THE HUMBLE goat is known as the ‘poor man’s cow’. In fact, more people in the world actually drink goat’s milk than cow’s milk, particularly in the third world, such as Africa, where 90 per cent of inhabitants are lactose intolerant.
Currently, there are nearly 500 million goats worldwide, producing around five million tons of milk. In the US alone, approximately one million dairy goats produce milk every day.
Research has shown that goat’s milk is healthier than cow’s milk. Many people, however, have an objection to the strong aroma, but with today’s technology and farming methods the problem can for the most part be avoided.
Everything depends on the goat’s diet, farm hygiene and most importantly keeping the male goats apart from the females – the main cause of the ‘goaty’ odour.
Now the Cypriot goat too has been brought in from the cold to grace the shelves of the island’s posh supermarkets and bakeries with the launch on Thursday of Lantis goat’s milk.
But the foreign competition is not far behind. In fact the foreign competition, which is French, is ahead, launched a week earlier, when milk produced from Alpine goats made an appearance.
The Alpine goats themselves made their appearance in Cyprus some time ago and are living happily on a farm in Potamia outside Nicosia, all 700 of them fully intending to go forth and multiply.
Down on the farm Dr Miltos Hadjipayiotou, Alpine Farms animal nutritionist and former official at the Agricultural Research Institute, explained that the Alpine goat was one of six pedigree breeds specially selected over many years for the production of milk.
The gigantic newly-built farm is divided into different sections, first and foremost, to keep the males away from the milk-producing females.
Hadjipanayiotou said 12 goats were needed to produce the same amount of milk as one cow. The milk is then pasteurised and distributed to shops.
While all that is going on, the goats themselves laze around in the sun in huge pens attached to warehouse-sized enclosures cooled by giant fans.
Some, unable to shake off their Alpine genes, climb on top of the feeding troughs for a better view.
“Each class of animal has his own area,” he said. “Once a goat is kidding it is transferred to small enclosure boxes and each individually has the best food it can get.”
Alpine Farms grows its own alfalfa but the goats are also fed some grain and hay from selected Cypriot farms. “Once you keep the area clean you have less microbes in the milk,” he added. “The less microbes you have better taste you have.”
When they are born, the kid goats are taken from their mothers after two days of suckling, and from then on fed artificially with replacement milk in controlled quantities, Hadjipanayiotou said.
“This farm has its own vet, animal husbandry officer and nutritionist,” he added. “And the food we buy from local farms is always clean.”
Each Alpine goat is worth around £500 and was imported directly from France as a yearling. Hadjipanayiotou said the climate appeared to be agreeing with them and that in fact they were producing more milk than they would have back home.
He said their production was three to four times the national average of the Cypriot goat.
“There are some good herds and flocks producing in Cyprus but even the very best goat herds here only produce half that of the Alpine goats,” he said.
Each goat, which can produce eight to nine litres of milk a day, is chipped and the milking parlour is computerised. It can handle 28 goats at one time and a sample of milk from each goat is tested on the stop to make sure the animal is healthy. If not, it’s taken away and treated by the vet, Hadjipanayiotou said.
The farm currently employees seven people but intends to expand to cater for up to 2,000 goats in the near future. It also has a sideline in selling young male Alpine goats to local farmers who plan to cross breed the pedigree animals with the humble local females.
Alpine is currently distributing 1,200 litres per day. Although Hadjipanayiotou was vague about the price, he said it was around twice the price of a litre of cow’s milk, which retails at 55 cents. Since it launched just over a week ago, Hadjipanayiotou said the company was selling around 1,000 litres of the milk, which is bottled by the Pittas dairy company.
“Even if the price is higher people are willing to buy it and the response has been positive,” said Hadjipanayiotou.
Lanitis, which decided to stick with the home-grown variety of goat, is selling at 65 cents a litre, according to Evi Lanitis, who said the company wanted to make the product affordable to the general public.
Lanitis, which also distributes its own brand of cow’s milk, said she did not want to make comparisons.
“What we are doing is offering the consumer an alternative,” she said. “A lot of people have problems with allergies to cow’s milk, they do have an intolerance and this milk is more easy to digest.”
She said it was a pity goat’s milk was not more widely produced locally because Cyprus had so many goats.
“We use the Damascus goat,” she said as it’s the main type of goat in the Mediterranean. “We’re using several farmers that we particularly picked for the hygiene of their farms. I went around the farms to make sure these are people who care for their animals because you see so many farms out there at which you despair.”
Commenting on the coincidence that two brands of goat’s milk had been thrust on the public in the space of a week, Lanitis said: “It just happened. It was a coincidence. We’ve been talking about it for so long and now slowly, slowly the farms are beginning to stagger when goats are having kids and it’s available more throughout the year.”
She said that her company had done extensive market research and a series of taste-testing, which had received a positive response.
“The big difference between us (Lanitis and Alpine) of course is the price,” she said.
“We could have put it that high and it would have made more financial sense, but on the other hand I think milk is still something that should be affordable to everybody.”
