Sydney the Alpine Goat at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo

I recently visited my favorite goat in the world at the world famous Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. Sydney was an utter jerk when I worked with her back in 2000, when the Australian Adventure exhibit first opened. It was the first time I was around goats, and I soon learned to love her devious personality. She was the one who was always jumping out of the enclosure, munching on kid's strollers, and so on. She was one of the original animals in the contact yard (petting zoo).

She's getting on in years and seems to have mellowed. Still, she's awesome.

Sydney in her younger years

The Results are In!

On Monday, March 5, I sat down with some members of the Dairy Business Innovation Center to discuss dairy goats in Wisconsin. It just so happened that this was the same day that the World Championship Cheese Competition was open to the public. I did a quick jaunt around the judging floor, munched a sample of some really good mozzarella before getting in touch with Jeanie, Becky (of Edelweiss) and Norm for a quick chat. 

 Click for a larger size

 The judging floor. Kinda seemed like a factory (what with all the white coats and hats) mixed with 4H judging. I would like to see them implement more of a "Dog Show" mentality, where the owners of the cheese parade their wheels around before the crowd. Of course they have 2,500 entries to get through, and some cheese makers (large companies) probably entered upwards of 100 different cheeses so maybe that wouldn't work.

 Wheels laid out pre-judging.

 Public tasting is not the main focus of the event. Still, it was really nice that they did provide a small array of high-class cheeses for sampling.

 Ok so this is a terrible shot of the goat cheese judging table. The man you cannot see behind the guy in the red hat is Steve Zeng from Langston University in Oklahoma. Much of the dairy goat research going on today can be traced back to him and the Langston Goat Research Extension.

After our initial introductions (in which I found that Jeanie and I each have a Cleveland, OH connection), we started talking about the Dairy Business Center. We talked a little about the low points for dairy farmers in the ‘80-90s, when the population of farmers was aging, the price for cow's milk was low, and most cheese produced in Wisconsin was considered “commodity cheese.” “No one back then used the word Artisan,” Jeanie pointed out.  In 2004 the DBIC was former as a way to help farmers find ways to create “value added” endeavors, such as artisan cheeses, to their farms.  

The DBC is there to help all dairy associated endeavors (goat, cow, sheep etc.), and recognizes the importance of  producers, dairy processors, state and federal government and industry leaders all working together. It is not a "brick and mortar" building, but a nonprofit organization of experienced consultants that can be called upon to help develop businesses for a lower cost than if the owners just went out on their own.

I found out Wisconsin is the only state that has a sheep milk coop  (I always wanted to write about the cooperative efforts in Wisconsin, I really feel they add to the tapestry of our history. It is The Year of the Coop, so maybe I will...) Wisconsin has the most goats in the country (always in competition with Texas and Iowa for milk producing herds.) We have some of the the largest plants for processing goat milk. We also make “mixed milk” cheese – mixing cow and goat milk, for instance, to make a different blended cheese. We are far behind the Europeans, both in our goat stock and our cheese, but that is to be expected with the long history of European dairies.

Goat farming is a fairly low cost endeavor, vs. cow dairying for people to get into, and the quality of artisan goat cheese has skyrocketed. Younger farmers are getting into the business (or back into the business) as promoting local foods, or going organic has risen in the media.  Norm made sure to point out that there are still real challenges. Farming is a lot of work, and this cannot be understated. There are hotspots of goat markets in Wisconsin, and finding a market is very important for the continued strength of goat milk.  Also, the quality of milk is very important. If members of your goat herd are not producing, farmers have to make the choice to cull animals, which can be difficult but necessary to remain financially strong.

We finished our discussion as Becky and Norm had to run off to meet some farmers they had been working with who happened to be in Madison for the cheese competition. Jeanie and I talked briefly about meat goats in Wisconsin, and I will hopefully be investigating that in the future.  

Back to the cheese floor, the World Championship Cheese Contest, though some people may feel it is weighted towards our fair state since it is hosted by the Wisconsin Cheese Makers (and we do have a whole organization dedicated to artisan cheese in our state, as well as being home to the Cheese Underground blog) is an impartial contest. Click on the first image for info on the judging process. The contest, which included judges from 40 countries sampling entries from all over the world that compete in 82 categories (not counting Best of Show), was covered by media from as far away as New Zealand.  

Some of the most interesting results to me included a number of Wisconsin cheeses making it into the "sweet 16" finals PDF (alas, none of them goat), along with a Spanish goat cheese. Montchevre and Carr Valley Cheese both made good showings in the goat milk cheese categories, placing in the top 3 in a number of categories, and (in a rare departure from my goat alliance) a special shout out goes to the small Hidden Springs Creamery for placing 2nd overall in the Flavored Soft & Semi-soft Sheep's Milk Cheeses (I love their little sheep-y label).

