Raising Goats in Canada

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Description

In this episode, host Deborah Niemann is joined by Mallory Kaiser, president of the Alberta Goat Association and vice chair of the Canadian National Goat Federation. Mallory shares insights into the goat industry in Canada, including available breeds, import/export challenges, traceability regulations, and the demand for goat products. Whether you're curious about how goat farming differs in Canada or considering expanding your own herd, this episode is packed with valuable information.

Key Takeaways:

• Canada has a strong demand for goat meat, but local production struggles to meet consumer needs.
• Strict import regulations limit genetic diversity, making it difficult to bring in new bloodlines from the U.S. or Europe.
• New traceability requirements could open doors for better disease monitoring but are met with resistance from producers.
• Goat farming in Canada comes with unique challenges, from frigid temperatures to predator threats, requiring strategic planning and infrastructure.
• The future of goat farming in Canada depends on better regulation, improved record-keeping, and stronger trade relations with the U.S.

Correction Notice:
In this episode (at 01:05), the guest mentioned that the Canadian Meat Goat Association is in the process of having Spanish goats recognized as a designated breed in Canada. This was incorrect. The correct information is that the Canadian Meat Goat Association is working on having Savannah goats registered in Canada, not Spanish goats.

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Transcript

Introduction 00:02
For the love of goats. We are talking about everything goat. Whether you’re a goat owner, a breeder, or just a fan of these wonderful creatures, we’ve got you covered. And now, here’s Deborah Niemann.

Deborah 00:17
Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's episode. If you've been listening for a while, you know that the last few months, we've started talking to people from other countries about what it's like to raise goats there. So I'm excited today to have Mallory Kaiser join us from Canada. She is the president of the Alberta Goat Association and vice chair of the Canadian National Goat Federation. She's been the delegate in supporting the goat industry on its updating of the Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Goats, and she just happens to raise Kikos herself. Welcome to the show, Mallory.

Mallory 00:52
Thank you.

Deborah 00:53
I'm so glad to have you here. So first of all, a lot of people probably think, Oh, Canada, like, you're right there, north of the US. You probably have all the same goat breeds we do. What goat breeds do you have in Canada?

Mallory 01:05
Well, we'll start with the meat variety. You're looking at your Kikos, your Boers. Boers have been a really big, strong part of the meat industry in Canada. And then the Spanish. The Spanish is getting very close to being recognized as a designated breed in Canada through the Canadian Meat Goat Association. CMG is what we call that. We have two registries with the meat and then the dairy, which is the Canadian Goat Society.

(Correction: The Canadian Meat Goat Association is in the process of having Savannah goats registered in Canada, not Spanish goats.)

But for a lot of those, we have our Nigerian Dwarfs, our Toggenburgs, our Saanens, our Alpine, and I'm missing a whole bunch there. But there's some mini dairy breeds that we have obviously outrank a lot. And then obviously we have a strong, small group of the Mohair breed. And the Angoras here in Canada as well. So, and there's goats from the Yukon up by Alaska, all the way down to Vancouver Island, down to Newfoundland and the east, all throughout the east coast there, so.

Deborah 02:03
Do you have any breeds that are not in the United States?

Mallory 02:21
My understanding in the history is that any goats that were brought into the States have, usually, before the borders got closed, came into Canada prior to 2002. Maybe some of those have maybe died out by now. But there's a strong possibility that there's some breeds that the US has.

Also, because we have different rules and regulations for our registries, there are some breeds that have been established as heritage breeds, which aren't recognized in the Canadian catalog, right. They'd be like, Well, that's just a Spanish goat. That's just because it has this label on it. We would only recognize it as a Spanish goat or Nigerian Dwarf, right?

So the big difference is, like, because I'm more familiar with the Kikos, is in Canada, we have the Canadian Meat Goat Association, and in the States for the and that's where I would register my Kikos with. But in the States, we have the International Kiko Goat Association, the American Kiko Goat Association, the National Kiko Goat Registry.

What I've kind of seen throughout my time in the Kiko is that if you're not happy with how one registry is managing, you can always switch back and forth where in Canada you're registered through a federal organization, and that way it's managed and clear to where your records are. Now, as a Canadian, most of us Kiko producers, because our goats that came from the States into Canada, majority of us still use the National Kiko Registry for our registry paperwork, so.

