I have a 20 acre farm in Green county Wisconsin. I am wanting to start my own business raising milk goats. My goal is to make cheese and soap and sell these products in our local area. I need to know what kind of restrictions and requirements the state may have when opperating this kind of business from my home. If you have already went down this road before and could share any of your wisdom with me it will greatly be appreciated. Also I am handicapped and I am in need of finding a used milking machine. If you know of where one can find used equipment let me know.

-- Neva Marie Nelson (neva@cheerful.com), January 07, 2002

Answers

Hi Neva,

Wow, thats great, there is a lot of work though. I will be happy to share our experiences though in hopes it will give you a starting point. We recently relocated our goat dairy to Arkansas from VA to begin a Grade A Dairy and to make cheeses and fudge. We were limited in VA and AR seemed cost effective. To begin with, this may not be a cost effective endeavor if you must begin from the ground up, I don't mean to discourage you, I just want to point out that it will entail some investment capitol and ambition. I will get to the goat part in abit, first I want to discuss the regulations of making cheeses and making products from raw milk. You will definately need to find that out first. many folsk, good intentions in mind think that "OK, I have a few goats, let me find a way to make them pay for themselves" and will pursue going into the next level. But there are snags and going into making a product will mean investment capitol and work. Others think that you can simply purchase goat, then get a contract to ship milk or a market for your product and not know the regs and find themselves in an impossible situation financially. Then basically they sell out and go for broke. You must have a good business plan in mind. You also reside in a state where there is already a cheese marketing cooperative, Mt. Sterling, here is their website: http://www.buygoatcheese.com/ So you will have competition, maybe and maybe not. You need to cultivate that market niche you need and then develop it. www.realmilk.com will provide you with the information on the sales of raw milk in many states, but not all. this will give you an idea. then contact first you st ag dept and ask for their dairy reg dept and then ask questions about what you need to do in order to sell your cheese legally. DO NOT try to sell cheese under a loophole or without a permit first, it will come back to haunt you. In Virginia many folks did this, one was even arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for selling cheese without following the regs. You need to be careful, your competition will not be friendly either, well, maybe , but in most cases, not. To sell cheese you will need to have a pasturizer to make soft cheeses like chevere. I would suggest asking about hard cheeses as they do not require pasturization, but instead are aged. VA was lenient on hard cheeses but not soft. You still are going to have to know the regs because you need to know if you must make your cheese in a stainless steel vat, etc. You will also have to be inspected regurarily as well. Packaging is another issue in that you must state certain information on your label.

After you contact your st ag person, then call your local county extension agent and then sk for the county regs, you will need a food inspector to come out to approve your operation. Then after this is all said and done you will need to know what is required for milking your goats, as in, do you need to have specific storage tank or will another option be OK.

After you move through this "hairball" of regs, etc then you can get to the enjoyable part, launching your cheese. Soap is actually less work and easier to market as it does not require a lot if involvement or capitol. Make sure you know full well what you are getting into before you buy your goats. Next comes buying the goats

If you want healthy goats who milk a decent amount of milk and for cheese you will need a higher Butter fat % you will need to research the various breeds. Nubian and laManchas have higher BF but less milk production. It takes a gallon of milk roughly to make a pound of cheese. Buy the best goats you can afford and no more than you can financially manage. Do not buy from auctions. Goats require a lot of care in order to produce what you need. You can't simply pasture them, feed them any old hay and grain, you must provide for them if you want them to provide for you.

I probably could write a novel here on this so i will stop at this point. If you are interested in more information please e-mail me privately or post here and I will respond. We are in the process here now of launching our cheese business 2 years sooner than we expected because of market opportunities and our competition expanding. I had the day off work today, snow day, so i enjoyed talking to our st dept folks and to the very nice gentleman from the Univ of AR. I will be writing a SARE grant for our operation and hope it is accepted. There are folks out there who will help you and some who won't. Do your homework first. I have oodles of websites pertaining to cheese business that I will share if you'd like.

Remember, there is enough room out there for all of us who make farmstead cheeses and we need to work together to develop our niches. But purse your legal ends of it first with the regs.

As for milking machines keep an eye on the goat lists at yahoogroups.com, saw a lady who was selling milking machines last week. Hope this helps. I don't mean to be so abrupt, hope i didn't come across that way at least, but I wanted to put it all out there for you.

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), January 07, 2002.

