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| Dairy Goats | |||
| Pat and I have been married for 37 years. Over that time on several occasions we have had the opportunity to raise nubian dairy goats. We adore the animals for their beauty, personality and temperment. We have made cheese, butter, yogurt and ice cream from their milk and love its rich sweet taste. | |
We read a news group called Nubiantalk. A while ago a message appeared from a person in Mexico who wanted to establish a dairy goat herd on his farm. He didn't get many responses | |
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We live on five acres in the Texas Hill Country near the small community of Mico. We have a barn and are rebuilding our fences so we can get some more goats. (This is our daughter Ruth's picture of my well shed.) | Richard Flamer and I started a correspondence and discovered that we had two sides of the same vision. He wanted to create a foundation herd of nubian dairy goats on his Catholic Worker farm and I wanted to find a way to send goats to poor communities in Mexico. | |
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| So a great idea is born. We will collect nubian goats on our place in Texas and once or twice a year Richard will come up from Mexico and take them to Chiapas. Then school there that Richard works with will, using a Grameen Bank model, sell then to the local women who will pay off the loan for the goats with the profits they make from selling their milk to a local cheese making coop run by a different group of indigenous women. The Bishop Ruiz Project was born. |
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One small problem. Using the Grameen Bank model, this would make a relatively self-supporting system with infusions of new genetics from the U.S. regularly. After having thought out the logistics and the finances (a bit) we realized we had forgotten one small thing. Namely, the animal import and export regulations. It was then that we discovered that Mexico has not allowed U.S. dairy goats to be imported for breeding purposes since 2004. |
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| Why Milk Goats? Dairy goats are ideal for ultrasmall farming operations. They are only about 1/5 the size of a typical cow, they have a much less demanding diet and they produce a large volume of high butterfat milk. The cheese made from the milk is in high demand. Also they generally produce two offspring a year so a herd can grow rapidly, they can drop their first kids after only about 18 months and the excess males make an excellent source of meat for the diet of the family. The plan is to help the local women establish their own herds of goats. By constantly bringing in new stock, particularly bucks, the quality of the herd genetics will be maintained. There is an existing women owned dairy coop that produces cow's milk cheese that would provide a market for the milk from the goats and there is local demand for the cheese so the women would be able to dramatically increase family income in a relatively short time. | ||
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So our plans have changed a bit. We have been able to find a source for high quality dairy goats in Northern Mexico. The BRP will raise money to purchase the goats for Casa de Camillo Torres farm. We will also accept donated goat and dairy equipment. Richard will build the herd from Mexican stock and will help the women establish their dairy herds. |  |
| A new opportunity. While Richard was visiting us in June we went to a local goat farm to see their stock and discuss options. We were particularly interested in how to improve the existing local goat stock in Chiapas which is used primarily as a source of meat. The local stock is highly inbred, very small in stature and of low quality. |  |
In prior attempts to upgrade the stock the imported bucks have generally been too large for the local does with disasterous results at kidding time when most of the does died and few kids survived. We had an opportunity to see some high quality nigerian pygmy dairy goats on the farm we visited. Not only are these animals good for both milk and meat, but they are almost exactly the size of the local goats in Chiapas. |
| So we have also decided to expand our original vision to include developing a high quality nigerian pygmy goat foundation herd that can be used as a source of bucks for breeding with the local goat does to improve the overall quality of the goats in the region. It is a big project and we are just getting started on it. You can help. | ||