The overall winner was a Dutch Vermeer, made by FrieslandCampina. The winner will be honored at the International Cheese Technology Expo next month.

Amish Goat Farm Visit

 

CLICK the sketch to see FULL SIZE

Another bank holiday, another farm visit! This Presidents Day I was visiting the farm of an Amish farmer who had received a USDA loan to start milking goats and selling the milk to the MontChevre  cheese factory in Berlin Wisconsin (the company is based out of California). My Uncle  happens to be the loan officer, and he had heard that the milk truck had just started to come to the farm, so we set up to go take a look.

It is so funny to think, on our way to the farm, we were discussing Twitter and Bing and iPads and so on (my aunt, who is retired from the University system, knows about all of these things and we were discussing the different reasons for using them.) At the farm, we found ourselves discussing wood stoves used for heating the milk parlor, running cold water around a metal jacket over one portion of the stove to create hot water, and a cistern on the hill that created a gravity-fed water system so that a spray hose could be used for washing the milk house. From inside the grid, to completely off it, in about 15 minutes.

Now, this was an Amish farm, and so I chose not to take any photos. However, I have provided a sketch of the goat barn (see above). I also transcribed my notes on the drive home and, in leiu of a notepad, used a number of paper tags my Uncle had in his truck to track my thoughts.

 

One of my "note tags" 

The farmer was very accommodating on this mucky winter’s day. He seemed a little overwhelmed by having 150 baby goats to contend with (there was indoor and outdoor pens housing the babies). Also, he had just started milking – they had had only one milk pickup, the second one happened while we were visiting. His family does the milking (mostly his children I believe). He showed us the milking stands - 10 or 14 stands. One that held about 8-10 goats was long and had a neck lock section that could be closed to hold the goats. He really liked this as opposed to the stationary neck holder. Some of his goats had horns, others did not. The long section was for most of the goats, whereas the smaller 2-4 goat stands were for goats that took an extra long time to milk by hand (due to the makeup of their udder, their age etc.)  

Behind the milk parlor was the milk barn, made up of a hoop house that was open at one end. On right side he had his milking goats, and on the other, he had the dry goats.  He has some Billy goats (bucks) on site in a separate barn. One of them is his “$300 Billy goat” whose mother was known for being a very good milker.

He has 100 dry goats. He hopes to breed some of them in a rotation so that he will always be milking. Since he is selling liquid milk, there is a premium for it paid in winter (since, in the natural scheme of things, this is when goats dry up.) We chatted about how long a goat is expected to be in the milk production system (only about 3- 4 years actually, which surprised me a bit. Goats can live 15-20 years. On another website I found information that a goat can be bred before age 1 year, and “retired” at around age 10 and still live to old age. ) He said that the two most important things in getting milking goats are looking at their bloodlines, and providing them with the best food possible. He wished he had been able to have his barn a little wider, as then he would have two troughs for food (he currently has one that both sides of the barn eat out of.) That way, he could feed the more nutrient dense food to the milkers.  He really liked the airiness and light of his hoop barn though.

Some other things taken into account when setting up the farm were how many people could milk for how long. Due to his family, his farm can have 10 people milking goats for approx. 10 years before the children are old enough to grow up and leave to go out on their own.  The goats sold for meat went for about $1.35 / lb. The hoop house cost about $10,000. Once again, the Great God Hay came up in that it is hard to create good milking quality hay in Wisconsin. Much of it is “western hay” which comes from Nebraska.

A skid-steer is sort of a Bobcat type vehicle that can  run through the barn and cleans up the manure. In winter, the barn is a little hard to clean out, and a lot of work to do by hand with pitchforks. There was some discussion about bringing in pigs – if you poke holes in the packed down manure and put corn in the holes, then let pigs root around in it, it will loosen and fluff up the material so that it can be more easily dug out. 

Currently, it takesabout 1.5 hours to milk 75 goats by hand. He is currently getting a good winter milk price of about $37 per 100 weight (here is some historic info on goat milk prices in WI). Eventually he’ll be getting about $750/ ton. In other words, making about $100 / day at peek production (which was figured to be no less than 5 lbs of milk per goat per day. He already has one goat that gives nearly 20 pounds of milk!) Out of that $100, about $75 goes towards feeding the goats. His setup has the goats housed in a hoop house and not on pasture. All hay and other feed needs to be bought, brought in, and fed. 

