GOAT dairy farmers gathered near Skipton for the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers (RABDF) goat open day hosted by the Ormerod family. Neil Ryder went along.

CHANGING from milking Holstein cattle to Saaneen and Toggenburg goats paved the way for Phil Ormerod's two sons to join the family business.

The Ormerod's are first generation farmers who started in 1987 at 200 acre Pasture House Farm, West Marton, Skipton.

The switch to goats came in 2006 with 1,000 milkers and has increased to 1,250 plus 500 young stock.

A 35 strong nucleus breeding herd is owned jointly with Jane Miller and produces stock both for home use and export. Jane also makes all the farm's breeding decisions.

The commercial herd currently averages 1,070 litres while the nucleus herd, reflecting its higher genetic status and management input, averages 1,700 litres.

Kidding is split between January to June and September to October and milk is sold to Delamere Dairy.

The flock has been scrapie monitored for more than eight years. Disbudding of horns is carried out by the farm's vet and a foot trimmer visits weekly to check and deal with any problems.

The diet is based on whole crop cereals and grass silage, molasses and a fine meal. Feeding is mostly conventional barriers, but a fully automated robotic monorail system has been installed in a newly erected building.

It also features a split floor area - half on slats and half conventional straw bedding. It gives the goats soft and hard surfaces to walk on and keeps the housing dry. There is also an extremely hard, smooth resin feed table.

The team is made up of Philip, his wife Trisha, twin sons Joseph and James, and Becs plus two part time staff for weekend milking. Additional help comes from contractors.

This includes silage making and storing in a plastic sausage. It provides high quality fodder but means the silage contractor and sausage contractor have to be on the farm at the same time.

Angus Wielkopowski, RABDF council member and founder of St Helen's Farm - one of Britain's largest goat milk producers and processors - said

tightening regulations in Europe, and high start up costs, made it difficult for potential newcomers to the sector - but a solid future for those already involved.

When it was first suggested that the RABDF should be involved dairy goats many thought it a waste of time. In fact it had been a catalyst bringing together top class scientists and others in the industry.

Mr Wielkopolski said: "The goat dairy industry is developing fast which makes it a very exciting time to be a goat farmer. The only thing that is sure for the future of the industry is change. This will include becoming more welfare friendly and wider use of automation in this country."

The one issue was profitability, but there was solid demand for goat dairy products, and increased constraints in Europe plus retirements, meant falling numbers of goat milk producers, giving those remaining a solid future.

Dr Joanne Conington, SURC geneticist, said the use of breeding values was a major part of livestock genetic improvement which could be as much as three to five per cent year on year.

She said: "Studies show that genetic improvement work is very highly cost effective in terms of the money you can get from this. Take a goat giving 1,000 litres of milk over 305 days - though many goats have longer lactations - just a one per cent cumulative annual increase in milk yield over five years in a typical 300 goat dairy herd is worth about £7,000.

"If you are making one to three per cent improvement generation on generation in a 1,000 strong goat herd like this farm, the five year improvement is worth an extra £22,000 to £25,000 purely by selecting the best genetics."

Dr Conington also said the potential of using genomics as breeding aids had been clearly shown in identifying sheep that were susceptible to scrapie. Work was ongoing but, potentially, they had the major advantage of being able to identify genetically superior animals without having to wait for their progeny.

Identification of genetic potential was being aided by the use of SNP 'snip' chip technology in which samples of DNA tissue samples were placed on a silicon glass keyboard to quickly identify key DNA sequences.

She said this was expected to have a key role in identifying diseases such as Johne's Disease which was common in goats.