News Milk
Dairy goat farming better margin at high costs
Dairy goat farming has had a better first half year than last year. The milk price has risen and although many other costs have remained high, the price of concentrates has fallen. Last year the feed price was at a record.
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This is reported by accounting and consultancy firm Abab. Figures from Agrimatie support the picture of a difficult 2022. A milk price of €74,00 per 100 kilos, as Abab mentions for 2022, does not seem particularly low. Yet for most goat farmers there was not much left after deducting all costs. Provisional income figures from Wageningen UR indicate that income has almost halved. Concentrate costs in particular rose to great heights last year. Costs peaked in June 2022 before slowly declining. Only last spring did they fall clearly below last year's level again. Grass and litter became more expensive again this year. Energy costs also rose sharply last year.
Dairy goat farms are vulnerable to these types of cost increases because most farms have little land of their own and therefore have to purchase almost all the feed. There are also relatively high costs for labor and energy. Many goat farmers are tackling the cost increases by increasing scale. In recent years, company size and production have grown steadily. Of a total of 665 professional goat farms with an average of 735 dairy goats and 490.000 kilos of milk, 437 were truly specialized last year, according to Wageningen UR. These farms had an average of more than 1.070 goats and a milk production of more than one million kilos of milk.