Monach Farms Goats

The Monach Herd has been breeding registered Dairy Goats since the early 1970's, although we kept goats for many years before that.

We keep 4 main dairy breeds - British Saanen, British Toggenburg, British Alpine and Anglo Nubian, with some other British breeds kept as well.

The herd belongs to the British Goat Society Monitored Herd Scheme for CAE (Monitored Herd No. 155) and has been part of this scheme for over 14 years. We are also Scrapie Monitored with DEFRA.

Currently with over 150 milking females, as well as males and youngstock, we are the largest showing herd in the country. Many of our animals have our own breeding prefix for 4 or more generations, and are also bred for their longevity with some of our milkers still producing high yield at 10 years old.

The goats are kept as a commercial enterprise on a mixed livestock farm. The milk that we produce supplies cheese makers, whose products fly first class around the world and supply health food shops.

The goats are bred primarily for their milk production with the average herd yield being 1600 litres per annum, per goat. The goats are Milk recorded with The British Goat Society.

YOUNG STOCK NOW AVAILABLE FOR SALE. PLEASE EMAIL EMY2@DIALSTART.NET OR PHONE 01480 830426 FOR DETAILS

Over the last 20 years we have had export links with a number of countries including:-

As well as being supporters of the Farm Africa scheme to provide quality dairy goats for Ethiopian farmers to cross with their own goats and to help them become self supporting farmers.

In 2006 two of our male goats gained their British Goat Society 'Sire of Merit' status. They were the Anglo-Nubian SM Monach Nero and the British Toggenburg SM Monach Nemo whose biographies are shown below.

SM Monach Nero AN30024D

Nero was one of those kids we had always planned to use to put a distinctive stamp on our Anglo-Nubians. He was deliberately line-bred out of a brother-sister mating:

Sadly Ivy died just after Nero was born so never gained any qualifications but she was such a beautiful specimen and milking so well, that we decided to keep him as one of our stud males despite him having no proven milk figures directly behind him.

The grandparents on both sides were $108/100+ Monach Hippocrates and R114 Monach Echeveria *2. Both these animals had been successfully shown and Hippocrates was already producing other excellent kids before Nero was born.

Nero grew on to be a large, docile and very laid-back male, who lived his life with our other AN stud, $132/102+ Monach Nehru. We used the two in order to cross between the two main lines of ANs that we keep. Unfortunately Nero was so laid back that he was slow to perform his manly duties but the offspring he eventually produced were always well worth the time we waited for him to operate! We used Nero for three seasons and gained super offspring particularly from R134 Monach Harebell Q*14 AN27987D, Monach Ixyiolirion *1 and Monach Lloydia *.

At this year’s Suffolk Show his daughter Monach Rudbeckia became Q*15 with 4.95kg milk, 4.89% and 4.20% butterfat and 2.97% & 3.04% protein

SM $$167/166+ MONACH NEMO BT25315D

Nemo’s breeding was an attempt to bring together the high milk and long lactations of our line of British Toggenburgs, by introducing a bloodline from the successful show BTs of Judith and Peter Collins’ Frenchall goats. We bought in $166/200+ Frenchall Pendragon BT24766D and used him on several of our BTs including AR162 Monach Foxglove Q*4 BT 022533D who gave us Nemo. One result was a line of kids that would jump out of almost any pen! However, on the positive side Nemo’s offspring continued our good milk production and threw us some delightful kids.

Used on RM141 Monach Junipertwo *2 BT23937D , Nemo sired RM145 Monach Potentilla whose male kid was this year exported to Switzerland because of the high fats and protein of his dam. Used on RM190 Monach Kumquat *3 BT24114D, he sired one of our favourite goats, Monach Romneyatwo *4 and from R165 Monach Morisia BT24908D he gave us R127 Monach Omphalodes

BT25758D. Out of Monach Notocactus BT25226D he gave us R130 Monach Picea BTBT25924D, whose progeny now live in France. At the time we were first using Nemo we had also acquired R184 Loosetrife Q* HB69314D, a kid from a Monach goat we had sold to a person who then gave up goats. Loosetrife produced triplet females from Nemo: RM143 Monach Orange HB70920D, RM143 Monach Oak HB70918D and RM153 Monach Opuntia HB70919D. Of these Nemo offspring, only Romneyatwo has been out to a show and the others have remained in our milking herd with Ellie and Warren in Essex.