Deborah 03:39
Okay.

Mallory 03:40
And it's still recognized in Canada, so.

Deborah 03:43
A couple seconds ago, you said that “before the borders closed in 2002.” So I'm sure most of our listeners don't know what that was about. So can you explain that a little bit? What does that mean?

Mallory 03:55
Yeah, so BSE, or mad cow disease, was detected actually about 100-200 kilometers from my house, actually where I live here. And so, with that, that completely shut the industry, all livestock industry, down from moving across the border until they were able to establish what the issue was with the mad cow disease.

And so from that, the cattle industry in Canada, they came up with the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency–CCIA. It is a nonprofit organization that talks with–where your guys is a Food and Drug, we have the Canadian Food Inspection Agency–CFIA. Lots of C's, lots of A's. I get it.
But our Canadian Food Inspection Agency, so the Canadian cattle producers created that group. The sheep jumped on with it, so the marketing traceability of having RFID tags in the animals and then reporting your animal’s movement. So the cattle had one, the sheep jumped onto it, onto the same program. Pigs jumped onto the same program. And then eventually the poultry industry did, and the bison and the elk, and the goat industry has not caught on yet.

They didn't jump onto it. They didn't feel like they wanted to have that government control. And at the time, a lot of eastern Canada had the larger voice on that, and at the time I was a teenager, and I had cattle, so that really affected me at the time. And so it's just this last year is when goats were finally accepted into the Canada Gazette.

Goats were accepted into it. So now, depending on when elections happen now and everything happening between Canada and US and our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, we're supposed to be getting part two, finalized and written, and that's when we're supposed to have our soft start to let producers start putting tags into the ears when they take animals to the auction and reporting their movements. They have a kind of soft start for about a year, and then 2026, is when you have to report and put tags in the ears. But it's a little bit messy right now with things trying to get things through legislation and what's happening between the two countries right now, so.

Deborah 06:15
So what does this mean in terms of, like, what happens now if somebody wants to buy goats from the United States and import them into Canada?

Mallory 06:24
Well, we have a few different options right now. If you're in the US and your farm has been on the national scrapie program where your herd is completely closed off, you have a USDA vet coming to inspect, you're sending heads in every year, and you're meeting your certificate level status to be able to sell live goats internationally, or at least to Canada.

So in 2019, I imported two bucks from Lookout Point Ranch down on the west coast there, and because they were on a scrapie program, they decided to come to the border. They had to be tested for TB, bluetongue, and Brucella. And when they had to be held at the border, their scrapie tag was removed from their ear at the border. And then once they did their tests again at the border, because they'd be held there for about a week or two, they came up with a bunch of other goats that came from the same place to save on travel and cost for everybody.

And to my knowledge, that's been the last big import from Lookout Point Ranch. We have quite a few genetics of that farm in Canada. There's another producer in the east side of the US that was supplying the east side of Canada with Kiko genetics. But when I had last looked at the scrapie status in the US–and I was part of that meeting–between sheep and goat producers at the time, there was only 300 producers combined that were on that scrapie program, and I imagine those numbers have greatly dwindled since then. So that's really restricted.

So the only other way is really for producers in Canada to sell live goats across the borders, they have to be on the scrapie program. And you have to be on it for seven years, submitting 30 heads over those seven years, and having a clean biosecurity and having an agent come to your place, inspect everything, and have everything come back negative, and then eventually you can. There hasn't really been anything that has moved that way out of Canada for goats anyways.

We did have a buck that was on the scrapie program from Texas coming to Canada, and it hasn't had that much success. The sheep in Canada used to be big on it, but now they can just do genotyping. And as long as the herd has been genotyped and has continued to show resistance to scrapie, they can be sold live across the border into the US. Both sides of Canada and the US haven't done enough genotyping to get the national vets confident in the breeds to be having that.

Deborah 09:06
What is the current demand for goat products in Canada–like meat, milk, cheese, fiber, all those good things?

Mallory 09:14
So much like the US, but in Canada in 2023 we brought in $20 million of goat meat from Australia and New Zealand. And that's about 80% of consumed goat meat in Canada is the stat on that. We were down to about 72-73% and then we had a big rush in it. And what we're kind of finding for the goat side of it is that there's just not enough abattoirs that are at that level to handle everything yet or be–or they're not enough consistent animals. We had stats done in 2021 in Canada for the amount of goats, and they said there was only like 250,000 but we think there's a lot more than that.

