The best way to develop your milk production is to identify the animals which are producing good production and the least medical care needed to keep them producing. However it is not always possible to access the best genetics. Goats with CAE OR CL have shown to produce less milk and require more treatments than those disease free, so starting with good genetics will provide improved milk production. The following comments should assist you in maximizing the milk production from your animals. When developing your business plan you must have the income value from milk at the initial stages. How much milk are you expecting from your goats? When comparing milking goats to milking cows, the greatest challenge is that the dairy goat farm is far more time consuming than an equivalent dairy cow farm, hence it is very important to design out as much of the in efficient labor functions as possible When calculating the pen size we recommend 15 square feet per animal with a 12 to 13” headlock space to access feed. With today’s technology it pays to have the largest pen possible with a good size collecting area which can hold 2 groups of animals separated by a backing gate.įor animal management we would recommend using technology available to sort the animal using a sort gate after she leaves the milking parlor. This concept has proven to be very time consuming when it comes to milking. Animals were kept in small groups to allow easy management of the animals when they needed attention.
For example if you have a 2 x 24 parlor you have a pens size group of 48 animals. In the early days of goat milking in Ontario, animals were kept in pen the size of the milking parlour. (If the backing gate has a sounder as well then once the goats are trained, you can turn off the electric fencer and just use the gate and sounder to get them in) You can design the backing gate to move the correct distance every time the milking parlour is loaded. The use of backing gates which are optionally electrified in a collecting area is useful in keeping animals loaded. We recommend feeding in the parlor to motivate the animals to come in. Also try and make it easy for the animals to see where they are going so the loading is not stressful. When designing a collecting area if you need to slope it, slope it up to a milking parlour as goats like to stand up-hill. When sizing such an area, we work on 3.5 square feet per average Saanen goat giving an average of 1000kg per 305 day lactation. We recommend you have a collecting area behind the milking parlour where the animals will walk into your milk-ing facility from. A well designed facility will allow easy loading and unloading. The speed of milking in our tables discussed above do not include time to bring animals into the milking facility and allow them to exit. Sizing the collecting area and pens where the goats are located.
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