Riding the highs and lows of goat farming at Darkan

Like many others, the third-generation Merino sheep farmer from Darkan had seen the wool industry hit rock bottom and began questioning his future in agriculture.

"I have seen the bottom and that was pretty much it," Mr Bunce said.

"When the wool market crashed we ran everything through the drafting race.

"If it wasn't up to scratch, it was shot and buried onfarm.

"We did sell some - when there was the potential to - but that was at $1 per head."

Today, Mr Bunce is making money from goats and runs just over 1000 head of mixed origin goats, including 800 to 900 breeders and 150 replacements.

He moved out of sheep farming in 2005 and ran an entirely closed herd of goats.

The Bunces' journey into goat farming started in 1995 with one buck from New Zealand.

At the time Mr Bunce was running a heavily destocked flock of 5500-head of Merino sheep (down from 7500-head) across two properties and working an off-farm job to "stay alive".

Meanwhile, other farmers in traditional sheep country had switched to broadacre cropping.

But Mr Bunce identified unpredictability in cropping and fertiliser prices, while inputs were constantly increasing.

And he wasn't prepared to wait 30 years - as the old-timers were saying - for the wool market to return.

So he did what many pastoralists did and ventured into goat farming.

"A Wesfarmers agent brought a shipment of boer goat bucks in from New Zealand at the time when wool was only just breaking even again," Mr Bunce said.

"It was at the point where one kilogram of wool was starting to cost a little more than it did to produce.

"There were so many misconceptions about goats and, of course, I had all of those misconceptions because I knew nothing about them.

"I brought the one buck, got home and thought, that's stupid, why did I buy one for?'

"So I rang the agent and said you got any left?

"He said 'yeah there's a few here' so I got him to pick me one out and we ended up taking two."

And he has not looked back since.

Coming from a Merino sheep farming background, Mr Bunce did not want a breed of goat that required labour in shearing.

He decided to run cashmeres because they naturally shed their coats.

Mr Bunce started selling his 12-week-old kids into Wesfarmers' capretto market at $23 per head.

That was how long it took goats to reach the market weight of 12 to 16 kilogram liveweight.

However, when the boer genetics were put over the does, the time it took for the kids to reach that weight shortened to as early as seven weeks.

"We used to sell them at 6kg dressed weight (dwt)," Mr Bunce said.

"Now we sell them at 10kg (dwt) and that is done in eight weeks.

"They could grow at 300 grams per day if you get things right.

"It comes down to the genetics of the boer, how much milk mum can poke into them, as well as the quality of the milk."

Mr Bunce's kidding percentages have reached as high as 185 per cent, but as his numbers increased so too did the loss of kids in their first week of life.

He said he was not sure whether that was due to boer genetics or other reasons.

"We are at 110pc to 130pc kidding rate now, it has backed off a lot to what it was,'' he said.

"In 2006, which was the worst year we have ever had in terms of drought, we were at a 65pc weaning rate."

In that year, Mr Bunce's herd kidded in mid-June with no decent rainfall until July 21.

Paddocks were bare and he couldn't buy in hay for feed because there was no supply.

While sheep could feed on straight oats, goats were not able to because they were at high risk of acidosis.

"Goats are very hard to feed on grain, so lupins are the best option," Mr Bunce said.

"They are a very hardy animal, but they have very fickle digestion.

"They are made to graze high mineralised plants and shrubs, as opposed to mushy, green pasture.

"The mushy, green pastures are very high in protein and at the start very high in potash, but they are deficient in every other mineral.

"So in no time the animal would die from malnutrition, while they are standing on green grass."

For Mr Bunce, it took some time before he realised what exactly was going on in his herd.

Particularly as he had been told by professionals his goats were dying as a result of an over eating disorder, pulpy kidney.

"When I was told it was pulpy kidney, I thought 'OK so I have to slow them down','' he said.

"But the more I would slow them down, the more they would die.

"And the more I would let them go into the feed, they better they would get."

It was not until a few years and a New South Wales Department of Primary Industries' newsletter later that the penny dropped.

Mr Bunce was reading an article in the newsletter, which stated that sugar sat in the top half of a plant and nitrate in the bottom.

"It was a seriously big lightbulb moment for me," he said.

"When I rushed to push the goats into feed, they only ate the top half.

"Whereas when I slowed them down, they were eating down to the bottom half.

"It was then I realised the pulpy kidney wasn't killing them, the nitrate poisoning was."

