“If you're out and about, you're in with a shout”

I started clueless with £200 and a goat

So why did a city boy start a goat meat business? I like to think of myself as a ideas person. My background is in managing supported living services. I have a BA(Hons) in counselling and I'm studying for a Masters in Mental Health. I've lived in Yorkshire for some years now but always in the cities. My work brought me to the countryside and I've never looked back.

I was working in mental health services when I started having ideas of keeping my own animals. I started with some chickens and geese but only as a hobby. I frustrated local farmers because I asked lots of questions and challenged why things are done in the way they are. I looked into the by-products of the milk industry (kids and calfs) and I thought this could be a way of starting a small business but I needed land. I started to work on a business plan that would help to keep me focused over the next five years.

My first goat - a boer buck named Joe

A friend let me use a small barn and I got a boer buck goat (Joe). I was going to get dairy goat does as kids to start my breeding but ended up making my first expensive mistake. I raised around 200 kids on milk over a hard winter. The dairy stock are hard work. They eat a lot but they do not put the meat on in the same way as the boers.

I was still working, studying and feeding my herd. This is were my funds came from. I would never fund the business with credit cards or loans. I have a family, a mortgage and bills to pay. The added stress of loans would have made it unenjoyable. The funding came from hard graft. I was doing around a 90 hour week. My family deserve medals. Many times I have been feeding at 5am before doing a 12 hour shift on ward and feeding again before going home.

I added to my herd with boer does when ever I could and stopped buying dairy stock.  I helped my friend with his sheep at lambing time and this gave me the experience to kid my own does. I spend a lot of time with my animals and as a result they are chilled around me which helped when they were kidding. All my animals come to my call.

I needed a outlet for my product and quickly found butchers to be unhelpful as they wanted the product for nothing so I started to write to and phone restaurants and got one or two results. A local website designer helped me to put a website together to help explain what Goatee Joe was about. I needed the brand to make a impact.

I love cooking so I started to develop products using the meat. I gave lots of food away asking for feedback and as a result, I felt that I could go to market. Another one of my loves is music so why not sell a product at festivals/farmers markets? Being a festival lover, I know most of the food is bought in from the cash and carry. I knew I could offer something different. I put in around 100 letters to festivals up and down the country as well as phone calls and emails - not taking no for a answer. As a result, I got results. This was a great opportunity to prepare and cook food on the spot and serve it fresh to the customer. It has taken me 18 months to get to a point were I can see the startings of a business. On the day of writing this blog, I have 80 breeding boer does, 2 boer bucks, 30 weathers and some great looking kids. With this many animals, I needed more land. I now rent 68 acres. Much of this land has taken 8 months to fence and prepare, 900 posts have been knocked in by hand. I now keep 80 texel sheep, 10 pigs and 3 highland cattle. I need all my meat to be my own so that I can produce a good product for customers to eat. “I breed it, I raise it, I cook it” is my moto.

In the future I would like a polytunnel or two and a JCB bobcat to muck out with as at the moment I only have a shovel. I would like a farm of my own but this is not the be all and end all. Enjoying what I do is. I love working with my animals, I love cooking and I love music, what a job! I do not feel like I have a business yet but in three years time I will.

Top 10 Tips

You need:

1. to graft
2. to plan
3. to learn fast
4. to resist getting in to debt - take your time - build it up
5. to love what you do
6. friends
7. family support
8. good stock - best you can afford
9. not to take no as a answer - ask “what do I need to do to get a yes”
10. to trust yourself


I hope that my future blogs will make sense now.