Today we're here with Leslie Cooperband, one of the owners of the Prairie Fruit Farm and Creamery. The farm is about, a few miles, four miles north of Urbana, Illinois, in central Illinois. We're only a very few miles away from the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign Campus. And so, sometimes I bring my students up here to visit the, the goat farm. And Leslie, thank you very much for hosting us today and spending some time with us. You're welcome. You do a lot of kinds of things around here besides milk goats. Can you talk a little bit about all the different kinds of activities and events and so on that you do here? Sure. We are, we're principally a Grade A dairy and we turn most of the milk into a selection of goat milk cheeses. Uh-huh. We also make goat milk gelato so that's the main production enterprise that goes on on the farm. We have a commercial kitchen onsite and we do a lot of local food; Farm To Table meals. So breakfast, dinner? Breakfasts, pop-up dinners to, all the way to a very elegant five-course slow food meal. You start out with what, a very few goats? We started out with three does and a buck. And where are you at this point? This year we're actually going to milk about 75 standard, standard breed does and we've introduced a new breed, the Nigerian dwarf. We're going to milk about six of them. Our, our standard breeds are principally Nubian and Lamancha and then we've done crosses between, back and forth between those two breeds. They are not high-producing breeds but they have exceptional milk quality, very high solids for cheesemaking. Okay, excellent. So that's why you chose them? That is why we chose them. Yes. Yes. And roughly, how many animals do you have in total and different? It's about 90 standing head and that includes breeding males, a couple of wethers and some retired does. And one of the reasons that we're here right now, this is early March, is it's the kidding season, the birthing season. And so, you would have bred them last October? Right. And about 150 day gestation? Correct. And so, they've been kidding since roughly when? We started a little earlier than we had anticipated. We started kidding around the 22nd, 23rd of February. Uh-huh. So, It's a little bit earlier than we would have anticipated, shall we say. And it will go on for what, another couple of weeks here, two or three weeks? The main, the main, the most, the bulk of the does will be kidded out by, in the next couple of weeks. Okay. And then, we tend to breed our yearling does, the replacement does, in November. So, they will start kidding in early to mid-April. So goats are seasonal breeders? They are. Yes. And so you're basically operating in terms of milk production during the season. Can you describe that process? Yes. So, so their, their estrus cycle is cued mostly by day length. It can also be triggered by, by abrupt changes like abrupt weather changes or stress. So if they're moved from one location to another, sometimes that can induce estrus. But for the most part, their, their estrus cycle starts to come on full board as the days get shorter. Okay. And so, we, we follow that rhythm and, and breed in, in the fall, which means that all of our does are essentially on the same lactation cycle, which is very different from what you would see in a cow dairy where you can breed any time of year and you have cows coming in and out of lactation throughout the entire season. So they're, they start lactating when they kid, obviously, and they peak about eight weeks postpartum. So in this case, May, early June? So May, June is kind of our peak, peak production. Most of our does will be producing, at that point, close to 8 pounds or close to a gallon per doe per day. We have some that are producing more like 14 pounds, but our herd average is about, at peak, is about eight pounds per doe per day. And then it, we, we hope that it just kind of plateaus for a while at that. And then, as the summer comes on and, and heat stress starts to set in, then sometimes we'll get dips in production that usually result in not too much of a bounce back. So, it kind of hovers up and down throughout the summer and then towards August their production starts to slowly go down, mid to late August into September. And then, once they start coming into heat, we also see changes in their production. And then, once they're bred, their production really goes down and by, by mid-December, they're, they're pretty much done with, with lactating. So, you're, you're basically essentially shut down for a couple of months? Yeah, about, about two months. Yep. So how does the, how does this, then you talked about production. How does that relate to the solids content because that has a lot of importance for your cheese production? Yes, it does. Yeah. So, right now, when, when they have just freshened, their solids is, is quite high. They have, of course, we, we don't put any colostrum milk in, in our bulk tank, the colostrum being the first milk that they produce that has all the antibodies for the kids. We give all that colostrum milk to the kids and then the milk solids content, butterfat, can be as high as six percent at this time of year. Protein in the high four percent range, Okay. And then pretty quickly, about, about a month after they have kidded, the solids start to go down. Production is up, so - total solids is high. But production - I mean, production level is up, so total solids. So, even though their solids percentage is going down, their milk, their, their volume is going up. And then, mid-summer when they're on, when they're on pasture and they have a lower dry matter intake, their solids are at their lowest point. Okay. And then as, as they approach breeding season their solids start to go up. So the concentration is going up? The concentration is ---. Less production? Right. And it's more concentrated and so by the end of their lactation, our, our yields are as high as they would be right now and sometimes they're even higher. So, we're going to talk a bit more in a few minutes and then talk a little bit more about the cheese-making, but right now what I'd like to do is go out and visit where the babies are, the kids are. And so we're going to go transfer to there.
