"It’s like a dream come true for us, people had been asking us about the goats’ whereabouts for a long while and now we are happy that they have arrived," says an ecstatic Mike Mamkeli.
"It’s like a dream come true for us, people had been asking us about the goats’ whereabouts for a long while and now we are happy that they have arrived," says an ecstatic Mike Mamkeli.
Mamkeli heads the Makana Goat Farmers Co-operative and said that the farmers were overjoyed when a herd of 175 goats was delivered to Lower Gletwyn Farm two weeks ago. The goats arrived in trucks from Cape Town-based Stillerus Bokmelkery on 20 July. The supplier, Roelf Smith, spent a week training the farmers to feed and look after their new animals.
The dairy goats look healthy and have 51 kids with them. The herd has five rams, namely two Saanens, two Toggenbergs and a British Empire. Mamkeli said that in the meantime there are only three labourers who are looking after the goats but that he was expecting some members of the co-operative who had also recently been trained in Cape Town to put their skills to work.
"We have not yet started milking the goats," he added.
While the goat project is associated with eight farms, he said the project will be piloted on one farm and will, over time, be extended to other farms. The farms which are all situated in the Makana municipal area are Koodoovale, Pershoek, Gletwyn, Broughton, Salemville, Inneskilling, Greenfield and Alicedale.
He also said that while Gletwyn Farm, which is in the Manley Flats area, is good for grazing they intend to build a milking parlour on Inneskilling Farm (behind Extension 7, on the way to Fort Beaufort) where the actual dairy operations would be run.
He added that they will start building sheds and other permanent structures on Gletwyn Farm later this month, a process which will eventually be extended to Inneskilling Farm and other farms.
More setbacks
The lack of infrastructure is not the only challenge facing the emerging farmers as nature has also dealt them a setback.
The lack of infrastructure is not the only challenge facing the emerging farmers as nature has also dealt them a setback.
Besides the lack of water on Gletwyn, which is the case for most land which has been transferred to emerging farmers through the government’s land redistribution programme, the farmers have to battle with lack of feed for their goats. Mamkeli said none of their feed suppliers in the Cacadu district can provide them with lucerne, something which he attributes to the ongoing heavy drought.
"The supplier in Alexandria said we have to wait until the end of the month while others say, maybe until the beginning of September," he said.
He added that they get a constant supply of water from Makana Municipality, which is also one of the partners of the goat project. The plan is to approach Eskom to make an application for power supply.
The Makana goat project was awarded a R4-million grant by Thina Sinako in 2007, an Eastern Cape provincial Local Economic Development support programme. However, the funds were frozen when an "ineligible expenditure" of R500 000 was detected by Thina Sinako last year.
This development led to the whole project’s management team being dissolved. Mike Mamkeli is the new project manager of the four-month old project which is meant to breed the goats and produce dairy products such as cheese and milk.