 As the milk truck driver was lamenting the fact that his route keeps changing now that all the goats are starting to “freshen” (i.e. give birth and start to be milked), he also said he has to work long hours in hopes of not falling behind. “No rest for the wicked,” quipped my aunt. To which the farmer responded, “ya, not too much rest for us good guys neither!”

Dreamfarm Organic Goat Dairy

I arrived at Dreamfarm, located just Northwest of Cross Plains Wisconsin on a chilly January morning. Diana, the farmer met me after I pulled into the icy driveway and surveyed the tidy farm. The farm is located up on a ridge: to my right was the farmhouse, which was updated by the former owner – he added a fancy kitchen and neglected to get rid of the old one. This worked out well for a farmstead business owner like Diana, who if I remember correctly uses the second kitchen for things like washing eggs from her chickens.  Also to the right was the main barn – home to the goats and barn cats - with a field that connects with the area that houses the bucks and some Jacobson sheep.  To the left was the cheese making facility (a former “game room” of the guy with the fancy kitchen), garage, machinery shed, and chicken house. Down the ridge there is a hay field and hilly, tree-filled grazing area. 

While we wait for another person who had expressed an interest in taking a tour, we chat. Diana and her (apparently handy) husband bought farm 2002. Before that she and her family (4 children) lived on 6 acres in a cabin that they build.  They still have one daughter living at home (a high school senior) and helping on the farm.

Diana tells me that she worked for Vermont Valley CSA, got a few pygmy goats and chickens while she lived on the 6 acres, and was asked if she wanted to provide some “value added” elements to the CSA shares in the way of eggs and/or goat cheese. Her family moved down the road to the farm they are currently at which has 25 total acres. Since embarking on the process, she’s gone from 12 to 24 goats and it seems like that is about the most one person can handle. She milks 4 at a time via vacuum milkers.  

 

We eventually start the tour without the second guest. The herd is a mixture of full blood goats and mixes. “Don’t just buy pretty goats,” Diana says. She recommends buying goats with good history and also ones that are healthy. The goats have indoor/outdoor access as much as possible. Diana also says that organic hay is hard to come by.  She and her husband grow some on their farm (although she does grumble a little about the unreliability of their haying equipment). We head into the barn, which is a very old structure, and she walks me past the pens. There are some for kids, and some for the grown goats. She has two Nigerian Dwarf goats she is trying out. They are both pregnant and there is a buck on the grounds.  Nigerian Dwarf goats are known for giving very rich milk.

 

We walk into the milking parlor and she shows me the way it was originally designed, with the goats coming thought a hole high off the floor, and then she explains how they hated that and how they just come through the regular door now and hop onto the milking stands.

We head on through to the milk house where a small bulk tank stands. Diana eventually explains that, at the height of the season, she could get 450 lbs of milk (average 18 pounds of milk per doe, or a little over a gallon in the a.m. and a gallon from the p.m. milking). She used to carry the milk from the milk house to the cheese making building, but now she has to load it on the back of a pickup and drives it across the driveway.

 

 

 

We walk out of the barn and head on over to see the bucks. The parade of does follows us.  Diana says she hasn’t had any problem with goats getting sick from eating noxious weeds  - they pretty much avoid

things that would make them sick. She does confirm that goats can be prone to parasites, and then tells me of a rotational grazing program that she is implementing with the help of an outside organization.  She said that with that sort of intense management, allowing a set number of goats on a certain size portion of land for a limited amount of time, and then rotating them so that the plot has a chance to regrow, also helps keep the goats healthier.  There are three bucks  – Ringo, a mixed Alpine, Saanen, Nubian, Tim, a full bred Nubian, and a very wooly bearded Nigerian Dwarf named Gandalf (who hung back in my photos, but I found a good one of him and his glorious mutton chops on her blog.) She is expecting 50-60 kids in March – most of her herd was bred in October (goats are very seasonal breeders) and  2-3 kids per doe is the norm.

We talk about the Midwest Organic conference which is happening in La Crosse in a month and she said she does enjoy going. She tried implementing some of the things she learned about at one seminar which involved leaving some kids with their mothers but said with her herd, it didn’t work well.  She did say there is no good place she knows of to get organic milk replacer.

She dehorns her goats, and has one goat in her herd that does have horns. “She uses them.”  Most of the unwanted kids they sell for meat, and the price they get doesn’t take into account that they are organic. They just go per lb. She has had some experience with selling to people who, for religious or ethnic reasons, want to slaughter the goat on site.

