Sheeps and Goats are known to provide good source of income to farmers from ages. Whenever there is emergency need of funds, goats and sheeps have always come to the rescue of farmers. Now, it has created a new curiosity among large progressive farmers, industrialists and business men. With sky rocketing meat prices, shortage of supply and increased demand for meat, stall fed commercial goat farming has become a viable option that most of them want to try their hands at. With shortage of extensive grazing land, with easier access to technologically advances in stall fed farming, starting a commercial goat farm is quite easy. With more and more consultants and expert veterinary doctors readily available to offer services in this area, we will soon see large scale commercial goat farms in and around metro cities.
With rising per capita income, growing urbanization, demand for goat meat is bound to rise further. In the last decade price per kg has increased from 60/kg to 300/kg. The only way we could consider meeting this demand is through commercial goat farming setup that is supported by government, NGO and other developmental organizations. Even though commercial goat farming seems to be a simplified answer, there isn’t enough empirical data that can prove the success rates of such setups. There are select few goat farms that have done well to scale up and above 1000 breeders, but the lack of public information, non-cooperation by private entities to share information which they guard as trade secrets is making the rapid required growth in commercial goat farming still a distant future. Lot of entrepreneurs who have tried to establish commercial farms hard way of self-learning has burnt their fingers.
Our advice to most first generation entrepreneurs is to do enough research before they start and also take advice of known veterinary doctors, government bodies and select few consultants. Even though initial cost of such research and consultancy looks high, it pays off within first one year as you learn through them and then learn to throw consultants out and do things on your ownJ. It would be stupidity to keep depending on consultants even after one year of establishment.
Coming back to commercial goat farming, our research has shown that it is essential to start small, but with enough funds and conviction to scale up. A one year research, experimentation with 100 breeders is essential to understand all issues. This should be followed up by scaling to a 300-500 breeder unit to realize actual profits in second year. Without this it would become difficult to sustain in long term.
One should budget around 15 lakhs to establish a 100 goat unit. Good animals will cost you around 7000-8000 per breeder, and a good ram will be even more costly. The shed and other setup would cost you around 4 lakhs. You will need around 5 lakhs as operating capital to manage monthly expenses. Those interested to be part of the commercial goat farm growth story, can contact us for project report, training and consultancy.