After being with us Nemo moved on to live with the Nutknowle herd owned by Lyn and Jenny Jenner in Sussex

Management Considerations in Kid Rearing

Presented at National Irish Dairy Goat Conference, April 20th 2007, Tullamore

The Monach Herd has been breeding registered Dairy Goats since the early 1970's, although we have kept goats for twenty years before that.

We keep the 4 main dairy breeds - British Saanen, British Toggenburg, British Alpine and Anglo Nubian, with some other Herd Book AOVs as well.

The herd belongs to the British Goat Society Monitored Herd Scheme for CAE (Monitored Herd No. 155) and has been part of this scheme for over 15 years. We have also been Scrapie Monitored with DEFRA since that scheme began...

Currently with over 150 milking females, as well as males and youngstock, we are the largest showing herd in the country. Many of our animals have had our own breeding prefix for 6 or more generations, and are also bred for their longevity with some of our milkers still producing high yield at 10 years old.

The goats are kept as a commercial enterprise on a mixed livestock farm. The milk that we produce supplies our own Farm Shop, our on-farm Ice Cream Dairy and Parlour, a specialist cheese-maker, and local health food shops via our Regional Distributor, Tastes of Anglia...

The goats are bred primarily for their milk production with the average herd yield being 1600 litres per annum, per goat. The goats are Milk Recorded with The British Goat Society via a local Milk Recording Club.

Over the last 20 years we have had export links with a number of countries including:-

China	Denmark
Holland	Spain
Saudi Arabia	Belgium
Kenya	Switzerland
Trinidad	Kuwait
Finland	France
Germany	Ireland
Tanzania

We have also been supporters of the Farm Africa scheme to provide quality dairy goats for Ethiopian and Tanzanian farmers to cross with their own goats and to help them become self-supporting.

Hence, healthy, good quality kids are a vital part of our programme not only for herd replacement but also for export to other countries and for supplying high quality males to commercial herds in UK. We find that it is best to rear kids in small batches of 8 or 16 so that individual animals can be more carefully monitored. In the past we have tried rearing kids on powdered milk-replacer but have found that the time spent in hygiene and the waste of product makes it more worthwhile to use real milk. Health is much improved and growth far better.

If a large number of kids are suspected up to 3 kilos of concentrate hould be fed over three feeds daily. However, good hay and long fibre is STILL more important and should be permanently available.

Goats hate to eat anything that has been soiled by their feet or by droppings or by mice/rats. They will starve rather than eat dirty food. Make sure all water-troughs are clean and sweet.

Worming should be carried out at 6-monthly intervals and vaccination given against tetanus, enterotoxaemia etc. in the three weeks prior to kidding and again at mid-year. Trim feet regularly every 6 weeks. A heavily pregnant doe with untrimmed feet will not bother to get up to eat sufficient food for her kids to develop well.

A mineral lick containing trace elements including copper should always be available.

We find that it is best to leave pregnant does in their loose-housed batches to kid where they are familiar and relaxed. At birth all kids are examined for defects and umbilical cords sprayed with an antiseptic spray or iodine. Infections from bedding via navel are a common source of kids failing to thrive.

It is extremely important that all kids receive colostrum-rich milk in the first few hours of life. Keep some colostrum in the freezer for emergencies, but normally ensure the kid feeds from its mother as soon as possible after birth. We find that giving this first feed via a bottle makes it far easier to get kids to take a bottle later.

We leave kids on the mother for the first 4-6 days, ensuring that they suck regularly. Any that are not accepted by their mother are removed and bottle-reared. Disbudding should take place the day before kids are separated from the doe.

