Introduction I'm a new farmer

[Pastor Dave]

Welcome from the Hoosier State!
It sounds like you have quite a bit of space to do as your heart (and finances) desire. Do you work your own hay fields and such? I am courious how your acreage breaks down in terms of usage, but don't want to sound too nosy

 

[Devonviolet]

Our original plan was to make and sell goat cheese but after handling 10 births in 9 weeks we decided to just breed pure breed Nubian instead. To make a living with goat cheese we would have had to have around 200 - 250 does in milk

Wow! That is a very optimistic goal. I started milking last March, and am still learning how to make cheese. You must be planning to make a LOT of cheese! Our LaMancha goats each give me 10 cups of milk once a day. If I milked twice a day, I could get 35 gallons a week per goat. That can build up very quickly. I'm thinking with 250 goats that could amount to 8750 gallons of milk a month!!! That Is a LOT of milk!

I don't know how it is in Washington, but here in Texas, the laws are very restrictive, when it comes to selling raw goat's milk, or products made from raw goat's milk. If you haven't gone through the expensive, convoluted certification process, you can only sell your milk and it's products on the farm.

Then, you need to think about marketing. Again, I don't know how it is in your corner of WA, but here, in East TX, people aren't interested in paying for the extra cost of organic food. About a year ago, I was trying to sell our Free Range eggs (not "organic", but soy, and GMO free), for $4.00/dozen. People were telling me they could get eggs for $1.50/dozen at the grocery store. So, low price is more important than high nutrition.

You said you are changing to pure bred Nubians. I may have miss it, but did you say what other breeds your current goats are crossed with? Sometimes a cross can produce higher fat content and quantity. Sort of like crossing a Boer meat goat with a myotonic goat giving you maximum meat to bone ratio.

It's good to have you here on BYH. I look forward to learning from your experiences raising goats. For, as we know, we learn from our experiences. Here, on BYH, we learn from the experiences of other members as well. It's a win/win situation.

 

[Jeanne Sheridan]

Wow! That is a very optimistic goal. I started milking last March, and am still learning how to make cheese. You must be planning to make a LOT of cheese! Our LaMancha goats each give me 10 cups of milk once a day. If I milked twice a day, I could get 35 gallons a week per goat. That can build up very quickly. I'm thinking with 250 goats that could amount to 8750 gallons of milk a month!!! That Is a LOT of milk!

I don't know how it is in Washington, but here in Texas, the laws are very restrictive, when it comes to selling raw goat's milk, or products made from raw goat's milk. If you haven't gone through the expensive, convoluted certification process, you can only sell your milk and it's products on the farm.

Then, you need to think about marketing. Again, I don't know how it is in your corner of WA, but here, in East TX, people aren't interested in paying for the extra cost of organic food. About a year ago, I was trying to sell our Free Range eggs (not "organic", but soy, and GMO free), for $4.00/dozen. People were telling me they could get eggs for $1.50/dozen at the grocery store. So, low price is more important than high nutrition.

You said you are changing to pure bred Nubians. I may have miss it, but did you say what other breeds your current goats are crossed with? Sometimes a cross can produce higher fat content and quantity. Sort of like crossing a Boer meat goat with a myotonic goat giving you maximum meat to bone ratio.

It's good to have you here on BYH. I look forward to learning from your experiences raising goats. For, as we know, we learn from our experiences. Here, on BYH, we learn from the experiences of other members as well. It's a win/win situation.

The 200 - 250 goats was based on pasteurized chevre. We had worked up a business plan with a mentor who has 35 years making goat cheese commercially on a small scale. Our market here will pay more for organic and certification would have been a little easier as our farm hasn't been a working farm with any chemicals for 30 plus years. Before we made the change to just breeding goats we already had 2 local restaurants that wanted farmstead cheese. That was just in our local small town, but we have much larger markets north and south of us. Portland is about 90 minutes south and has a large number of farm to table restaurants.
When we were making trial cheeses in our kitchen we tried cheese from milk from specific breeds. In addition to the Nubians, we have 1 Nigerian Dwarf doe and Nubian/Oberhasli cross doe. We liked the milk and the cheese from the Nubians best and on top of that our best producers give us about 2 gallons a day each. If that wasn't enough of a reason for us we found the Nubians were far and away the easiest to milk. We picked up a used a surge milking system off Craig's List that makes milking twice a day much easier.
I have two neighbors who are selling free range, non-GMO, organic eggs for $3 a dozen and have asked if I'd like to join them once we have a coop as they have more demand than their chickens can produce.

