Cooladdi Dorper and goat breeder successfully introduces Kalahari genetics

This was the message from Cooladdis Brett McDonald to a South West NRM-convened field day, touting the place that goats are increasingly playing in Queenslands semi-arid rangelands.

He recently took a call from a live export agent in Western Australia looking for between 1200 and 1600 Kalahari goats to air freight to Bangladesh, who had searched his home state without success and was turning his attention to eastern states.

Brett and his family are probably one of six registered Kalahari breeders in Australia.

Apart from that distinction, the familys base within a couple of hours of the Western Meat Exporters base at Charleville is putting them in the box seat for breeding, live export and abattoir markets.

I feel were safe for the next 10 years, Brett McDonald said.

Its a far cry from the days when the family sold Woolabra and Newholme at Charleville when the minimum price for wool collapsed.

Wanting to stay in small animals because of their country type, they moved firstly into fat lambs, putting Dorpers over Merino ewes.

Opportunistic harvesting of rangeland goats was happening alongside that, and the fears of fibre contamination pushed the family into a purely goat and meat sheep enterprise.

They were confronted with aging infrastructure and an urgent need to fence.

Because of their tough economic environment, they started off with electric outriggers on existing wooden fences, but the age of the fences brought challenges.

It was sufficient to keep the goats in but they werent as effective for dog control, Cathy Zwick said.

Governed by restricted budgets and the season, they experimented within their means and eventually settled upon a seven-wire suspension fence, with the fourth and second wires hot. The two top wires are barbed.

Compared to exclusion fencing, Brett said it was 70 per cent as effective, meaning they had a suite of other pest animal strategies in place, including ongoing 1080 programs, poisoning and trapping of pigs, and opportunistic shooting.

Cathy said fencing was a viable option for lower carrying capacity country, costing around $2000/km.

But now that people are keeping their does and growing out their kids, rather than purging their country, it could pay dividends.

According to MLAs specialist goat representative, Julie Petty, the market is transitioning from a money for meat market to one with money for breeding does.

The steady increase in prices to a high of $7.40/kg recently is a perfect storm for producers.

Cathy Zwick said the decision to introduce Kalahari goats into the small animal enterprise at Allambie looks like paying off, both in animal survival rates and in dollars for the bottom line.

The family has had them on the Cooladdi property on the Paroo River for 16 months, assessing their reproduction characteristics and heat tolerance, and Cathy said the news was all good.

We wanted to prove to ourselves that they could reproduce in a paddock situation without supplementary feeding, and theyve done that very successfully, she said.

The property has only had 40mm of rain this year, and their does produced their first kids, all twins, on the hottest day of the year.

The introduction of Kalahari Red and Black varieties, and Anglo-Nubian dairy goats, and their earthy colours has resulted in a greater ability to hide from predators, especially aerial ones, even if they are harder to muster.

Cathy said the full skin pigmentation and floppy ears meant their tolerance to heat was good.