Our second guest, (whose name I can’t recall) joins us as we head over to the cheeserie, a big clean area off of one of the garages. Dreamfarm has two walk in coolers, a pasteurizer (much of the equipment came from an Alabama goat farm that was getting out of the business). The molds used to shape and make the cheese are very expensive. Diana shows how she keeps records of everything, and it sounds as if she expects inspections all the time. The other guest is not as concerned with the paper trail of organic and health safety records Diana must keep – she is getting some info on starting a goat milk and cheese coop in Guatemala. Diana and she talk for a while about the need for a constant supply of water both for the goats and for cleaning. 

 

Along with goats, chickens and Jacobson sheet, Dreamfarm also keeps pigs and steers – the steers, while not organic (they come from Diana’s brother’s conventional farm) are grass fed.  The pigs eat organic whey from goats. Her goats are classified organic by MOSA.

Diane processes all the cheese herself and is a licensed cheese maker (a necessity in Wisconsin.) It sounds like a very intense process. When I asked if there was any other advice she had for aspiring goat farmers, Diane suggested to just keep visiting farms, making contacts and learn as much as you can (She also shared this link to the Dairy Business Innovation Center).

Wisconsin Tops the 50 States for Dairy Goats!

I just read in an issue of Wisconsin Trail's Magazine that Wisconsin produces more goat milk than any other state.

The Fantome Farm was featured in the piece and was one if not the first farm to sell chevre (soft fresh French style cheese made from goat's milk) made on their farm from milk from their own herd. Chevre means goat in French. Other goat farms selling cheese include:

Blue River Capri Creamery
LaValle Carr Valley
Cross Plains Dreamfarm
Mt. Sterling Goat Cheese
Westby Nordic Creamery

Iowa County Supports Goats!

Goats have more fun. I have proof. You will see no sheep in these pictures, except to cheer on the goats.





































The Iowa County Fair in Mineral Point Wisconsin finished off its yearly run today, with a 1p.m. Goat Costume Class and Agility Contest. The La Mancha you see above was being driven by the reigning champion at the goat agility contest. He ended up finishing third this year. Two young ladies bested him.

The goats had to put at least two feet into the ball pit (you should have seen how some of them flew through the air when the balls startled them!), then up and down the teeter-totter (the course lady watched to make sure they had a gentle time of it), then through the weaving sticks, over a small hurdle, and up and down one last ramp. That last ramp was where I started to get annoyed at the course judge, who took to pushing the goats up and down from behind. If you were a goat being attacked by a mountain lion, wouldn't you freak if someone grabbed your hindquartes? I know I would! There was also a little joshing about one girl "cheating" by resorting to using positive reinforcement (in the form of grain) to lure her goat through the course. Hey. It worked.



















This little goat - a miniature I believe, was the best at the course as a whole and ran it twice with two different handlers.

Finally, there was the Costume Class! This was just a few of the contestants. I felt the girl with the ladybug outfit and her bee goat should have gotten a prize - they were the first ones dressed, and her goat kept his deelie-boppers on the whole time. The winners were a boy dressed as a bee with his goat dressed as a field of flowers, a boy dressed as Merlin riding his goat (you can see him in the background - as far as I was concerned, he should not have won since his goat wasn't wearing anything - except a rider!) and the little Knight in the front with the green dragon goat who, I admit, was the cutest.

Upcomming Goat Events

Wisconsin Dairy Goat Association Annual Badger State Show
May 16th & 17th, 2009 Portage, WI.
Watch the calendar of events for details.

"Save the Date"
September 12-15, 2010 for the National Goat Conference in Tallahassee, Florida.
Sponsored by the Florida Meat Goat Association.

How much is a pound of milk?

I have found a note on this page that an Australian Saanen doe (the breed originally came from the Saanen Valley in Switzerland) named Osory Snow Goose holds the world record milk production of 7,711 lbs in 365 days. Dairy records are usually kept in pounds not gallons so it is helpful to know that 1 gallon equals roughly 8 pounds. Average dairy goats can give 4-8 pounds of milk a day.

Goat Supplies

I stumbled across this site : http://www.caprinesupply.com/
which has all types of goat dairy supplies while reading http://fastgrowtheweeds.com , a blog about a city girl who moved to rural Michigan. A fun read. The caprine supply site has some good tips under their article tab, such as goats will drink warm almost hot water in winter which helps with milk production.

Another farming blog with a sad / telling entry on goats is http://a-homesteading-neophyte.blogspot.com/
- the author describes it as "a beginner's tale of mistakes."







