You want to venture into goat farming? Maybe you should do the following first. Part 1
Deep in thought. Is he planning a goat farm?
Source: Google Images
Chapter 1 – Overview
It has been said that if we follow our passions, the money will come. Yes, I think this is true. Still it would be even better to prepare ourselves first.
Before embarking on any venture, we have to have a feasibility study and if it seems okay in our mind, then we should design our own plan on how we are going to embark on the venture.
I am by no means an expert in this matter. So I am merely listing my thoughts on how I would embark on this IF I were to start all over.
My favourite place to start for any feasibility study is the marketing part. So let’s start here. Thus the overall flow would be:-
A. Marketing – to answer the questions of:-
- How many goats can we sell?
- To whom would we be selling?
- What type of goat would we be selling?
- What price band can we expect to achieve?
- What kind of advertising should we do?
- What would be the resources that we would need to meet these sales targets in terms of transportation, licensing etc.?
- Can we sell any by products from the farm, say chickens, goat waste etc.?
- The strategies and tactics we should adopt to make the planned sales.
From our thoughts and research into the above, we should be able to come out with a marketing plan.
B. Production – to answer the questions of:-
- How do we get the goats that we expect to sell?
- Do we breed them or buy them (as a trader)?
- How do we deliver them?
- How long would we need to keep them at our farm before the sale?
- How do we care for the goats in terms of health, feeding etc.?
This should give us our production plan.
C. Resources – to answer the questions of:-
- How many and what size of kandang would we need to achieve the desired production?
- How many workers, including supervisory staff, would we need for this size of the farm?
- How much land for grass would we need or would we be obtaining other food sources and from where?
- What kind of machinery do we need for the expected farm size?
- What kind of auxiliary buildings would we need?
D. And lastly Capital – to answer the final question of:-
- How much capital and borrowings would we need to be able to fund the operations until the operations start paying for themselves and make a decent profit?
Overview
The final results of all our thinking and research would have ended with projections for marketing, production, cash flows and profit and loss statements.
This feasibility plan has by its nature to be reiterative. That is to say after we see the end result of the first round, we may have to go back to Step 1 and see where we can and should adjust.
For example, our first study may end up showing that we would be able to make, say RM35,000 a year after investing RM250,000. Is this return sufficient? Does this have a reasonable ROI, or IRR?
If not, then can we increase our sales, or can we change our sales channels, or should be go for higher value goats? And what would be the resultant impact on production, resources and capital?
Ultimately capital and resources are limited. We do not have unlimited capital or land or workers. So the final skill would be in tweaking all these factors and putting them together in the most efficient way, for us at least.
Let us continue this discussion in progressive detail and see where it takes us.
I wanted to start goat farming.Please advise on the next course.
Hi, Siva.
Good for you that you have a clear idea what you want to do. If you have not reared goats before, I would suggest that you start off by visiting at least 10 - 15 goat farms with a list of questions.
It’s better you make your own list. So long as it is around:
a) How to make money from goat farming?
b) what are the most common problems?
c) how to overcome them?
you should have a good base to build upon.
I strongly urge you to do this rather than to attend any course anywhere on goat rearing.
You can find a list of farms at the directory at:
http://pertanianmalaysia.blogspot.com/
And you are most welcome to include Ladang Fatima in your list.
Regards