Getting your goat on

There are lots of ways to stay up to date and find out what’s happening across the industry.

What’s coming up?

National Goat Roadshow

How can goats add value to your bottom line? Join us in the Adelaide Hills on 26 September to find out more.

The National Goat Roadshow focuses on improving on-farm practices and business management skills in the Australian goat industry, as well as profiling the range of new resources and tools produced by MLA. At the workshops you’ll enjoy:

• business management tips
• productivity gains with genetic selection information
• goat producer case studies
• industry expert panel session

When: 26 September 2019

Where: Adelaide Hills, SA

Dates and locations are being set for NSW and will be available soon. Don’t forget that expressions of interest are also open for 2020 locations across NSW, Queensland and Victoria.

Register now: AgCommunicators T: 08 8332 3277.

Goat industry development day

This event will provide you with a round-up of the latest happenings in the industry, what opportunities exist and give you a go at putting your learnings into practice with hands-on activities.  

Come along to find out more on:  

• using growth rates, genetics and visual selection to drive your profitability  
• disease investigation – what to look for to save time and money   
• value adding opportunities – what exciting prospects are out there  
• NLIS and LPA questions answered – your obligations  
• population modelling and lifting kid numbers – trends, causes and what you can do
• the financials behind the industry – look at the numbers behind the curtain of your business

When: 1 and 2 October, 2019

Where: Ipswich, QLD

Register: https://gidd2019.eventbrite.com.au/

Past events you can still benefit from

The Booming Goat Industry

In case you missed it, a webinar was recently held entitled: The Booming Goat Industry – An Introductory Overview. Trudie Atkinson of NSW DPI provided an introductory overview of the Australian goat meat industry. The webinar covered:

• industry production systems and supply chains that deliver goat meat to domestic and international markets
• supply, price and population trends
• major markets and global demand for goat meat
• R&D projects, which are supporting industry development.

You can view the webinar recording here. This event was held as a part of a Productivity and Profitability webinar series designed to assist sheep, cattle and goat producers to increase the productivity and profitability of their businesses. Register to be notified of upcoming webinars.

Data at your fingertips

Another recent webinar was Data at your fingertips. Like many red meat business owners, you’re probably dealing with multiple computer programs and apps to keep track of what’s happening in your enterprises. If these programs aren’t talking to each other to help you make better decisions, it can be time-consuming and expensive.

During this webinar Nathan Simpson of Binginbar Farms, Gollan, NSW, talks through how they tackled this challenge head-on. Representatives from Hitachi are also on hand to answer questions about Nathan’s project which was looking at ways to increase efficiencies by identifying and tracking the performance of each lamb on-farm, including Binginbar Farms’ feedlot. Other aspects of farm management included monitoring of soil moisture, trough and tank levels and potential performance from their cropping enterprises as well as many other ‘data points’ which were able to be aggregated up into a central, easy-to-manage dashboard.

Manual data entry has been removed completely and Binginbar Farms are setting up systems to prove their paddock-to-plate story to consumers, thus attracting a premium. To view the webinar, click here.