A meat and livestock show will be held in Cagayan de Oro City on August 22 to 28, 2011. It will be held at the Manresa Farm of Xavier University in Upper Carmen, Cagayan de Oro. MOGSRA or the Misamis Oriental Goat and Sheep Raisers Association will have a large booth on the said event. Live goats and sheeps specially the dorper sheeps will be on display and for sale, goat supplies will also be available by Goat Farm Supply. There will be lots of activities line up like horseback riding, rodeo and different exhibitors coming from the farms of Northern Mindanao area. Mr. Ben Rara and Mr. Neo Abalos will be gracing the event on August 26 and will be conducting some lectures. Hope to see all there!

Most of what I practice now in the breeding of my dairy goats I learned from the breeding of gamefowls. When a rooster and a hen, or in the case of dairy goats, produce outstanding offspring, you have to take note of this genetic jackpot and safeguard both parents.

For as long as they are still productive, you will continue to produce outstanding milkers.

Your only problem is the fact that goats and chicken, like human beings, have a productive phase in their lifetime and will ultimately die. goats could be productive up to the age of 8 to 10 years. This is where the understanding of simple genetics matters most.

I will no longer befuddle you with the gregor mendell theories on genetics. (but if you want to understand the more complicated genetic process, you could go to the internet and search “line breeding goats.” you will get a lot of inputs.) simple na lang gagawin natin.

How do you reproduce your outstanding buck and dam which give you prolific milkers?

We use a form of inbreeding which is called line breeding.

The female offspring of the genetic jackpot is bred back to the sire while the male offspring is bred back to the mother.

The father x daughter and son x mother mating is designed to copy the genetic design of the original parents. but you don’t stop with the first backcross.

In the first mating of father x daughter and son x mother, you will produce offsprings that theoritically will carry 3/4 of the genetics of either parents.

The next step is again to breed the father x granddaughter/daughter (or what we call the double daughter) and the double son x mother/grandmother.

What you will produce here will be offsprings that will separately carry 7/8 of the genetics of each of the parents.

For some, that level is sufficient to produce what could be considered as replicas of the original parents.

but there are purists who would like to go one level higher. they go to a third backcross, mating back the triple daughter to the original sire and the triple son to the original dam to produce animals which would carry 15/16 of the genetic components of the original parents.

with the breeding materials carrying 15/16 of the genetic components of both parents, you can go back to what you did initially to produce the outstanding milkers – crossbreed the 15/16s from sire and dam sides.

“puede pala ‘yan sa kambing?” a flabbergasted retired general cesar cabalquinto, a new goat raising convert, asked me.

in animals yes but among human beings, it is a social taboo. it is called incest.

the only danger in this method of inbreeding is, according to geneticists, it could highlight not only the good traits but also the bad traits.

i tried doing this to my boers and i noticed that somehow some of them came out small.

what you do is when the bad traits are manifested by specific goats, you must cull, as in convert them to kinilaw at adobong kambing.

but this is the best method to perpetuate a line of outstanding milkers.

you could also breed half-brother to half-sister, cousin to cousin, nephew to aunt, uncle to niece, but the full brother-full sister mating is discouraged, except when there is no other way to perpetuate the bloodline.

in my farm now, what i do is i breed back to hidalgo clark, my outstanding spotted buck from oklahoma, his daughters because i have validated that his daughters are prolific producers. one of his daughters, green gardens barchetta recently gave birth to a buckling which is a double-son of hidalgo clark.

before my very eyes, i saw barchetta produce 2.5 liters of milk from just her right udder. the left udder was where her kid was getting the milk.

i am also breeding back alexis, alexa’s first born buck, to alexa because i want to perpetuate her milking prowess.

when i would have many hidalgo clark double daughters or triple daughters, i will breed them to the double or triple sons of alexa to produce a herd of prolific milkers.

i am doing the same thing with brown bomber and the california anglo nubians from kastdemur’s, lakeshore and elkhorn.

