazing alongside the milkers and they are purely here for sentimental reasons though their kids do provide an additional income at weaning.

Also I purchase another 10 does (6 registered “Nelke” does and another 4 Wanganui does), their remaining kids, a registered “Nelke” buck and a milking plant in January 2011. This really sets me on the way towards going commercial. The seed is fully sown, germinated and well on its way to a full-grown plan.

THE SHED

Plans for a milking shed are thrown around with the original idea being to use a 20ft shipping container but after looking at the room needed and the consents required I decided I needed to build a proper shed that I could then expand from later if needed. With the help of friends and family (with out which I wouldn’t have made it this far) the idea begins to fall into place and building starts - and so does kidding before I know it.

It is intended that the shed will be operational and hopefully all requirements in place for the commercial sale of milk from my lovely herd of 21 goats before December (all going to plan). We are well on our way just paperwork to file and final set up of the shed to go.

THE PRODUCT

Goats milk is actually the most drunk milk that is produced in the world just not necessarily on a commercial scale though in Europe goat milking farms are quite common.

What does goat’s milk give you that cow’s milk doesn’t? Check out our products page for more information.