Around 2007, Noel Farrell, from Tipperary, saw an article about goats in the Irish Farmers Journal which sowed the seed for his move away from beef in 2010.

“To make a living out of suckling was very hard so we had to look at our options to see what we could do,” said Farrell, who is now milking 200 goats and supplying the milk to Cooleeney cheese in Thurles.

Finding “someone to take the milk is the biggest hurdle”, but he was also keen to point out that it is not a part-time occupation and he works 45 hours per week on his farm.

“Anyone that generally gets in part-time don’t stay at it because it is a full-time job,” he said, speaking at the Teagasc goat conference in Portlaoise on Wednesday.

Selective breeding

Selective breeding is the key to improving your goat herd as it contributes to higher yield. Farrell emphasises the importance of having a good billy.

“When you buy 100 kids off three different farms they’re not giving you their best kids, they’ll be keeping them, so you’ll have to work with what you get and build them up.”

The goats are fed with concentrates and zero grazing, and they get an additional 1kg of meal in the parlour each day. In total, each goat receives 450kg/year of concentrates. Last year, Noel used a mould inhibitor, Eco-Bale, on the silage which he said made a big difference in preventing listeriosis in his goats.

Irish artisan cheese production

Cheese-maker Elizabeth Bradley milks goats on 30ha in Co Carlow.

“There’s an awful lot of people in Ireland who have never had a farmhouse cheese,” she said. “I think there’s huge potential in Ireland. It’s about getting the product out there.”

But she points out that it is not easy to do everything at once because “milking, making and selling is very difficult in terms of having enough hours in the day.”

There are a number of challenges in the Irish goat milk and goats cheese market, not least the fact that a wider discussion around collaboration is needed.

“The challenges I see, particularly in Ireland is that the market is very dispersed,” said Bradley, who currently has a student from UCD with her on work experience. “In the market in Carlow I sell about 30 different types of cheese, not just my own. There’s not only the challenge of labour but also of selling the product.”

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Need for more co-operation among goat industry to maximise incomes