It was the first Noosa Show experience for Nick Fairbairn and his Noosa Goat Co. and the attraction was busy all day with visitors coming to pet the Nigerian dwarf goats, try out the goat kissing booth and find out more about the new enterprise.
The Black Mountain dairy goat breeders are in the early stages of establishing a raw milk dairy for the local community in line with regenerative farming methods and Safe Food requirements.
“With raw milk, you have to do food safe standards,“ he said. “We have to get audited twice a year, have batch testing before every bottle and once a month we have to send it to a lab to get tested,“ he said.
“Our goal is to build the herd up so we’ve got enough to have milk all year around. It’ll only ever be small scale. There’s huge demand. We’re only ever going to reach this area.“
They currently have a herd of 28 does, five bucks and 17 babies.
In addition to the dairy, Noosa Goat Co uses their goats for animal therapy and they sell goats to families wanting them as pets, for their own dairy herds or to help manage vegetation around their property. Quite a few people buy them as pets if they have small acreage properties, they browse on leaves, sticks, get rid of all the fuel, Nick said.
They also hire out goats for people wanting to a pesticide-free way of reducing their vegetation load.
“Not so much rural properties because it’s a biosecurity issue, but if we’re taking them to suburban 600sqm block in Noosa, if it’s got a fence all around, we just drop them off for a week, they eat everything, then they come back,“ he said.
For more visit Noosa Goat Co on Facebook.
