Grade A Goat Creamery renounces license

[tmfinley]

http://boonesfarmoregon.org/  I stumbled across this website today and find it very interesting.  Thought I'd share.

[Nana]

It sounds cool but the prices are extreme I think.

[tmfinley]

I thought the prices were a bit hefty as well.

[Vicki McGaugh Tx Nubians]

The goats are in excellent shape.  At least it looks like those profits are going back into feed, if not asthetics.   Did anyone else think the goats didn't look like they were used to being hand milked   V

[tmfinley]

I saw those little kicks and stamps too and wondered about it.  They specifically say they hand-milk 20 does.  Maybe they were in a different place than they were used to for the filming?  I don't know.

[buckrun]

Siskiyous are such a beautiful range.
What a wonderful place to dairy.

[nightskyfarm]

I do not think think the prices are too much out of line for that part of the world. Herd share costs here are approx. $40 for the share and $32 -$40 a month for a gallon of raw goat milk. Cow milk herd shares tend to be a bit less at $24 -$30 month with up to a $60 share cost. I think they are on top of it. Our costs are our costs and they have to be met somehow either through the sale of milk or a value added product like cheese. Good for them to be so brave as to throw the dairy permits to the wind.

[Laverne]

I re read it and it looks like each ownership share is 20.00 and re sellable at any time so that's not lost money. The 20.00 per Monthly boarding unit is for a half gallon of milk once a week,for the month, so that's 10.00 a gallon. Around here pasturized goat milk is around 13.00 plus,per gallon, in the stores. Artisan goat cheese is around 20.00 a pound at health food stores around here. I think the milk is a good price.

[Nana]

The prices here are much lower.  Maybe that is why there aren't as many goat farms.

[lazydaisy67]

$13 for a gallon of milk??  I'm lucky if I can get $4 around here!  My sister-in-law buys raw cow's milk from a dairy for $3 a gallon.  Seems pretty steep to me to pay $10 a month for 2 gallons of milk, course my family goes through about 4 gallons a week. 

[Ashley]

Here the going rate is about $5 a gallon. I would LOVE to get $10 a gallon for milk!!

[Laverne]

If I could get goats milk for 4-5 dollars a gallon I'd get rid of the goats.

[Ashley]

Well, the stuff I got before I got goats didn't taste so hot. And the other person I checked with before that had CAE and CL positive goats. And yes, she was selling it raw.

[Vicki McGaugh Tx Nubians]

Yep I pay $5 for soap milk!  Vicki

[nightskyfarm]

Different parts of the world bring different prices on everything from feed to utilities to labor which all translates to milk prices in addition to what your market will bear. There are so many variables. Someone who is paying or receiving $3 for a gallon of milk is not being paid for their total cost somehow. Even with producing all of the animal's feed, I am very sure the actual cost for that gallon of milk is more than $3. But, if the market will only bear $3 a gallon, one either loses money or sells their milk through other avenues, a different location, store  to get a fairer price. It's all relative. In Oregon, those are good prices from both vantages; farmer and customer. In Iowa, those prices seem quite high; feed costs etc. in Iowa are probably much lower.

[Aja-Sammati]

Part of price is about marketing your product, too. If you go to the local store here and they even sell goat milk, it is pasteurized stuff from Meyenburg. It will cost you $4 per QT...which is $12 per gallon. When you are selling raw, you are selling a value added product... plus it actually doesn't taste like cooked cardboard... so $10 a gallon is actually a good price, as long as you have consumers that understand the value of what they are buying.

Ever ask why is it that the same people that will spend the $4 per qt will expect to pay only $5 a gallon when they buy it from the farmer that actually produces the product? Why do they think a person with 10 goats has a lower per unit cost than the dairy with 1,000 goats??

[lazydaisy67]

I guess you figure $3 per gallon from a Holstein cow that produces, what, 8-10 gallons a day equals about $24-30 per day per cow.  The guy has 12 cows, so that's 8,600-10,800 per month from milk sales.  I don't know how much cow's eat but I can't imagine they eat $10,000 worth of food in a month!

[Tallabred]

$60 to start + $60 per month x 12 = $780 / 52 weeks = $15/week.  That is below grocery store prices here for 4 qts of milk($3.67/qt) + 4 oz chevre(~$4).

[tmfinley]

For some reason when i was doing my math I was thinking it was $60 per week.  DUH.  So, yeah, the money is not so bad.

[nightskyfarm]

I will tell you that cows eat a lot. My Jersey now, pregnant, due 1 Feb, still producing 3.5 gallons a day eats 18 lbs of grain each day, hay, dry pasture (need rain). It's a great deal of food and multiply that by 3 for 3 cows. How do you figure $3 a gallon for Holstein milk? If you milked one Holstein it would cost you way more than $3 to produce that milk. If my Jersey is fed 18lbs for 3.5 gallons multiply by 3 for the Holstein (much bigger cow making 3x as much milk) that's 54 lbs of grain each day plus hay, pasture and or silage if you feed silage. Grain at $10 per 50 lbs. That cow will cost you per day $10 grain $5.00 for a bale of hay (they can eat a whole bale per day), the time spent to milk, time handling the milk, energy to store that milk, time cleaning up after the cow (cows make a mess), the list gets very long. In the end, you can have $22 a day or more into the cow for 8 - 10 gallons. You're not making any money. A cow making 8 -10 gallons of milk a day will take an hour to milk out by hand and if you start getting milking equipment and your costs have really jumped up. The dairyman makes enough to survive and only that. He has a good life, a job that has no vacations, is 24/7/365 tending to the animals and is under-appreciated by most of society, but they all want their milk and dairy products. The public doesn't want to pay for all that hard work; they want milk at $2.50 a gallon, cheese at $4.00 a pound. This is why the niche markets of artisanal cheese and raw milk have sprung up all over. It's in these markets where a sustainable living can be made and I do mean sustainable, not necessarily profitable. We do this out of love for the animals, the way of life and truly wanting to enrich the community in which we live. Yes, $3 a gallon is not enough for delicious raw cow's milk, if worth far more than that.