Using holistic farm management tools and information from the newsletter, Mr Bunce was able to make the appropriate changes to his grazing plan.

Mr Bunce and his wife Jackie had used holistic management as a decision-making process in all aspects of life, after completing a course run by the late Bruce Ward.

The tool aims to empower graziers with a decision framework and adaptive management paradigm to help with adaption to climatic variability.

"Grazing management is about time, not numbers of animals or hectares of land," Mr Bunce said.

"To run livestock you need to be a pasture farmer first and use the animals to assist you in growing pasture."

The situation improved over winter, a time there would normally see a higher percentage of orphaned lambs across the farm.

But when summer came goats started dying again, as they were digging up and eating Guildford plant bulbs in the soil.

"That's like an unrestrictive grain ration," Mr Bunce said.

"So the goats were eating the plant bulbs and killing themselves with acidosis.

"It was just one of those problems I couldn't figure out.

"We would get through two thirds of a way through summer and they would be going fantastically, then it would just be like they fell off a cliff.

"That was the second time I was ready to quit goat farming."

Mr Bunce persevered through and began feeding his goats on pellets for 90 days.

Still not seeing any changes, he decided to reach out to Hitech Ag Solutions in Bunbury, that specialise in liquid fertiliser and soil conditioners.

They recommended he use a fermented seaweed product.

"The beauty of the seaweed was it goes straight into the animal's stomach and they can digest it immediately," Mr Bunce said.

"So with little energy from the animal, they take it in, absorb all the benefits, push it out and recover.

"Whereas if they were given medication (to recover), the body has to metabolise that medication, so that it depletes minerals and energy from the body.

"The medication also needs to work and digestion has to do something in the meantime."

Mr Bunce added that the Guildford grass bulbs had messed up the goat's digestion, meaning it was not doing anything for two to three days.

As a result, the clostridium bacteria was proliferating, the animals were dying and the veterinarian was putting it down to "pulpy kidney".

"Pulpy kidney is an end effect - it is a symptom of what's happened beforehand and finally it kills the goat,'' he said.

"If you change one of the preceding stages, the end point changes.

"But HiTech Ag Solutions showed me how to change some of those stages along the way - one was fermented seaweed - and ultimately change the end point."

Fermented seaweed resolved the problem, until the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) told the company they could no longer sell it because they hadn't spent the money to have it registered.

From there Mr Bunce introduced gypsum, dolomite and magnesium into his program in the goat's drinking water toward the end of summer.

"I would mix up this brew and put it into the water, so they would just drink it," he said.

"It was the easiest way to drench them (given how difficult goats can be to handle)."

The minerals were mixed into the drinking water, a tank was put onto a truck and the trough was dropped into the section where the goats were grazing.

That was their only supply of drinking water.

"They would be dosed and go back to straight water for a few days, then you'd make the next brew and control the situation like that," Mr Bunce said.

"From that point I thought, 'well OK that works fine in summer time, but what about winter time?'

"I learned about fulvates, which is an activator, put a litre to a thousand in, mix all the trace elements and spray it on the paddock infront of the goats a day or two before they graze it.

"The plant pulls the fulvate in because it wants it and brings all the minerals with it."

Mr Bunce said that aided the process in which the plant turns the nitrate in the bottom half into carbohydrate and amino acids, which is what the goats want.

"Then you graze it and don't have the nitrate problem because you have a more nutritious pasture on top," he said.

Mr Bunce also decided to spray pastures with a concentrate selenium mixed with trace elements, after he found it was difficult to give selenium pellets to goats.

"They don't have a straight tongue, they have a lump at the back, so they can block off their throat," he said.

"They would just spit the pellets out.

"So I decided I would get the concentrate selenium, mix that with trace elements and spray it on the pasture.

"This can be done with iodine as well - put that in when you need it - spray it on the pasture and they take it in.

"They don't even know they're self-medicating - they are all happy and we are all happy."

Not long after, Mr Bunce was "shot in the foot" when the AVPMA announced farmers couldn't use selenium concentrate because it was too dangerous.

The restriction on the concentrate has forced Mr Bunce to buy a selenium chip, which is six times more expensive.

The chip is put on the hay crop, which hopefully puts selenium into the hay to be used for feed.

Mr Bunce was pushed back into growing hay for feed, following the challenging dry years.

Rainfall at the farm went from 475 millimetres a year average to 360mm (a 25pc to 30pc decrease since 2000).

Some years Mr Bunce has recorded as low as 196mm for the growing season.