the same is also being done with my la manchas.

a few years from now, braveheart farms will have at least three distinct families of outstanding dairy goats. this can only be done if you have a simple understanding of genetics.

so to go back to our first post on the breeding of the dairy goats, always be on the lookout for the best milk producer in your herd.

this is where the tattooing of the ears for anglo nubians and tail webs for la mancha is very critical. in gamefowls, we punch holes in the feet webs or clip the right or left covers of the nose to identify the bloodlines.

you must be able to identify the sire and the dam. kaya hindi puede sa genetic reproduction ang herd mating because you will not be able to identify which buck or rooster produced the outstanding offspring.

now, let me repeat the caveat: i am not a veterinarian or an animal science graduate. i am just another goat and gamefowl breeder who loves to experiment and discover.

do not be afraid to experiment. i assure you, however you do it, when you breed a goat to another goat what will come out will certainly be another goat, not a satyr.

manny piñol

The potential of cross/hybrids for the rural provincial farmers,silent majority has it advantages,initial costs for an unrecognized breed is more inline with what the silent majority can afford as an entry level breed.Over time,the silent majority with gained experiences and a better understanding of breeding strategies can upgrade to one of the purebreeds available in the country.We are only limited by our imaginations and selective breeding to produce both meat and dairy goats capable of performing well in a tropical setting.

Mustang Sally Farm is set up as a small 50 doe head level operation.We conduct continuance R&D experiments for breed improvement.Having such a small head level,forces us to divide our herd into small groups for our research.One downside for us,gains can be small when successful but when no gains are realized,nothing much is lost.This also allows us to conduct multiple experiments and decide where we should be heading or if we should end and begin again.Breeding requires many,many years of selective planning and a good strategy,not always are the results favourable.Should we all work together and share our knowledge,something gained,information not shared,information lost.The goat industry in the Philippines is growing by leaps and bounds every year.Exciting times for those who wish to invest in this industry,we all have a role to play,from the top breeding farms to the silent majority and everyone in between.

On behalf of the management and staff of Mustang Sally Farm,we wish all, great success with your venture.

Hi everybody. If there is anybody Filipino dairy goat raisers should thank for opening our eyes to the potentials of goat dairying, it should be the american southern baptist pastor reverend harold watson and the baptist missionaries of the Mt. Carmel baptist rural life center in barangay kinuskusan, bansalan, davao del sur. It was rev. harold, who was raised in the farms of the deep-south america, who introduced the anglo nubians (including la mancha and boers. i think they also experimented with other dairy breeds.) to goat farmers in the davao and cotabato areas. For sometime, the reputation and influence of Mt. Carmel, as the center was later called conveniently, stretched across the oceans, influencing farmers even in the indo-china countries on the sloping agriculture land technology.

Mt. Carmel had two major anglo nubian milking lines: harold and watson and both were prolific milkers. they became so popular that for goat raisers to be able to buy breeding materials from them, you will have to write your name in a log book and wait for over a year, sometimes two years, before you could get your goats.

But the farmers living around Mt. Carmel and who worked occasionally in the center had access to some of the breeding materials and crossed the anglo nubians to the local goats. this started a thriving “underground” goat breeding industry where “mestizos” with pendulous ears were passed off as “Mt. Carmel” anglo nubians.

As part of our featured farm story in the goat raising industry here in the Philippines may I present to you a 5 part series of the viability of Goat Dairying from an experienced goat raiser from Kidapawan Cotabato, Mindanao. Former Governor Manny Piñol of Braveheart Farms.

Hi everybody. When breeding, one must always set an objective, meaning if you breed a dairy goat your goal must be to come up with a line of goats which would be prolific milkers.

Sometimes though we go astray because we get more focused on the looks of the goats rather than its milking capacity. We love to have Anglo Nubians with really pendulous ears and Roman noses.

