No acting the goat for these farmers
Goats can be like pets and easier to handle than dairy cattle, says Oete Farms director Matt Bolton.
But they see the farm just south of Auckland as the forerunner of “more and more farms” as New Image grows its export trade in goat infant formula and other nutritionals and seeks to add to its NZ supply.
“Oete Farms is our partner where we established a relationship to 100% supply to New Image with goat milk,” Wills told Rural News at Oete’s official opening last Thursday.
“They have 2400 goats increasing to 3000 so they will be the largest goat farm in NZ. This is a partnership we set up to establish our NZ supply of goat milk.”
The milk is converted at New Image’s dairy plant into nutritional products like infant formula, senior formulas and nutritional products.
The goat products are exported to China, Vietnam and Malaysia, and to the Middle East.
“We sell it here in NZ and are exporting a large quantity to the China market which is demanding high quality products and there’s a growing demand for goat milk.”
New Image has its own brands such as Baby Steps. New Image is registered for China for the manufacture of dairy products and its own brands have access.
“We’ve been in China for several years and we’ve also been marketing out goat products in China for three or four years now and we’ve seen very good growth,” says Wills.
Oete Farms director Matt Bolton says the farm has 120ha of grass which is cut and harvested back and fed to the goats. That is 80% of the goats’ diet and they source other roughage and locally sourced feed for the goats to balance diets.
At present they have 2400 does, all in kid and due to start giving birth next month. One was born that morning.
He and his wife Sarah have been dairy cow farmers in the lower North Island for 15 years.
They started getting excited about the goat and doing something different with the goats, he says.
“We want to be pretty special here, we want to produce NZ’s best goats’ milk, higher quality and we want to have NZ’s happiest goats because we feel the two go hand in hand.
“We want everybody to be very proud, especially New Image and the public in general about what we are doing here.”
The goats are housed and milked twice a day on a converted 56-bail rotary platform.
Associate Minister of Agriculture Jo Goodhew says goat milk powder and other nutritional powders are now exported to at least 20 countries. Australia, Korea and Thailand are the top three, but there is much growth in other areas.
While dairy products are NZ’s biggest export, products such as goat milk nutritional powders are a great addition to spread the type of product we are exporting to the rest of the world, she said.
