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Goats may be climate winners

By Daneka Hill

May 26, 2022

Australia has been harvesting feral or ‘free-range’ goats for a long time, but there has been a rise in proper goat farming as the meat starts to cultivate a demand. Photo by Daneka Hill

The largest research investment ever to be granted to the Australian goat industry has been officially funded.

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The $3.5 million project will focus on improving reproductive performance across Australia’s many farm and harvest goat operations.

The money is coming from the Meat & Livestock Australia Donor Company and the University of Queensland.

MLA productivity manager David Beatty said goats’ ability to thrive in harsh conditions made them primed to take advantage of environmental changes.

“We’ve seen changes to many grassland and pastoral systems result in increased shrubs and woody regrowth,” Dr Beatty said.

“Goats are primed to take advantage of these environmental changes because of their unique abilities to digest and thrive on low-quality diets containing high levels of fibre and anti-nutritional factors.”

The $3.5 million research project will gain insights on what causes kid loss among goats, develop reproductive benchmarks for different goat farming systems and investigate the impact of management systems on reproductive performance.

University of Queensland meat science professor Louw Hoffman said the goat industry was in a transformative stage right now as farmers moved from ‘free-range, low-input’ to more intensive management systems.