Lucknow Farms

Q-Fever in Netherlands Leading to Culling of Goat Herds

Q-fever is a bacterial disease that is carried by goats, in which it congregates in the wombs of pregnant goats, and appears also in humans, in whom it causes pneumonia. In recent years, Netherlands has seen both a rise in goat farming and in Q-fever in humans. Although a definite linkage between the two phenomena has not been proved, the Netherlands government has undertaken a policy of killing pregnant goats to halt the spread of Q-fever in humans.

(Martin Enserink, "Questions Abound in Q-Fever Explosion in the Netherlands," Science, 327, 15 January 2010, 266.)

Goat Meat Becomes More Popular With Non-Ethnic Diners In NYC

Henry Alford, "How I Learned To Love Goat", The New York Times, March 31, 2009.

Making Artisan Goat Cheese

This 5-minute video, posted on YouTube, is by "Cheese by Hand", a writer-photographer team who have a blog, www.cheesebyhand.com. The video is charming and affecting. The setting, judging from the narration, is outside Portland, Oregon. The link opens a YouTube page. Click the size-button to reduce the size of the video screen for a better picture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDbCwHHYNc8

Goat Meat Prices

The Stockman Grass Farmer (v. 7, no. 2, February 2007, p. 29) reports a University of Missouri study that the price for goat meat is now "slightly above that for beef in the Midwest." Demand from swelling immigrant populations has increased prices. Most of the goat meat in the Midwest is sold in ethnic food stores. The national goat herd is estimated by the USDA at 2.83 million goats of all kinds.

Engineering Goat Milk

The Los Angeles Times (August 4, Friday, A25) carries an interesting article about UC Davis research involving "engineering" (not explained) goat's milk. Apparently, the dairy goat is "engineered" to produce milk containing lysozyme, "an important antibacterial enzyme in human breast milk that is substantially lacking in the milk of dairy animals." The researchers fed the milk to pigs, which have an intestinal tract more similar to human intestinal tracts than goats (which have multiple stomachs). The amount of coliform bacteria in the pigs decreased. Since overabundance of coliform bacteria produces diarrhea, the altered goat milk, it it hypothesized by the researchers, might be a useful milk for human infants where, as in third-world countries, diarrheal diseases are an important cause of infant mortality.

Related note--after aging for two months, natural not-pasteurized goat cheese "develops antibiotic properties that kill almost all disease germs that might have been in the milk." (Jerry Belanger, Storey's Guide to Raising Dairy Goats [Storey Publishing, 2001], p. 218.) Presumably this antibiotic is another enzyme. I don't know whether aged goat cheese, as consumed, has the effect of reducing coliform bacteria.

UPDATE. According to research in Britain on Gouda Cheese made from goat milk, it the "lactoperoxidase system" in goat milk that kills coliform bacteria and staphylococci in the goat milk. The research did not address the question whether the cheese would reduce the coliform bacteria present in the gut of the consumer of the goat cheese.

Farmgate Goat Milk Prices

What does the farmer receive for raw, fluid goat milk? I could not find USDA statistics. Apparently, because the market is so small and localized, there is no national marketing channel for goat milk products. The largest goat milk producer and distributor is Meyenberg, based in California, distributes over most of the nation. They do not reveal their internal costs. There does not appear to be a producer cooperative of goat milk products (as there are many for cow milk products).  I have Google searched for instances of price quotation and find few, which are provided.

$20/cwt/summer and $40/cwt/winter, fluid raw goat milk (Iowa, 2003).

$23/cwt to $37.50/cwt, fluid raw goat milk (hypothetical low and top prices in a cost analysis, early 1990s?).

Retail prices for goat milk, sold by the farmer at the gate and sometimes delivered to the consumer, range from $2.00/quart to $5/quart.

It is similarly difficult to obtain farmgate prices for goat cheeses. Goat cheeses are carried by a few specialty stores (Whole Foods Market at Union Square in New York City has a selection of domestic and imported goat cheeses--clearly they are the retail exception). I have not seen Meyenberg goat cheese in my local California market where I buy my goat milk. Trader Joe's, a Southern California discount gourmet food chain, carries imported French goat cheeses. Independent farm produced goat cheese is, apparently, produced for subscription and distributed locally to restaurants and specialty food stores.

Milk Goat Herd

The number of dairy goats in the US herd has increased, along the increase in consumption of goat milk and meat products. In 1997, there were 15,451 farms with milk goats in the US with a total herd of 190,588 milk goats, according to the US Agricultural Census of that year; in 2002, there were 22,389 farms with milk goats with a total herd of 290,789 milk goats. The average number of goats per farm increased marginally from 12 goats per farm in 1997 to 13 goats per farm in 2002.

California has the largest portion of the national dairy goat herd, followed by Texas (Texas also has nearly half of the nation's meat goat herd).

Dairy goat farming has become more popular in West Virginia, increasing from 122 goat farms in 1997, to 321 goat farms in 2002. The Census does not distinguish between farms specializing in or producing solely dairy goats and farms with dairy goats in the mix of farm animals (cattle, sheep, pigs, etc.).

Goat Meat Production

Consumption of goat meat has increased in the US, after a long period of decline. In 1984, there were 107,299 goats slaughtered at USDA inspected slaughter houses; in 2005, there were 535,892 goats so slaughtered. The USDA attributes the increased consumption to immigration of ethnic populations from India, Asia, and South America where goats are part of the native diet, and to the rise of ethnic restaurants.