Hi Bernice,

I have a question that is pertinent here:

I have found a couple of countrysiders who make goat milk soap and I buy direct from them now. Can you, being the dairy owner and cheese maker, sell your cheese direct to me without having to go through a middle man (coop or Kroger, etc?). In other words, is that legal if I want to buy your cheese and you are a licensed maker?

I always would rather buy direct and give the farmer/soapmaker/feed grower their money rather than pay the inflated prices that come from the many middlemen.

I used to buy goat milk direct from a fellow who lived down the road, he didn't advertise, but he had the best milk!, unfortunately he retired and sold all his goats, now I will have to buy a goat to get the milk unless I want to pay $2.49 a pint for canned milk.

Anyway, I don't anticipate making cheese or soap for quite a while, so thought I would ask if buying cheese is an option?

Thanks Cindy

-- Cindy (colawson@mindspring.com), January 08, 2002.

Bernice, one thing I really like about you and Vicki is the amount of passion you have for what you are doing with your goats! :-)

-- george (bngcrview@aol.com), January 08, 2002.

Thank you George. There are times I wish I had more time to help others, but with working full time and the dairy plus the now recent decision to move our cheese business plan up 2 yrs really takes a lot of my time. Not to mention the upcoming year with shows. I once asked Vicki how she does it all, Bless her heart, she is up into the wee hours. I was once a newbie too and still run into troubles now and then so I try to help others because I have been there too! If one of my experiences can help someone from falling into the same mistake or help from a success then its all worth it to me. And yes, I do love my goaties and wish for the day I can stay home and not have to drink my morning cup o' coffee on the run but with my girls!

I never thought about getting into dairy farming again after we sold our cow dairy yrs ago. I just wanted a milking goat and Jackie, who was a registered Alpine came into my life. I looked at her papers and about died, she had some excellent lines in her and deserved to carry on her beauty, love and potential. I cried so hard at nationals last year when her doe kid, Jackie's Valentine, won 5th place in a highly competitive class, I was stunned!

Sadly, Jackie was 8 yrs old, had a genetic problem and got arthritis from it and we had to put her down before we moved in May. I cried so hard. I even cried again in Nov when I went past our old vets farm in VA and thought of her. I was on another goat buying expedition and headed to see our son and grandsons who live near. She was quite a girl, and a character too! But I had to let her go and move on. Thats not to say I don't still think of her every day and have her picture on my desk and nightstand next to the 2 legged kids and grandkids. I hope to one day commission an artist to paint her for a picture to put above our fireplace. I even named our fudge line after her, Jackie's Fudge.

Its because of my passion for Jackie that I fell head over heels in love and now have a dairy. We raised Nubians yrs ago, but there wasn't the desire to expand til yrs later. And..... I have been blessed with some of the best Alpine bloodlines and the meanest too ! Naw, they aren't mean, just bossy! Now the trick is to see if I can continue to improve on what we have.

Thank you again George for your kind words, they really help to spur me on when I feel down or blah!

If you would like to see our website and goats and even Jackie, here is our website link:

http://geminigoats.tripod.com/ShalomDairyGoatranch/

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), January 08, 2002.

Hi! I'm from SW Wisconsin, Vernon Co. barely (half the road is in Crawford). For making cheese legally, you must pass a test and at the moment have "apprenticed" or worked for a cheesemaker for a certain period of time and taken some classes. I think it is "Lovetree Farmstead" that makes sheep milk cheese, and I heard her talking about this once on Wis Pub Radio. I know this guy down this way near Richland Center who is starting an Organic Goat Cheese business, and he does all the milking and making himself. He would know about this. He doesn't have much time, but might let you drive down and check out your operation. Then, just a few miles down the road is a goat cheese cooperative, Mt. Sterling Cheese. They would let you watch and answer questions, I am sure. The folks there seem really friendly .

HobbyFarm which advertises in the back of Countryside is sort of NW of Madison. She sells great milking LaManchas, registered, and keeps her best for show, if you are interested, and really loves her animals. Her non-show quality are obviously cheaper. She has a milking one now for sale for $200 (or did 2 weeks ago) I bought a goat she bred and raised and sold to a dairy farmer, and the dairy farmer got rid of all of her goats, and now I own her. She is wonderful, calm, gentle, etc. I got her for $55 because the woman was going to sell her as a cull because she had mastitis at the time.

-- marcee (thathope@mwt.net), January 08, 2002.