We have a program called the PID system. It's Premises Identification. And if you have goats, chickens, pigs, horses on your land, you have to mark off what you have and what your max capacity could be to hold that many, so your max and your minimum. So you kind of have to take, if you know if the producer says they can have up to 300 goats, could have up to 300 goats, and you can kind of average out they probably have 150 or 100 goats that they have on the premises. And then there was going be 900 farms recognized as having that many, where the Stats Canada for like a number for my province in Alberta had about 900 farms, but Stats Canada said there was only 400 farms. So there's some missing data, or data not complete, about how many goats there are.

So that's one thing about the traceability we're hoping to have is to have a better recording of goats and their movement. I had to do some very fun phone calls last year trying to find out how many goats on average are in each province. And, you know, using the stat numbers, using the PID and just kind of getting an idea, because on reserve in Canada, we only had like 150,000 vaccines for hoof and mouth disease. And that was supposed to cover all the cattle industry, all the sheep and all the goats. That just wasn't enough vaccines to–definitely not enough to cover everybody, and the cattle industry had brought that up. So, my job was to phone contact the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, and Yukon, and Alberta BC governments and find out, like, how many goats they think there is through their systems they have.

Yukon and Northwest Territories, you have to have a permit to bring sheep and goats in, and then phoning Nunavut was a bit of a run around. So, I kept getting sent to the health department and because they don’t have a livestock industry there, so, yeah.

Deborah 11:48
So obviously, there's tons of opportunity for somebody that wants to get into goat meat, because you're way underserved in that area. What about like with fiber goats or dairy goats? Do you have a lot of farmstead creameries in Canada?

Mallory 12:01
We've got some in the west. We don't have a lot of big dairies, but there are, if we do, they are big dairies. There's just not a lot of them. In east, seems like Ontario has really moved into the dairy industry. There's still some meat there, but the reports I've gotten is that a lot of it has moved from the dairy side of things. There is the Canadian dairy program there, and they pretty much are just bringing in milk. And from what I understand too, you guys have in the States is there's no strong regulation.

So like with dairy, with cattle dairy, for example, the expectation is you're feeding your cattle dairy as a group, as an industry, the same thing, so the milk comes out tasting the same, so you don't have this inconsistency, where in the goat dairy, there's really big inconsistency from one jug of milk to another jug of milk. And I found that myself, and when I've gone to farm shows and trying to convince people to try some goat milk or some goat cheese, they're like, Oh, I've had a really bad experience. It tasted really grassy. It wasn't good. And I was like, Well, I got this jug here and it tastes just fine. And they're like, Oh, this one does taste good. I just must have got a bad jug.

But talking to the dairy industry, that's one of the things that they're saying is that they are trying to, you know, try to regulate it, much like the cattle dairy industry that so that everybody's having the same rations that they're feeding their animals, so they have that consistency in the taste. And same thing for the cheeses, right. In Canada, where you compete a lot with European cheeses coming in. There is some US dairy that comes into more in eastern Canada, but in the west we have it's mostly Canadian or European.

So for example, to make a pound of goat cheese in Canada costs $11 and for us to import it and sell in grocery stores in Canada is $9. So that's one thing that we're also trying to combat, because we have to keep our barns warmer and have more feed stocked in the winter time. Because like where I am your grass is pretty much done grazing by September. You start feeding hay by October and you're feeding hay until June almost. So your growing season. But also depends, too, if you're in Ontario, your grass season and your multiple cuts is a lot longer than where I am in up in northwestern Alberta. So your readings will make a big difference in that aspect for the dairy sector.

And then for the fiber industry, we've got a group here, the Mohair group. They will–they collect all their Mohair in Alberta here, and they will get a permit to send down to Texas to get it processed down there. There's some people that will do some cashmere kind of on the side. And maybe it's happening more out east that I'm just not aware of, but I know for sure that the Mohair is a big product, and that it’s going down to Texas to get processed.

