BUSINESS BITS

Goat-raising a lucrative trade
Joel D. Adriano

It used to be that goats were considered a poor farmer’s livestock, and that very few were seriously raising them. Yet the growing demand for and the rising prices of healthier and leaner chevon, or goat meat, as well as the promise of very good returns from this business are changing this perception.

Chevon prices have shot up to P180 to P220 per kilogram from over P140 per kilo two years ago. Just a while back, live native goats were selling at P800 to 1,000 per head, now they go for as much as P2,000 to P3,000. Prices of mestizos, crossbreds, have also doubled to between P7,500 and P10,000 per head.

Dr. Edwin Villar, director of the livestock research division of the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development, sees a lot of room for growth for the goat industry. Current per capita consumption of goat meat is just 300 grams per year, compared with the yearly person consumption of 21 kilograms of beef and 18 kilograms of pork.

People from Northern Luzon who use goat meat for their popular native dish, papaitan (goat meat and innards simmered in water and vinegar), are the biggest chevon consumers. Mindanao, with its sizable Muslim population, is also a huge market as Muslims who don’t eat pork would naturally go for meat alternatives like beef or chevon.

Twenty-three year-old Ketty Chua saw the tremendous potential in breeding goats when she did a feasibility study on this business. Chua, a Business Management graduate of the University of Asia and the Pacific, learned about the income potential of goat raisin from her uncle, who was also into the same business. Chua got her start after her family, who owned a feeds and poultry business in Cebu, asked her to take charge of their goat-breeding project.

Chua imported 550 Boer goats from Australia in October 2005 to cross breed them with the smaller native goats that produced less meat and milk. Cross breeding her goats would improve their qualities. She sold her imported breeds for P40,000 to P60,000 each while her island-born purebreds went for P30,000 per head.

Most of Chua’s buyers were farmers from Mindanao, although she would give seminars and hire salesman to help market her goats to raisers and buyers in Luzon. Despite being new in the business, Chua is already considered one of the country’s biggest goat breeders because of her no fewer than 500 goat stocks, all purebred and worth around P50,000 each. She expects to recover her substantial investment in three to five years.
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Angelina Mendoza, who owns the Tarlac-based Lakeview Farms, never thought that goat raising would bring her tremendous returns. She started goat-raising as a hobby in 2001 to while away her time while waiting for their mango trees to bear fruit. She bought he goats – a male and a female – for P12,000. Goats are fast breeders and Mendoza can attest to how quickly her pair multiplied several times over in the next five years. Just the same it took her three years to realize there was serious money to be made in this business, and decided to become a serious breeder by importing more Anglo-nubian goats in 2004. Her farm now counts 350 goats worth P3 million.

Even if more and more entrepreneurs are going into goat-raising, the existing supply cannot keep up with the shooting demand for goat meat. And then there is a huge untapped overseas goat meat market to consider. Mendoza says they can dictate their prices now because production is only close to 1.7 million heads when demand is more than 1.8 million goats.

Even though Mendoza and Chua spent a lot to start their goat farms, Villar says other can go into this business on a much smaller capital. A farm with one male goat and 10 does can be started with between P30,000 and P40,000. A big part of the capital will go to buying goats. “An eight-month-old male meztizo breeder goats costs around P7,000. With just one male, you can have 10 females which cost P2,000 each or a total of P20,000,” he says. “Including the investment in housing and feeds, initial investment in housing and feeds, initial investment for a goat farm of this size could cost between P30,000 and P40,000.”

Antibiotics would only set you back by P50 for each goat for one year, while you would hardly spend on feeds as goats, even the imported ones, graze on just any grass or leaves, although Vilalr says napier grass, and ipil-ipil and kakawate leaves are the ruminants’ best food.

Does are ready to bear kids on their eighth month, and reproduce twice a year. While goats normally have a single offspring, the native varieties would often give birth to twins. Given this reproduction cycle, a goat farmer could double his stocks in less than a year, and could recoup his investment in 18 months if he sold the animals every eight months (the time it takes a goat to weigh as much as 20 kilos). Villar says around 40 goats can thrive in a cage built on a 50-square-meter lot.

Mendoza says anyone wanting to get into the goat raising business can approach her group, the Federation of Goat and Sheep Producers, which offers regular trainings on goat farming. Others can e-mail their inquiries to the federation’s e-group, (goatraisers@yahoogroups.com). Goat meat, anyone?