Little Critter Heater
A microwavable blanket designed to raise the core temperature of hypothermic kids. Easy to use: simply remove bags from blanket and micro-wave 1-3/4 minutes. Blanket will reach peak temperature of about 110 degrees and cool down over 45-60 minutes. Reusable, water-resistant, washable, American-made. A must for every barn.

Blue Rose Dairy Visit

I took a trip to the Blue Rose Dairy back in March and it was quite an experience. I drove about 100 miles into Washington to visit with Rhonda and her family during a typical Northwest rainy, cold, misty Sunday. I had met Rhonda last summer at the local Moorland Farmer's Market (Moorland-Sellwood being a neighborhood of Portland, where I live). I had chatted with her, as I have begun to do with as many goat farmers as possible, and was intrigued by her brochure which stated Blue Rose followed an "open farm" policy. I vowed to visit; a promise which was further reinforced by my visit to the sheep farm in December 2006 and the urgings of a USDA friend to visit as many farms as possible before getting one of my own.

Rhonda and her husband (who was laid up with a torn tendon in his arm - after lifting the new pasteurizer into place!) and their daughters manage the farm, milk the goats and make the cheese. The family and their farm have been featured in the local newspaper a number of times. I found them all to be incredible helpful, open and inviting!

I arrived around 2 p.m. and had a tour of the farm. I was also told the back story (related on their home page) about the trials and tribulations they have gone through over the past 5 years to get where they are today. Rhonda states that she never heard of a goat dairy until she saw the one for sale in Winlock. She had always milked a few goats, though, for milk and to make cheese for family and friends. They took over Blue Rose in late 2003 and their first few seasons were quite taxing. One of her first pieces of advice to me was, "never purchase a goat unless you have laid your hands on it." Her first group was sickly, skinny and horned. The second group, also bought sight-unseen, were wild and pregnant! Finally, the group they have now; a mix of Saanen and Alpine with a few others, are moving towards the type of herd she wants to have.

After the tour, in which she showed me their milking parlor (an "inline 8" as opposed to the "v-8" I saw at the sheep dairy), the new cheese "cave" (a spiffy converted refrigerated semi-trailer), their 5 bucks and their Anatolian guard dogs, I asked Rhonda what she would add to her farm if money were no object. She said that she would microchip all of her does for feeding and medicating. Currently, they have a large hopper that delivers the feed the does eat during milking, and she adds her special mix of supplements. She also said that she would like some kind of way to automatically measure the amount of milk from each doe. Being that she is currently building the herd and not planning to sell anything but her least-performing does, she really doesn't see the need to track milk production right now.

(The Cave)

After a cup of tea and the perusal of some goat and cheese books, we got ready to milk and feed the kids. Her three daughters are the ones in charge of separating the "dry" females (pregnant) from those who are milking, as all are allowed to mingle together in the barn. I was able to feed two of the little black Alpine baby goats ("kids") who were only a few days old, yet did not really take to the bulk feeder (a contraption that looks like a feed bucket with nipples at the bottom) and had escaped back into the main herd a few times to feed off of mama. They weight little more than a house cat and sat in the wheel barrel until I was done feeding them. Then we moved into the milking parlor to go through the whole process of milking. Rhonda said she wished she could shave the goat's butts early on so they would be tidy and neat for milking time (since that's what the farmer looks at as they milking happens.) She let me set up some of the does, a process that includes stripping the first two or three squirts of milk from the utter. Unlike milking a cow, where one starts at the top of the teat and slowly pulls downward, with goats, it's a bit like milking a two fingered rubber glove filled with water. You grasp high on the teat and squeeze with all your might (no need to pull downward.) The reason for stripping is because the first few squirts have been shown to have the most bacteria in them.

After we milk for a while (the setup had been in existence since the farmer who sold the dairy had also had goats - he had moved to a larger, new facility), Rhonda decided to make use of my extra pair of hands (since her husband was in a sling) to debud Jessie James, a male kid that the girls were training to be a pack goat. This was pretty intense, since it involves applying a brand to the horn bud to burn it dead. The goat is placed in a box with just his head sticking out and then the iron is placed over the horn bud - since Jessie's horns were a little ways grown in, we had to do this a couple of times. By helping with this, I was taught a valuable lesson - dehorn early! We also got to place a rubber band around his boy-parts to castrate him (the balls dry up and fall off due to the lack of blood.) All around, Jessie had a pretty strange day, but once he was placed back in with the other kids, he seemed fine.

That was pretty much it for the visit. However, Rhonda and I have kept email contact, and I may be helping her at the farmer's market this year - I'll let you know!

The Blue Rose home page is a little hard to read, but is kept up to date and can be found here:

http://bluerosedairy.com/

- Das Ghot Maide