Deborah 14:57
Alright. And you mentioned that you have to keep your barns warmer there, which immediately caught my attention, because I'm in Illinois and our barn is not heated at all, and most people in the US don't need to worry about that. Although my daughter moved to South Dakota, and last winter, she called me and said, “I know you said that goats could handle cold, but it's minus 35 Fahrenheit out here, and the goats are shivering.” And I said, “Well, I only told you they were good down to minus 25 Fahrenheit.” And when it gets that cold, I think the Fahrenheit and the Celsius are, like, almost the same.

Mallory 15:36
Yeah, minus 40 F and minus 40 C are the same temperature.

Deborah 15:41
Yeah, so we're both talking real cold here. So can you tell us a little bit about–because when we have that kind of stuff, like even in South Dakota, that was just for a few days, you know? Whereas you guys live with temperatures like that for longer periods of time. Can you tell us some of the challenges that you have in terms of cold weather?

Mallory 16:03
Well, it definitely depends on your breeds, like your dairy breeds don't seem to always get that much of fat grown over that muscle to kind of keep them warmer. So sometimes producers will have at least a barn with a door that closes, so it's just their heat will keep it about, you know–it's not going to get above freezing in there, but it'll stay warm enough. Their winter coat is going to be really important that they grow and establish that, getting that nice cashmere underneath. That's what a lot of people don't realize is that cashmere is just the goats undercoat that's so fluffy and warm. It's always fun to stick your hand into in the winter time and warm your fingers up.

Or like with the Kiko goats and the Boer goats, they have the meat and muscle mass and also the cashmere to kind of keep them warmer. So for my Kikos and stuff, it could be minus 25 and blowing, and they're happily sitting by the bale, chewing their cud. And some of them, I have–it's almost like a four-sided shelter, they just have a walkway that you can go through type of thing. And then the straw bedding–having nice straw, clean bedding is also a big major where they have some place clean and dry, and they'll dig down and nest down. Because, you know, with any breed, you don't want their teats freezing in the cold, right? So I've got clean bedding.

And if it does get to minus 40, because I do have a bigger barn that is insulated, because we do kidding in April, and it can get to minus 20 C sometimes. And so we'll just kind of bring whoever who's gonna be kidding into the barn, and we have a big gas heater in there to keep them warm and heat lamps. But for the most part, we do kid outside in April. And then obviously, if you're gonna be kidding anytime in the winter in Canada, you're probably going to be having a barn that is heated either by natural gas, propane, wood, I guess, if you're brave enough to do that. It just kind of depends.

And again, that's another material you're having to purchase if you don't have the land to be making your own straw. Buying that straw to make sure you have that bedding. And then having the equipment to remove that bedding. Because if you don't clean that bedding out, or be replacing it sometimes, that's where you start getting the mites and the lice, right? So it's, you know, making sure you have that replacement of materials and having it long enough. And if you've had warm winters, then, like last year for us, we didn't use as much straw, but this year, yeah.

You get weeks and bouts of that where it'll be really cold, and other times we'll, especially if they're in the corrals that aren't as sheltered from the trees, we'll put up just a tarp over the front of it, and inside there it warms up, you know, closer to minus 11 C for them to, you know, be comfortable in there.

But good ventilation too, when they are in the barn, right? So that, you know, they're not getting that ammonia, stinky smell to them, so. And then heated waters are the other thing that we have to be thinking of and conscious of, right? So it's something that everybody has, and nothing like going down to the hockey ring on the weekend and someone being late because Ahhh, I had a water freeze up on me, so trying to figure out what the problems were. It was the heating element, or your heat tape went out, or what's happening?

Deborah 19:16
Yeah. So when you talk about heating the barn, you're just really talking about warming it up a little bit, not making it toasty or anything–

Mallory 19:25
No.

Deborah 19:26
Like it's not even above freezing.

Mallory 19:28
Yeah, and especially for the does that are pregnant. Now, if you're dealing with when we're kidding, yeah, we want above in there. Well at least above 7-15 degrees C. That way those kids don't have to put in so much energy in trying to stay warm, that that colostrum is going right into their bellies and that they're getting up and being active and feeling good and comfortable.

And if we see a doe that it looks like she's gonna kid in the nighttime, for example, we'll move her into the barn, into her own pen, and we have a camera in there so we can kind of just watch her and know that those kids are going to be born fine and be warm. Because there's nothing–nothing hurts your heart more than going out there, and I've had a doe where I didn't know she was pregnant, or that really pregnant.

