We started in 2000 with 385 goats and gradually built up a herd of 700 French Alpine dairy goats.

They are housed in a wooden goat house sheltered from the weather and produce about 2,000 litres of milk a day. One goat produces an average of 3 litres of milk a day. The goats are milked twice a day in a rotary parlour with 32 stalls. Milking takes about two and a half hours, morning and evening.

During milking, the milk is cooled in a temperature controlled tank and then taken to the dairy to be made into cheese.

The goats are fed twice a day on hay, home-grown oats, straw, alfalfa, maize and mineral concentrate.

The goat nursery is open to visitors twice a year. To provide regular milk production throughout the year, the goat herd is divided into two, one half giving birth in February; the other half in October and November.

The birth season is a busy time in the goat house: 1,000 kids are born each season. Feeding them is also very time consuming as they have to be bottle fed until they can fend for themselves. The kids then learn how to take reconstituted milk from the automatic feeder. When they are older, some of the kids are selected on the basis of their genetic characteristics to improve the quality of the herd. The other kids are sold to farmers who wish to set up a goat herd.