Since we don’t really have goat shows in the Philippines, the looks of our Anglo Nubians should be secondary. The focus should be on milk production.

In the United States, one of the most outstanding lines of Anglo Nubians is the Six M Galaxy. The McLure family’s goats have been consistently in the top 10 of the ADGA list of outstanding milk producers.

But if you go to their website, you will not appreciate their goats because they look so unlike our ideal Anglo Nubians. They look short and plumpy but their udders are truly amazing.

So to start our series of lessons on breeding the dairy goats, here is what you should first do: identify the doe or does that give out the highest volume of milk at the longest period.

Never mind the looks. We are not going to field them in a beauty contest anyway.

If you still have the mother and father of these does, make sure they are taken care of and very well protected. They are your goldmine.

In our next post, we will discuss how to perpetuate a good milking line.

Manny Piñol

Photo above from Braveheart Farms

If insomniacs mentally count sheep to be able to fall asleep, a former banker in the name of Nilo Casas literally do that in his farm in Cavite, Luzon as he eyes profit on his endeavor.

For 23 years, Casas, who is also a commercial goat raiser has been convinced that there is money in sheep raising even as it is true that Filipinos generally do not eat lamb. His market, the Arab and Muslim communities as well as returning Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) who come from the Middle East all contribute to the continuous growing demand for mutton (sheep meat) in the Philippines.

“One time,” the 54-year-old Casas recalls, “I was able to earn more than a million pesos for selling 275 heads of sheep alone. There was a politician who bought 200 heads and another rancher who bought the other 75 heads. I told myself, indeed there is money in here.”

How Casas stumbled into raising these woolly mammal species is an interesting story in itself. In 1984, right after he resigned as a liaison officer of a prestigious bank, Casas focused his energy on managing his five goat stores in Metro Manila.

One day, a farmer from Dumaguete offered him to buy a live sheep. “I told him, I don’t have any market for that. But the farmer insisted and I bought the sheep for P405.00. The next day, I was able to sell the sheep for P600.00,” Casas said.

The following day, he recalled, the Dumaguete farmer came again and sold more sheep. “That time, I was able to sell those for P1,000 each. That cycle repeated until I was able to sell 32 heads of sheep.”

After five months, Casas said he bought 22 heads from the same farmer but did not sell the ewes (female sheep). “I brought them to my mother’s farm in San Juan, Batangas where they were taken care of as breeders and in three years time, the number of heads multiplied by eight times. By 1987, I was already raising around 400 heads of sheep.”
Since sheep belong to the genus ovis and are part of the goat antelope sub-family, Casas said that raising sheep and goats does not differ.

In fact, he says, it is even easier to raise sheep because they do not succumb to the dreaded sore eyes and foot and mouth diseases which usually infect goats. Both ruminants, sheep and goats could also be raised together in the same farm and share the same food, which mostly consist of weeds and silage.

“The sheep has a higher survival rate than goats,” Casas explains. “One of the reasons for this is that sheep rarely give birth to twins and as such, don’t really compete in drinking from the milk of their mothers.”

Today, Casas maintains two sheep and goat farms, one of which in an 18-hectare farm here and the other, a smaller five-hectare in Kawit, Cavite where all his ruminants roam freely to pasture in verdant grasslands.

Through the years, he has tried to shepherd different sheep breeds from the fine-textured Suffolk to the hairy St. Croix and the exceptionally vigorous Damara. The prices of these imported breeds range between P25,000 and P35,000 per head. They are raised primarily for their meat, unlike in other countries, where some sheeps are also raised for their good quality wool.

In three to five months after birth, Casas said, the sheep are sold live at prices ranging between P3,000 and P4,000. The ewes sell more for P5,000.

Through time, he said he has also learned the art of value-adding by grilling the lamb and selling the whole “lechon tupa” at P5,500. The price would include his version of the “tupang kilawin” and “papaitan.”

