What to do when your goats get an itch?
Goats, just like us, get an itch once in a while. And when they do, they rub their bodies against some rough surface. Much like us, when we get an itch at a spot that is not easily reachable by our fingers.
We let our goats loose for a few hours everyday. They play about in a fenced up area and when they get an itch, they make a beeline for the fence and rub themselves. Fences are not made to withstand goats rubbing against them strongly every once in a while. The fence sort of bulges out and in time, holes develop at the bottom allowing for small animals to get in and/or goats to get out.
So this is what we came up with. A scratch fence. This stand alone section of fence netting allows them to scratch themselves happily and no more damage to our fences. We did not have to show the goats any “how to’s”. They just found their rhythm and now we consider having solved one problem.
Our scratch fence
My thanks to Zai, Din and Munaqin who came up with this idea. I have not seen this scratch fence at any of the farms I have visited so far. Maybe Ladang Fatima should patent this…..hehe
Hmmmm…this is what I call a good scratch…..
Our stock of pokok turi
I have written about our attempts here and again in Part 2 to seek natural feed for our goats. One alternative we are looking at is to grow pokok turi.
As the Kebun pointed out in his comments, the turi tree does not produce much leaves. One tree would be hardly enough to feed a goat. On the other hand, the tree does grow quite fast, about 8 months or so in our Malaysian weather. The leaves too, grow back reasonably fast. And we do not need much land for the trees.
The weakness is that the protein content of the leaves is far too high to be used as a primary source of feed. Rather it has to be used as a supplement.
We are on the verge of solving our grass and the land needed for the grass issue. In the meantime, we are growing a large number of turi trees to be planted on the land earmarked as exercise area for the goats.
Turi shoots - planted about 2 weeks ago
These were planted about 2 months ago. The shoots were obtained from a farm in Batang Berjuntai.
Naturally, if we plant the trees now, the goats would finish them off in no time. So we are growing the trees in polybags and only when they are stout and can withstand the goats leaning against them, do we intend to plant them.
This is a photo of a tree after all its leaves were taken off. This photo was taken on 3 January 09. See below for how the tree looked like on the 5 December 08.
Starting some Ayam Kampung
Many health conscious Malaysians are shying away from the commercial chickens and seeking to buy “kampong chicken”, instead.
To partly tap this market and partly to stop our families from eating the commercial chickens, we have started a small brood of ayam kampong.
We bought the first batch of 50 tiny chickens on the 3rd December 08 and the second batch of 100 chickens on the 30th December 08 from a trader in Tampin. Our chicken coop can easily accommodate 300 chickens, so another batch of 250 will be brought in this month.
Our chicken shed
The chickens seem happy enough, and hopefully in about 22 weeks (5 and a half months), they’ll be laying eggs and reproducing, Insya’Allah.
The happy chickens
We plan to start the sales sometime in April 09.
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.
Sala’am Maal Hijrah
Today, the 29th December 2008 is the first day of the Muslim Calender for the year 1430.
The 1st of Muharram is known as Awal Muharram and is a Federal public holiday in Malaysia.
Semoga tahun baru ini memberkati kami semua dengan rezeki yang halal, rezeki yang bertambah dan rezeki yang tidak terputus, Insya’Allah.
Amin
Other goat farming blogs
One of the ways we use to keep abreast of the local goat farming industry is to look up and read other blogs.
The only directory I could find was the Direktori Pertanian dan Penternakan that has been put up by Global Excellent Marketing Sdn Bhd. It appears that the link to sign up to get listed is to send the blog administarator an email at direktoripertanian@yahoo.com.my
I must congratulate the blog administrator for this excellent effort, which is indeed a great help to the rest of us in the industry.
We have just registered our blog with the administrator. I have to follow up and check as to when it would be put up.
I have often clicked through the farms listed in this Directory, read the posts and get to know a lot more about the local goat farming industry. The farms are listed in alphabetical order, and so we do not know the location or the size till we click and read about the farm.
It would be great if the Directory also had facilities to be able to sort the farms by State.
Some of the things I have noticed about some of the other blogs are:
- Many are stories on personal experiences narrated in the own words of the farmer and /or blog author. This is great as this is far better than reading something that is theoretical.
- Some of the blogs have advertisements and pop ups that keep intruding upon the readers focus on the articles.
- Some of the blogs have sort of dropped off or the blogging frequency has reduced or stopped.
I am quite intrigued by the 3rd issue, especially on why the blogger has stopped. Is it because he or she is so busy with daily activities that there has been no time to blog? Or is it because he has stopped the farming activity? And if so why?
I am planning to click through these blogs and see if I can get to talk to these farmers and try to get to know them better. Insya’Allah, I’ll blog about these visits.
A great side benefit of attending the Kursus Kambing – Opportunity to Network
Picture of us having a coffee break in Al Barakah farms
I have written about the Kursus Kambing that I attended from the 21 – 25 November 08.
One very useful advantage that we gain from attending such Kursus (besides the main objective of gaining knowledge) is the meeting and getting to know other like minded people.
There were 42 attendees in our class. I met people from Johor, Penang, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan as well as other States in Peninsular Malaysia. (Unfortunately, we had no attendees from Sabah, Sarawak or Labuan).
The session on cutting Rumput Gajah, a staple for goat feed. The gentleman in the bandana is widely experienced En. Anis from Al Barakah while the gentleman behind him, partly hidden and facing is En. Mus, the course leader, also from Al Barakah.
It was an interesting mix of people. Young guys and girls, some still studying in Institutions of Higher Learning. Older ladies and men, some retired and some about to retire. The rest of the class were somewhere in between.