After separation kids are bottled 4 times daily for first week with up to 250ml milk at each feed. In subsequent weeks 1-1.5 litres/day is given over 3 feeds up to 12 weeks. Some kids are weaned at this stage but for our own herd replacements, we reduce the milk quantity and feed frequency over the next 4-6 weeks.

It is helpful to use a larger teat size for kids than the traditional lamb teat and certainly for the first 6-8 weeks it is important to feed milk at blood heat. Young kids do not take cold milk happily.

From 4-5 days crushed cereal may be offered at not more than 15gms per feed twice daily

Fresh, clean water must always be available at all ages. (A milking dairy goat will drink 30-45 litres daily in full production.)

Individual kids are notoriously difficult to observe in large groups for rearing. We have therefore developed a system of smaller pens in which 8 or 16 kids can be reared together. These can easily be hand fed with bottle racks and each kids’ consumption monitored. Because of a kids large throughput of liquid feed, bedding soon becomes soiled and wet. These damp conditions can soon give rise to respiratory problems so it is important to top up bedding frequently and fully muck out on a more regular basis than with the milking sheds.

Once the kids are weaned, hay/long fibre i.e. barley straw/Lucerne is the most important feed and should be permanently available.

Branches of trees & green vegetation when available must be fed dry at all times otherwise stomach will gas up and goat will die.

NO evergreen trees should be fed. Branches from plum and pear not recommended as they cause diarrhoea.

Grain or concentrate food should be given at not more than 1 kilo per day at approx. 16-18% protein.

The goat has a larger rumen (stomach) in proportion to the cow and therefore a greater capacity and need for dry, long fibre diet. The goat is by nature a browser, feeding from 35cm upward, not a grazer like a sheep and therefore all food and troughs are better situated off the ground.

At weaning, kids should be vaccinated against tetanus, enterotoxaemia and other diseases and also wormed. For best foot care, a first trim should be given around 8 weeks and this must become a pattern of management. A smaller number trimmed weekly in rotation is far easier than letting this chore get out of hand. It is far more difficult to correct a damaged hoof than keep it in good order.

Ear-tagging is particularly problematic with young kids and torn and damaged ears can result at any age. So far, we have found button tags to be the best of a bad lot but we do not insert them until they leave the premises or reach regulation tagging age. For new-born kids we identify with neck-bands (like hospital wrist-bands) but before these are chewed unrecognizably, we replace with microchip implants. We have now used these as our on-farm identification for two years with total success. The cost of chips has come down and chip readers are cheap and easy to use.

Flies can bring infection problems in the kid-rearing shed. Commercial fly-papers are helpful but the best management technique is to stop the flies breeding. There are good systemic sprays on the market to use on walls and ceilings and effective granules to put under the bedding after mucking out. Both work out cheaper than treating infections or loosing stock.

If kids become ill or off their food, dehydration is one of the major reasons for further deterioration. It is important therefore to keep available at all times one of the electrolyte based re-hydration formulae that are on the market. Often, this is enough to solve a problem but it is also sensible to keep a broad-spectrum bactericide on hand. A jab in time can save far more than it costs.

Some management considerations may seem too obvious to mention. Yet, on visits to other farms, I am often surprised to see slimy and fecally polluted water troughs, feed containers with sour food left in them and hay racks left with much inedible residue in the bottom. If you put effort into rearing kids any loss has a major cost implication, yet the vast majority of management techniques are inexpensive. I would consider that the most important factor in successful kid management is to observe your stock. They will tell you soon enough if there is anything amiss!!!

Please feel free to contact us for advice at any time. Contact details are on:

Monach Farms

Riding Stables ~ Pedigree Dairy Goats ~ Pigs ~ Sheep ~ Cattle

Dairy Goats

British Saanen Kids

SM Monach Nero AN30024D

SM $$167/166+ MONACH NEMO BT25315D

Management Considerations in Kid Rearing