“Imagine. Say you have 50 heads of sheep sold at P4,000 each for a total of P200,000. How much does a Filipino domestic helper in other countries earn? P35,000 a month or less? They might as well come back here and raise sheep.”

But then, the proverbial question that remains: Is there really a growing local market demand for mutton ? Casas says he doesn’t have the accurate figure to answer that question, although based on his experience, the demand is something close to 250 heads a month.
The demand peaks during Christmas and Muslim holidays and when the Arab communities in the Philippines have their own celebrations, Casas said adding that the Spanish-Filipinos or the mestizos also buy a lot of sheep from him.

For Arabs, Casas said they buy only live sheep from him and they want it complete with ears and tail. “They do not want parts of the sheep cut off.” The growing number of overseas-based Filipino engineers who have already acquired the habit of cooking and eating mutton which they have acquired during the years they have stayed in various Arab countries is another market, he said.

To further expand his market, Casas makes his sheep visible in agri-trade shows like Agrilink, which he has already been his loyal patron for the past four years. At the start of the year, he designs his own “Sheep Calendars” and distributes them to the different Middle East and Arab embassies in Makati. He said those calendars contain pictures of his sheep, his name and contact numbers and even maps of how to go to his farms.

He is also an active member of the Federation of Goat and Sheep Raisers of the Philippines through which he regularly exchanges notes and pointers with other sheep raisers on how to improve their enterprises.

For those who are interested to raise sheep, Casas shares this advice: “For a start, one can raise five to 10 heads of sheep. After eight months, the ewes can already be impregnated by the rams. In five months, they would already give birth.”

If the sheep reaches the weight of 18 kilograms, they can already be sold. “In my experience, raising one head of sheep entails the cost of P500 that includes the cost of the animal’s food, depreciation and labor costs.”

Sheep eat any kind of grass although Casas recommends napier, para grass, centrosema, malunggay and ipil-ipil. Sheep can also eat leftovers and food peeling and “if you want good quality meat, you could also feed them with growing mash, the one that you feed the pigs.”

It is also advisable for new raisers to contact others who are already in the enterprise so that they could learn from their own experiences. “We are growing in number. We have sheep farms in Bulacan, Antipolo and some other places.”
If they are worried about their market, Casas said, new sheep raisers can come to him because he also do not merely sell sheep as he also buy and outsource from other raisers in order to meet his volume requirement.

In the future, Nilo Casas said he aims to increase his sheep production from mere hundreds to around 3,500 heads. He said he is looking for possible business partners who with whom he could forge an alliance with. “With the growing number of sheep enthusiasts and the continuous increase of well-traveled Filipinos who have already acquired the passion for lamb meat from abroad, time will come I would no longer be able to count the sheep in his farms.”

By that time, he added he would probably be paying it forward and teaching the new generation of Filipino shepherds how to earn more money by raising these well loved woolly farm animals.

This is our first goat farm feature  in FGASPAPI website the famous Alaminos Goat Farm. Not many agribusiness people realize that dairying with goats has a tremendous potential. But one fellow who does is Rene Almeda of Alaminos Goat Farm in Alaminos, Laguna.

In 2004, Rene decided to go into, goat farming, using a 16 hectare property where he used to fatten cattle imported from Australia. The cattle fattening project was a money-maker for several years but it went sour with the decline of the value of the peso after the Asian financial crisis in 1997. It came to a point where the cost of importing became too high in terms of Philippine pesos that it became a losing proposition to go on with the business. He is thankful though that he quit the fattening project on time. With his savings, he was able to venture into goat farming in 2004 in a relatively big way.

At first he specialized in producing meat-type goats. He bought purebred bucks of Boer (a meat-type breed) and Anglo Nubian (for both meat and milk) to upgrade the 50 native stocks he initially purchased. The upgrading of meat-type goats goes on with Rene’s son Art mainly taking charge of managing the animals that have multiplied to more than 300 head, selling some as breeders and as slaughter animals.