He said as a grass grower, rainfall in the growing season was the most important factor.

"That's another lesson I learned from holistic farm management,'' he said.

"I don't farm goats, I farm grass and I use the goats to turn the grass into money - that's another one of the paradigms.

"You're a pasture farmer first, you have to grow pasture to feed the animal to produce the product to sell.

"For too long we focus too much on the animal and not on the pasture."

For Mr Bunce many small pennies have dropped slowly over the years farming.

And there have been times one has dropped and he was left thinking, "why did that take 15 years to figure out?".

The drier seasons have cut Mr Bunce's goat herd number back slightly, as well as a change in the average weight of a doe from 45kg to 65kg.

The additional 20kg per animal means they require more feed and therefore Mr Bunce cannot run as many animals.

"The kids go as soon as we can get them to specification," he said.

"At the very start of the season they could be really good at 19.5kg live weight and dress out at just a bit over 10kg.

"But as the season goes on, they start to eat a bit more grass and there's a bit of gut fill as well - not just milk.

"Then you have to start raising the bar up to 20kg, 20-and-a-half and then 21kg liveweight to get your 10kg (dwt).

"It is a trade off."

Mr Bunce said goat consumers looked for a smaller, traditional capretto, as it was something they could bake whole like a chicken or turkey.

As boer goats grow fast, they can be twice the weight at the same age (eight to 10 weeks) because of their genetics.

Colour in capretto is also extremely important for the consumer and Mr Bunce said the paler the meat, the better.

"It is like it almost glows white," he said.

"Capretto is better if it was lighter, but in older goat meat colour doesn't matter as much.

"There's good money in older goats now, there never used to be - the older goats were worth nothing.

"Prices have gone from $23 a head when we first started to about $150 each now."

Traditionally, older goat meat is used in curries because it stays together when slow cooked.

Mr Bunce said capretto prices had steadily increased over the years, having not gone way up and crashed back down again - making it a lot easier to figure out where he was going to go with his operation.

He delivers his goats to Dardanup Butchering Company in Bunbury and sells to butchers in Perth where he is paid a net price per kilogram.

The butchers pay the kill cost, transport to Perth and any other costs involved.

"The only thing I take out of that $11/kg is my transport cost to Bunbury," Mr Bunce said.

"At the moment I am getting somewhere in the high 45pc to 50pc of end product price.

"It was retailing from $23 to $25/kg and I was getting $11/kg.

"I think I was doing pretty well out of what the end pricing was, whereas when I was producing wool I was only getting 4pc to 6pc."

Mr Bunce said the demand for goat meat had gone up and down with supply.

In the early 2000s he and other goat farmers in WA, formed a steering committee called Goat West.

In the first two years, the group co-ordinated supply into the Perth market and were told "150 a week maximum" was all they would get into market.

"Well we were putting in up to 300 a week," Mr Bunce said.

"And there was an agent at the time, who was organising 80 to 100 a week into Perth as well."

But as the prices of goats increased, it knocked the outer suburb consumers out and only the more affluent suburbs could afford the meat.

The number of supply has also dropped.

Mr Bunce mates his goats in January and the kids drop in mid-June and by that time have enough green feed to last the month and a time the mums really need it.

"Kids hit the ground and they really power on," Mr Bunce said.

"The early kids are the ones that just go at it and it is all to do with feed quality and milk production.

"Then as you go through the season the feed quality starts to drop away, so the milk production eases a bit and the kids start to eat more grass."

Mr Bunce aims to have all of his capretto sold before the end of the green season.

That way, when he heads into spring the last of them are sold off and the herd is back down to mothers and replacement animals with no dries carried over in summer.

"So you just have your breeding bucks, does and replacement," he said.

"There aren't any animals that you have to wait another year for to get your money.

"Your money is in and your minimum amount of mouths are there for summer, keeping your feed costs to a minimum."

While goat farming has come with its challenges, Mr Bunce said, like any other situation in farming or life, it was important not to take the tougher times to heart.

He said instead he has looked at it as "the best he could do at the time".

"I think people carry too much stuff with them instead of saying, nope that was the best I could do,'' he said.

"Unless they feel guilty because it wasn't the best they could do.

"Farming makes a mockery out of you because you could bust your guts for a year and achieve little return.

"Then in another year, you could think 'stuff it, I am going to take a year off, I don't care, we will just do what we want and if we don't get it right then it doesn't matter.

"Then it just turns to gold.

"It's part of farming - it is a hard gig and it has never been easy, but there are good times and bad."