Nearly a thousand goats housed

Allan Karels with the control box of one of five conveyors which the agile goats managed to activate while his back was turned.

01-12-2008 | Not Specified

The Karels now have 4000m2 under cover of Taylorbuilt spans with clear plastic skin.

Three bays went up for the start of the 2007 milking season and a further three one year later.

The barns are open at the ends and the outside walls of shade-cloth and plastic can be retracted to assist air flow.

There are six 81m-long tunnels side-by-side and a sixth at right angles across the end nearest the dairy parlour to provide room for different mobs to be fetched and returned and for the feed wagon
to gain access to five conveyor
belts which run the length of the pens.

Goats put their heads through the rails of the pens to get to the cut pasture, silage, meal and additives which are delivered down the conveyors.

As each tunnel is eight metres wide up to 300 goats share a pen with more than 600m2 of space. Sawdust is added regularly and the litter scraped out every six months.

Watering and electrical systems, especially the controls, have to be robust and goat-proof.

Goats have plenty of time and curiosity and will eventually open gate latches and other things which are not doubly secured.

Allan found to his surprise one day that two goats, working together with their mobile lips in a random way, managed to turn on a conveyor belt by manipulating two buttons about 1.5m off the ground just outside their pen.

The control boxes now have metal covers with securing straps.

Housed at present are 950 milking goats, including the first-milkers in their own pen, and 280 kids for herd replacements and expansion.

The dry litter system and housing means goats do not have worm burdens, which avoids one of the major health issues.

They get mineral supplementation, Causmag, calcium and salt, dusted on to the cut grass. The goats require regular hoof dipping and trimming.

Forage harvesting is done with a Fella four-drum mower on the front of a 155hp New Holland tractor with a 12t capacity Strautmann Super Vitesse pick-up and loader wagon on the back.

Depending on the pasture cover, Allan says it takes between 30 and 45 minutes to collect a full load, which is done an average of four times a day.

Each goat needs about 3-3.5kg DM daily, mostly cut pasture, but excess is put down the conveyors to make sure every goat is satisfied.

Any pasture and feed mix that comes off the far end of the conveyors is collected and trucked out to beef cattle also run on the farm.

Cutting starts around 11am because pasture energy content is much higher in the afternoon and goats don't like eating wet grass. They also pick out any dock leaves or herb species as it goes past their noses.

The Karels have cut back beef cattle numbers as the pasture harvesting requirement for the goats rises with greater numbers or lower growth rates in colder weather.

New paddocks are being added to the forage rotation and nitrogen used to boost growth rate in winter.

For the past three years dicalcic fertiliser has been spread on the farm, including superphosphate. A year ago the soil fertility levels were 29 to 37 Olsen P.

In future the dry litter will be spread on paddocks and the need for any maintenance or capital fertilisers will diminish.

Renovated paddocks go into Italian ryegrass, chicory and plantain and Allan will be planting 10ha of maize this season.

Other feeds such as barley straw and silage have been bought in, especially during winter when wet conditions make it impossible to harvest grass.

The Karels did not want to draw any financial or yield comparisons with conventional dairying because of the short length of time that dairy goats have been in residence and the many costs of setting up the unit.

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