Thank you Motivation Africa for giving me this opportunity to share my success story on How I make millions from goat farming business. I am very certain that my experience will inspire and assist other aspiring and struggling farmers to Learn from my mistakes, success stories and make good choices based on them. I was inspired when I saw the topic you want me to cover (“How to make money from Goat Farming business”), since I have been in the goat farming business for over 10 years, I will start from the very beginning.
Table of Contents
How to Make Money from Goat Farming Business: My Success Formula
Why Goat Farming?
Goat Farming business is one of the easiest agricultural venture that anyone can start, unlike Fish and poultry, goats don’t ask for much, as long as you provide them with basic structure, good grazing area and water, you are good to go. The number one thing you need to succeed in goat farming business is the passion and a small take up capital.
Mistakes to avoid when going into goat farming
- Don’t invest a lot of money on structures: This is where most farmers get it wrong, success in goat farming business is not about building big shining structures, just have the basic structures for pen, water, grazing areas, etc.
- A sickbay pen is necessary: Try as much as you can to have a pen for isolation of sick goat and any new goat you may want to introduced to your farm. This is very important in disease control.
- Consider better grazing areas: I never really had this challenge when I was starting the business, I had a very big field with plenty of shrub and grass; I only reverted back to supplementary feed during raining seasons
- Start with your local goat breed: Please start with your local goat breed before bringing in other breed, this is because your local goat breed already understand the environment and they are good for learning.
- Avoid Inbreeding: If you visit my farm, you will noticed that I tagged all the goats with numbers, this is helpful apart from encouraging accountability, it’s also a strategy against inbreeding.
- Vaccination is very Important: I don’t know how to say this, you have to keep your goat all the basic vaccinations against disease.
- Start Small but not too small: I always suggest a minimum of at least 30 goats, then grow from there. This is very important because the money and energy you will use to carter for 10 goats is the same for 30 goats.
Managing your goat farm business
- Develop a roaster and guidance for your staff; this roaster will cover grazing time, vaccination date/type, number of goats in the farms, supplementary feed available, and any other information that can help you manage the farm optimally.
- Clean and keep all your pen neat
- Separate goats into different pen based on breed, age/size
- Always monitor your goats for any irregular behavior.
Making Money from your farm
Almost 97% of goat farmers set up their farms to make profit from it. If you want to make money from goat farming business, It’s important to know if you will focus on meat or dairy goats from day. Since this article is focus on how to make money from goat farming business: my success formula, I will limit my focus to goat farming business for meat production which is my area of expertise.
Before going into the business, I did a survey on the demand for goat meat production in and around my community; I realized that most of the goats that were used for meat were imported from other community making them very expensive. So I started making research on how to start a goat farming business in order to start a farm that will supply goats to the different goat meat vendors in my community. I even reached out to them and promised them and the encouragement I got was amazing.
The market was available, the next step was starting a farm that will produce quality and affordable goats that will reduce the burden of importation; so i reached out to my parents and informed them about my plans to go into goats farming they didn’t support me initially but after I showed them my business plan, my father supported me to get an open field and the structures and the farm was ready within 2 months.
My Success Story
- I build a network of goat meat market vendor from day one: This was the starting point of my success story. I was able to establish a connection with about 22 goat meat market vendor in my community who were in constant communication with me requesting to know when my goats will be ready. They were my first set of buyers and currently the goat farm marketing evangelists, some of them have even gone ahead to start their own farm based on free mentorship from my farm.
- I always re-invest at least 60% of the profit to grow the farm: If you want to be a successful sustainable goat farmer, don’t eat all your profit, always set out some percentage to re-invest back into the farm after each sells.
- Record keeping is very essential: I don’t joke with my farm record, this is very important for research, learning and knowledge sharing.
- Knowledge sharing is key: I made a lot of sell this year because of a free training I had with some locals on how to start a goat farming business. Most of them were amazed at the available opportunities and quickly placed buy orders for goats to start their own farm. Please as much as you can share your knowledge with others.
On a final note.
I hope that this article on how to make money from goat farming business will inspire you to go into goat farming business. There is so much opportunity in the business, the price of goat is increasing and the demand for goat meat is very high.