 

[Jeanne Sheridan]

Welcome from the Hoosier State!
It sounds like you have quite a bit of space to do as your heart (and finances) desire. Do you work your own hay fields and such? I am courious how your acreage breaks down in terms of usage, but don't want to sound too nosy

You're not nosy at all. Our farm is L shaped. We think of it as being made up of three 10 acre squares. The 10 acres square that touches the street is where all of our buildings are located and is where we will be keeping all livestock once we add a fence between it and the back two ten acre plots. Most of the buildings are in the corner of the property by the street but the second barn is over in the opposite corner of that square. One of our neighbors will be working the back twenty starting next spring in a grass mix that grows great here with just the rain out of the sky. Last year people in the area got 4 turns out of similar fields. This year it was just two as we got less rain over the summer. Our deal with him is that he does the work for half the hay. We aren't using the barn farthest from the house so we have told him he can use it for hay storage and sales. If we get more than 2 turns he will even help us sell the extra.

 

[Devonviolet]

That is so cool that you have someone, to mentor you, who has experience making cheese commercially. You mentioned marketing to restaurants, that sell farm-to-table local foods. So I looked online, in Dallas and Tyler, both larger cities, and found farm-to-table restaurants.

Then I went online to see if I could sell raw goat cheese commercially. I did find a site, and basically it tells me that in Texas, I have to get some kind of certification to even sell milk on my property. The way it is worded, is that the milk can only be sold to individuals. So, I'm pretty sure it means that I couldn't sell to a restaurant.

I'm interested in what you said about your Nubians and that their milk made the best cheese and that your best producers gave 2 gallons a day, each. That is phenomenal! I think I am going to start checking into Nubians. How are they health wise? How are they with parasite resistance?

You've really got me thinking. Thanks.

 

[Pastor Dave]

That's a good arrangement. Less equipment you have to keep up. I have a guy that mows our other church property, will bale my +/- acre and drop it in place for 75 cents a bale. He says it's abt double the amnt than if he used twine, but after weighing the results, he prefers wire. I just go out and collect it and store it. For now, it works for me.

 

[Devonviolet]

will bale my +/- acre and drop it in place for 75 cents a bale.

That's a great deal! The guy we get our hay from, says it costs him about $4 per square bale (60 lbs), for someone to bale it for him. He charges $6/bale, so he doesn't make too much profit on it.

 

[Jeanne Sheridan]

That is so cool that you have someone, to mentor you, who has experience making cheese commercially. You mentioned marketing to restaurants, that sell farm-to-table local foods. So I looked online, in Dallas and Tyler, both larger cities, and found farm-to-table restaurants.

Then I went online to see if I could sell raw goat cheese commercially. I did find a site, and basically it tells me that in Texas, I have to get some kind of certification to even sell milk on my property. The way it is worded, is that the milk can only be sold to individuals. So, I'm pretty sure it means that I couldn't sell to a restaurant.

I'm interested in what you said about your Nubians and that their milk made the best cheese and that your best producers gave 2 gallons a day, each. That is phenomenal! I think I am going to start checking into Nubians. How are they health wise? How are they with parasite resistance?

You've really got me thinking. Thanks.

I’ll Raet at the bottom and work up. The only issue we have seen with our goats are intestinal worms. We seem to have fixed that though by switching dewormer. We are now using a paste intended for horses. It was the vets suggestion. Next year we hope to switch to natural food based deworming with things like pumpkin.
When we were hand milking we weren’t be getting the volume we get from our surge pump. I found the pump on Craig’s List. The girl who owned it had been very active in FFA but was graduating from high school and going away to college. She had already sold her cows. We had to swap out the claws to a smaller versions but it was still a great deal. We can now do 2 does at a time. We are still looking for a small pasturizer. Even with the smaller number of goats we should still be able to support one of the local restaurants and she would need it to be pasteurized. She gets her rabbits from on of my neighbors and stopped in last week to ask about cheese. We love our Nubians. They are the sweetest goats.

 

[Jeanne Sheridan]

We lost our oldest doe over the weekend. She never really recovered from delivering her two BIG kids this last spring, never putting the weigh back on post delivery. She and her sister were rescues that we had not planned to breed as they were so under weight. Daphne had other ideas and pushed her way into out bucks enclosure. We will miss her as she was super sweet but she gave us two beautiful kids, a doe and a wether. I'll try to get pictures posted this week.

 

[CntryBoy777]

So sorry to hear that and it is always difficult to comprehend sometimes even with the best of care. Hopefully her 2 can fill the gap and do her proud in the coming years...