3June 2009 CUMBRIA FARMER
At 73, life is good for goat
farmer Ewan � no kidding!
BY ANNA BURDETT
D
olken Dairy is a thriving
Cumbrian goat farm that
has got direct selling
down to a fine art.
The Wiggonby business supplies
all the goats' milk to Thornby Moor
dairy at Crofton as well as several
other cheese-makers in the region.
It was set up by husband and wife
team Ewen Cockburn and Tessa
Kennedy in 1992 and since then has
expanded to meet the growing
demand.
Ewen said: "We've built our busi-
ness up as Thornby Moor has built
its business. If the cheese business
has a good year, we keep more goats.
"The number we keep is designed
to produce the amount of milk we
need. When we had a bit of a sur-
plus, we looked for another market."
At 73, Ewen has an average work-
ing day that would tax a man half
his age. He spends around six hours
a day milking 270 goats at School
Farm and travels as far as Carron
Lodge cheese-makers at Preston to
deliver his product personally.
Tess is in charge of the nursery at
another farm along the road where
goats are dried off (given a rest from
milking) for the last two months of
their pregnancy.
Here, they give birth and, after
about a week of suckling their kids,
are transferred back to the milking
parlour for the process to begin
again.
Goats give around 800 litres of
milk per year on a 305-day lactation.
They're kept inside in an open-plan
barn where, on average, they eat
seven kilos of hay per day. In the
parlour, they're fed two kilos of cat-
tle cake daily.
While Ewen and Tessa get around
55 pence a litre, more than double
the price currently paid for cows'
milk, it is more expensive to produce
goats' milk at around 33 pence a
litre.
They are kept inside because of a
high susceptibility to stomach worms
from grazing. Ewen doesn't use a
wormer because he can't sell the
milk for a month after the treatment.
Disease risks are high in goats, so
Dolken Dairy is a closed herd and
breeds its own replacements.
It recently started taking the milk
from a new farm run by Stan and
Tracy Armstrong at Little Bampton.
The couple approached Ewen and
Tessa for advice on setting up a goat
farm and were up and running with-
in months.
They pool their milk at Dolken
Dairy and share the delivery jobs in
what appears to be the beginnings of
a small farming co-operative.
Dolken Dairy started with pedi-
gree British saanans plus some
alpines and toggenburgs. The doe
(female goat) is mated with a dif-
ferent breed of billy each time to
create a first generation hybrid,
which is likely to give a higher milk
yield.
While goats can give milk for life
after having one kid, their yield
peaks after six to eight weeks before
starting to fall.
The dairy keeps all the female
kids, choosing 50 a year for herd
replacement and selling the rest
later.
The male kids used to be
destroyed by a vet at birth because
there was no market for them, but a
growing appetite for goat meat has
meant Ewen and Tessa can afford to
wean them before selling them on
for fattening.
Ewen said: "It used to be that we
couldn't sell a single meat animal
because there was no demand up
here, but even in Cumbria people are
eating it now.
"Now we can rear and sell the
male kids almost at cost. It saves
killing them at birth, which is a mis-
erable job. At least they have a bit of
a life.
The low fat and cholesterol con-
tent in goat meat has fuelled its ris-
ing popularity.
Cumbria Farmer met Ewen and
Tessa on a rare break from a busy
day. As soon as Ewen finishes the
8am milking, he eats his plated meal
and is on his way to Preston.
He said: "I do love this job; I don't
like sitting around. We've stopped
expanding now and we're hoping to
pay back all our borrowings in the
next year or two."
FarmingLife
Business up as
cheese-makers'
demand grows
Loves his job: Ewen Cockburn in the milking shed at Dolken Dairy PICTURES: DAVID HOLLINS
Nursery: Female kids are kept; males are sold on for fattening

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