There were four husband and wife teams as well as a brother and sister team. There was also a “business” team from Pagoh, Johor which had already started their farm and were there to increase their knowledge.
Only a few (I think about 4 or 5 of us) had already started our farms, mostly on a small scale.
We were also a very diverse batch from the educational standard point of view. We had post graduates, graduates, those still in IPTA’s and those with secondary school education.
Feeding the cut grass into the shredder.
You can imagine the rich and varied discussions that went on during the coffee / tea breaks, mealtimes as well as during the “hands on” lessons at Al Barakah farms.
I tried to get to know as many people as I could. However as expected, I could not get to know everyone well. I am happy with the friendships I made and will make an effort to continue keeping in touch with them.
Feed for the goats – Part 2
Sometime ago, I wrote about our predicament of not having sufficient land for the growing of Napier Grass or Rumput Gajah for our goats. I then mentioned that we were preparing alternative feeds that would not require much land. Our choices were petai belalang and pokok turi trees.
As part of the Kursus Ternakan Kambing that I recently attended, a doctor from MARDI who had also served with the Jabatan Haiwan, gave a lecture on goat feed. Amongst the important points he made was:
a) The FCR (food conversion ratio) for goats was 30:1. Hence a goat has to eat or be fed 30 kgs of feed for it to have a weight gain of 1 kg,
b) The optimal feed requirement for goats should be:
Protein - Min 12% ( 38%)
Energy for Metabolism - Min 10.6 MJ / kg (7.6 MJ/kg)
Calcium - Min 0.65% (0.69%)
Phosphorus - Min 0.45% (0.5%)
Salt - between 0.50 - 1.0%
Vitamins A & D - Min 2200 dan 300 i.u/kg
Fiber - Min 15.0%
Air - As required
The doctor also gave us a lengthy table of the food contents of several common feed that Malaysian farmers could be expected to use. Unfortunately pokok turi was excluded from this list.
Note :
The bracketed figures are those for pokok turi.
We were most fortunate that one of the Jabatan Haiwan representatives was kind enough to do some research on the food content of pokok turi leaves. He emailed me the analysis earlier this week.
c) In the event of imbalances of feed content, for example, petai belalang has a 40% protein content, we should work out the mathematical combination of the weight of the various types so as to obtain a ratio as close as possible to the ideal content.
It is clear that there would be an imbalance if we just fed the goats with
pokok turi leaves. I have to make an appointment with the doctor from
MARDI and seek his help in working out a combination of the feed with
turi as the backbone.
The owner of another blog, The Kebun’s Weblog, left a very helpful comment on my post on the turi leaves. I do agree with him that the turi leaves are
generally sparse and we need quite a lot of them to feed one goat well.
Still the advantages of the pokok turi are very alluring:
a) it grows quite fast (about 8 months or so to mature),
b) it does not have to be replanted everytime we prune the leaves to be fed to the goats,
c) it occupies little land and can be grown in quite a dense manner.
Though we have about 400 turi trees already planted, they are still young and quite a while away before we can use them for fodder. We are going to plant even more, maybe to bring it to 2,000 trees. After all I can give away the surplus trees, but a position of insufficiency would set us back another 8 months.
Kursus Penternakan Kambing by Al Barakah and AGRO Bank
I am joining the hundreds of other entrepreneurs who have attended the “KURSUS PENTERNAKAN KAMBING” conducted by Al – Barakah Global Food Industry Sdn Bhd in cooperation with AGRO Bank.
This course covers (I am now attending the Foundation Course) 5 full days of theory and practical hands on knowledge by industry practitioners and experts. It will be conducted from 21 November – 25 November 08.
My wife attended this course in June 08 and in July 08 she attended the Advanced Course as well as the Intensive Course on the treatment of common ailments that affect goats.
Al-Barakah’s farm is in Nilai which is not too far from my house in Seremban 2. During the course we’ll be housed at Nilai Hotel as some of the lectures and discussions will stretch late into the night. In addition there will be a number of attendees from other parts of the country hence going back home each day would not be practical.
Many of the active goat breeders have attended this course and consider Al-Barakah their “sifu”. Have a look at what ML Agrofarm and Rantau Agro Farm have written about the course here and here.
I have visited Al-Barakah’s farm a couple of times and have always been impressed with their sincerity and openness in the sharing of knowledge gathered over the years and years of experience.
I must also thank AGRO Bank for their support of entrepreneurs in the Agriculture Industry, in particular the goat breeding.
I am looking forward to this course as well as getting to meet and know other interested entrepreneurs. This will be a great avenue to help build up Ladang Fatima’s network in the business.
Though it is Monday today, and the course started on last Friday, this post was written and posted in advance. Insya’Allah, I’ll update all of you after I complete the course.
We have joined the Persatuan Penternak Kambing / Bebiri Bumiputera Melaka
As part of our networking efforts so as to gain a better understanding of the industry we have joined the Melaka Association of Bumiputera Goat Breeders.
The Association’s objectives are to:
- play a effective role in making the goat breeding industry profitable,
- unite the breeders into a team to create a business network from breeding to marketing stage,
- provide the latest industry news and guidance to members,
- assist in marketing,
- be an importer of goats, feed as well as farm related machinery,
- organise and conduct training courses for the industry participants,
- network with other relevant associations in the country for the benefit of the members
I think this is a great initiative by Tuan Haji Mahmud Hj Baba, the Managing Director of the InterXpose Group. We at Ladang Fatima certainly support this idea of the Association and will render our assistance where we can.
I have yet to meet Tuan Haji or visit the InterXpose Farm. So far only Zai has met with Tuan Haji and I look forward to the day when I can visit the farm and get to know and learn from Tuan Haji personally.