After being dropped by the major milk processor they were supplying, Shannan and Marcus Jessen were facing an uncertain future.
The dairy goat farmers were in the process of taking over the family farm from Marcus’s parents Dan and Peggy Jessen.
They milk about 2,000 goats, producing 1,000 litres of raw milk a day at their farm in Clifton, southern Queensland. But in February this year, they got the news their processor was stopping its goat milk line.
Despite the setback, the couple remain positive for the future of their own farm and the wider dairy goat industry.
They now supply a cheese and yoghurt manufacturer and have created their own line of freeze-dried raw milk powder.
“We had to really kick it into gear, find some fresh bulk markets, which we did straight away,” Shannan Jessen said.
The Jessen family has created a line of freeze-dried raw milk powder after losing the major milk processor they supplied. (ABC Rural: Brandon Long)
Niche but longstanding
Dairy goats have been a part of Australia’s history since goats were brought on the First Fleet as a source of meat and milk.
An industry eventually formed, and it now supplies milk, cheese, and even infant formula to domestic and overseas markets.
But despite its long history, the industry never organised and it has been facing an uphill battle for recognition.
In Australia, dairy industry organisations represent the dairy cow industry.
“There’s nothing really for dairy goats and there are quite a lot of dairy goats in Australia,” Ms Jessen said.
Shannan Jessen is also the federal export officer of the Dairy Goat Society of Australia, a breed society.
It maintains the stud registration system, keeping records of its members, but it is not mandatory to be a member if you breed dairy goats and it does not represent or lobby for the industry.
At Cranley Park, around 1,000 litres of goat milk is produced daily. (ABC Rural: Brandon Long)
Research and development
It is not known exactly how many dairy goats there are in Australia, data is limited, and the federal agriculture department does not keep specific data on dairy goats.
The data kept on goats is for the goat meat sector as it has been the beneficiary of research and development from Meat and Livestock Australia.
A report was commissioned in 2016 by Agrifutures, an agricultural research and development corporation to get a sense of the size of the dairy goat industry.
The report only examined the 68 dairy goat farms specifically licensed to make food products and not all farms took part in the survey.
According to the report, the national commercial milking herd is estimated to be more than 46,000 goats producing more than 16.8 million litres of milk annually.
In comparison, Dairy Australia reports the dairy cow industry has about 5,800 farms registered with more than 1.5 million dairy cows.
Shannan Jessen and her husband, Marcus, are taking over the family farm. (ABC Rural: Brandon Long)
The Agrifutures report described the industry as “fragmented” and said it would need to determine what the return on that investment of more research would be before progressing further.
It is not known whether further economic analysis was done.
Shannan Jessen said, in Australia, there were only around six to eight farms with large milking herds, which made it hard to organise as an industry.
“When you’ve got only say four companies probably owning those farms, it’s very difficult to create a governing body,” she said.
Genetic recognition
Even without formal organisation, Ms Jessen said Australian dairy goat genetics were sought after worldwide, with Indonesia one of the biggest markets.
Kylie Hopkins and her partner Leo started with dairy goats about 15 years ago at their home on the outskirts of Rockhampton in central Queensland.
Like many breeders, they did not aspire to be commercial dairy farmers. Instead, their focus was to just breed a high-quality herd of Anglo Nubians.
“We decided that we weren’t going to breed goats that weren’t productive,” Ms Hopkins said.
Since day one, the couple has tested their milk and recorded the details of the quality of milk and the quantity each doe produced.
“That is how we got to having probably the quality of animals we have now,” she said.
Kylie Hopkins runs a small herd at her property in central Queensland. (ABC Rural: Megan Hughes)
The couple only has a small operation — milking up to 20 goats in a year — but even a small herd can produce a lot of milk.
Ms Hopkins did not want to produce food products and instead used the milk to feed to pigs for milk-fed pork as well as making soap.
She used social media to teach others about dairy goat husbandry.
“If we can help other people, I think we’re fulfilling some type of civic duty,” she said.
Despite the processor setback and the lack of formal organisation within the industry, Ms Jessen was confident in the future of the sector.
“There are a lot of farmers out there wanting to do products themselves, which I think is absolutely amazing,” she said.
“I think it does have a big future.”
