A young couple will finally realise their farming dream next month when they start selling cuts of low-fat, high protein goat meat.
Adam Wright, 28, and Victoria Gardiner, 22, have been steadily increasing their commercial goat herd for the last year and now have 50 nannies, a mix of pure Boers and dairy cross Boers.
They have been selling whole and half carcases since October, but from next month they will be trading cuts over the website they have set up for their Scottish Goat Meat Company based at Hillhead Farm, Newmill, Keith.
They will also be taking the meat to farmers’ markets across Scotland in an attempt to secure new outlets for it, although have still to undertake the necessary research on which are likely to be the best.
The couple bought their 27-acre hilltop farm last June and moved themselves and their goats from near Ellon to their new home.
“It’s really only just been a handful of whole and half carcases that we’ve sold so we can get familiarised with the system,” said Adam, an electrician.
The goats that have been finishing for meat are generally about 12 months old. Millers of Speyside at Grantown slaughters them. Butcher Jock Gibson at Macbeth’s has been packing and labelling and posting the carcase meat out with the beef, pork, lamb, poultry, game, fish, venison and other meats which he sells from his business at Forres. But from February Mr Gibson will be transforming the goat meat into an array of cuts, such as racks, loin, shoulder, cutlets, chops and rolled.
Victoria, who works as a customer assistant with Kennethmont-based animal feed firm Norvite, also said there had been considerable interest from people wanting to have the meat diced so it can be slow cooked and made into curries and stews.
The idea for the goat meat business came while Victoria, who graduated with a BA honours degree in rural business management with agriculture from SRUC’s Craibstone campus, was completing the dissertation needed to complete her studies. Her parents farm and manufacture agricultural trailers from Tillyhoit, Carmyllie.
Adam and Victoria have steadily built up their breeding herd and have been using a billy bred by Kinross-based Hugh Campbell, a breeder who specialises in Boers, a goat specifically bred for meat.
Adam said to now have a selection of cuts ready for sale and a permanent base was a big weight off their shoulders. “We were down to the final three at Tullochbeg (the Forestry Commission Scotland starter farm near Huntly), but we were unsuccessful. We’d been looking at other places, but they were never within our reach.
“But then Hillhead came up and we managed to work with a bank. We had to stump up a good deposit and we got it; we had really never thought it possible.”
The farmhouse is currently being gutted and renovated. Adam and Victoria have a 35ft static caravan which they call home.
As well as the goats the farm is now stocked with 44 Cheviot cross Shetland ewes, all of which have been put to a Beltex sire and due to lamb in April. They have been acquired through a new finance scheme set up by Aberdeen and Northern Marts to help those just starting out in farming.
Mr Wright also has two suckler cows and calves at foot. The cows are due to calf again in March.
No decision has been taken yet on what will happen to the lamb crop. The lambs may be sold finished, slaughtered to extend the goat meat business, traded with their mothers in the spring or sold store.
Adam added: “We’ve had a lot of help with the sheep from auctioneer Finlay McIntyre. We’ll take advice from him nearer the time.”
Both hope Common Agricultural Policy reforms in 2015 will assist the business and give them access to subsidies enjoyed by other farmers from the outset of it. They have in recent months been among the lucky recipients of Scottish Government aid for new entrants.
Adam and Victoria also see an opportunity with the new Scottish rural development programme, aid from which the Scottish Government is already proposing should be prioritised in part for new entrants.
They believe that could help them improve buildings on the farm. “We don’t really have much shed space,” said Adam. “If SRDP funding is available it would be good to have some of that to help us. It’s quite open here, so putting up a shed would help us. We could also use some of the environmental schemes to plant hedges and shelterbelts as it is a bit exposed.”
A paddock grazing system is likely to be introduced to optimise the availability of grass at its very best for the goats – and sheep.
The fields at Hillhead have over recent years been rented out. The pH levels in some are well below optimum at 4.9-5.2 and will be limed in the spring. Phosphate and potash levels are low too so the couple are working with an agronomist to improve soil conditions and with that grass production.
Feeding the meat goats has been something of a learning curve as conventional thinking would be that grass should be enough. But Adam and Victoria have been boosting diets with dairy calf nuts and then lamb and calf finishing pellets to get the goats to the optimum slaughter weight of about 30kg (66lb).
Goats are naturally lean and a whole carcase after slaughter generally weighs 14-18kg (30-40lb).
Their website is at www.scottishgoatmeat. co.uk