What excites Rene more these days is dairying with goats. In May 2007, he imported from Australia some one hundred purebred Saanen goats, including a few bucks. Saanen is a breed principally for milk production. Within just one year, the number of Saanens has virtually doubled. He is not selling the females because he intends to increase his dairy herd.
“People might say that we are crazy or being boastful if we cite them the figures,” he quips. Here are his figures. With the right animals (Saanen), right nutrition and housing, one mother goat can give an average of two liters of milk a day. (Actually, during our visit to the farm, the 40 goats on the milkline each gave an average of 2.3 liters). The goat can be milked for a period of 10 months or about 300 days after it has given birth. At two liters a day, one will produce 600 Liters of milk in one lactation. Right now, Alaminos Goat Farm sells its fresh milk at P125 per liter. That will mean a gross of P75,000 per head.
Rene explains that they sell their milk at a much higher price than that of cow’s milk because it is something special. It is often mentioned that it is the milk that is closest to a mother’s milk and that it is the only fresh animal milk that is given to infants whose mothers don’t have milk of their own. It is recommended for people who suffer from lactose intolerance.

One might say that during the lactation period of the animal, there is a time when the milk yield is less than two liters a day. That is very possible. But even if the average milk yield during the 10-month lactation period were just one liter, that will still mean a gross value of P37,500 per head. An added income from the milkers is the couple of kids produced each year.

As of now, Alaminos Goat Farm sells its milk mostly as bottled fresh milk in one liter and 250-ml bottles. The 250-ml bottle or one-fourth liter is sold at P40 each. A small portion is also made into white cheese. These products are sold mainly in Metro Manila and some in Laguna and Batangas. Rene’s younger son, Toti, is in charge of marketing the dairy products. More regular buyers from Metro Manila are expected as these products become more known. During the company’s participation in the recent International Food Exhibition at the Mall of Asia, a lot of visitors, many of them Chinese, showed interest in the fresh milk and white cheese, according to Toti. In fact their stocks were sold out at the end of each day.
There are other niche markets for goat milk besides milk drinkers. One is the beauty soap makers. A number of entrepreneurs are now using goat milk as one of the ingredients in specialty soaps. Another use is as material for facial treatments in beauty parlors and in spas. One lady veterinarian who went for a facial with goat milk in a parlor said she was charged P2,500.

Of course, to achieve the potentials of milk production in goats, Rene emphasizes not only superior genetics but also proper nutrition for the animals. Proper housing, too. At the Alaminos Goat Farm, the Saanen breeders as well as the kids are raised in confinement. They are raised in a house with elevated floor. Four animals are usually placed in a compartment measuring about five feet by five feet.

The animals are fed with commercial ration (concentrates) which Rene mixes in his own feedmill. The feed consists of ingredients that provide carbohydrates for energy, protein, phosphorus, calcium, etc. in balanced form. In addition, the goats are given napier grass and leaves of leguminous trees. Rene notes that the leaves of Indigofera, a fast-growing leguminous tree, are particularly relished by the Saanen goats.

Rene stresses that one has to study the feeding habits of his farm animals. In the case of goats, you should not dump all at one time the feeds required by the animal in one day. The concentrate requirement of an animal at the Alaminos Goat Farm is usually given four times. One fourth is given early in the morning, followed by grass couple of hours later. The next one-fourth is given a couple of hours later, followed by leafy greens, and so on. In the hot summer months, feeding is recommended during the cooler parts of the day.

Goat raising has its own advantages compared to raising bigger ruminants such as cattle or buffalo. For one, goats reproduce much faster. Goats can be confined in elevated quarters, making it easier to prevent outbreaks of parasites and diseases. Goats also require less feed than bigger animals. And their milk sells at a better price.

Superior breeds, like selected purebred Saanen, may also cost a small fortune but then the investment could be recovered in due time. What’s important is to be hands-on goat entrepreneurs like Rene and his two sons, Art and Toti.