Nobody else was but her, and she had kidded in the winter time, and the one kid was dead and the other one, you know, was fine, we thought. But then her ears shriveled up and fell off. And then we couldn't get her hooves warmed up, and those had fallen off too. So not good, you know. Hard lesson to learn there. But it's, you know, having that spray foam insulated barn was really a big money saver for us for our goats, right.

Deborah 22:42
Yeah. So with you having such a short growing season, do you do rotational grazing, or just like very limited and then move them to a dry lot for most of the year?

Mallory 22:55
No, we do a lot of rotational grazing. We've got a quarter section here that we have the goats on. And yeah, we keep them depending on the size of the pasture that they're in. Like they're in the bigger the pasture, obviously they're in there for about a week. Then we move them on to a next pasture, and we just rotate them around. And there's some areas there that we're trying to kind of clean up and thin out the bush a little bit so we'll just kind of put an electric fence up.

And we have three guardian dogs. One that she's an old lady. She's 11 now, but she's the one that likes to stay with the herd and lay with them, and the two younger ones, they kind of do the outside rotations and stay close to the herd, but they don't like to lay down with the herd so much. But yeah, that is for us, where I am in Alberta, we've had Grizzlies, black bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars, you know, birds of all types.

So having the three guardian dogs has been really important. When we go more into the open prairies closer to Calgary, they're mostly dealing with coyotes in that area. So it's having one or two guardian dogs, or even llamas, that will deal coyotes is a better choice for them sometimes. But for us, yeah, I've had to come face to face with a cougar that was up in a tree, and it had swatted at my dogs, and I was scared because by myself. I had a gun, but yeah, still pretty nervous about that encounter.

Deborah 22:22
Yeah, no kidding, I don't think anybody would not be afraid if they came face to face with a cougar. So what trends do you see shaping the future of goat farming in Canada?

Mallory 22:35
Well, what we're starting to see is I guess, the politically correct we would like to call it is “our new Canadians that are coming into Canada”--they're the ones that are looking for that goat meat, and the one thing is that they are going to the superstore we call it here, and they're buying the halal goat meat for $30 for a kg of this meat, and it's coming from Australia or New Zealand, but it's being processed in Canada.

So there are shipments that come in twice a year into the west coast, and then goes to six different processors in Canada, and they're buying it between $12-$16 a kg, and then cutting it up and then putting it into boxes and selling it that way. And what we're finding is that those producers are like, Well, the Canadian goat meat's more expensive. This stuff is cheaper. I'm going to go with this. And then they get it and they're not happy with it. They don't like the taste of it. They don't like what they're paying for. They just don't see the quality in it.

And what we're starting to see as a trend, especially here in Alberta, is that we have a program called On-Farm Slaughter. So you get an inspection from the Alberta government, and then you are allowed to slaughter so many goats per family or livestock–different per family per year at your facility. And, you know, sends your records in and everything. And those new Canadians that have special requirements or requests, they're really enjoying this On-Farm Slaughter program, because they are able to get the cuts or the halal that they want.

Or if they want to have the carcass burned, that's another big one. Or if they want to be keeping every piece of the goat that they can keep it, or they don't feel like they're getting short because they're right there, if they want to experience the authenticness of it. And it's very interesting even then, with Kiko goats mostly being white. For example, the one gentleman I was talking to, he said that, you know “This Kiko, or even a Boer goat with the redhead, the natural redheads, looking at the animal that they won't want it, because it looks too dairy to them.”

They see a white and think dairy goat. And you’re like, Well you can see the muscle in this animal. It's amazing. “No, no, no, no. I want the black one. I want the black one or the solid red one.” And but as soon as you get the skin off, they don't, you know, they can't tell. They don't know, right? But there's some certain ethnic groups that's really important to them, that they don't get a white goat, and he abides to it.

But it's a really interesting, you know, thing that for producers. I sometimes get a lot of phone calls about, Oh, can I come to your farm, and can I do slaughter, or can I do halal? And I'm, I, you know, I live, like, really far from town, right? And I'm by myself. I'm not comfortable with a man coming to my place without my husband being here because he's gone away on work or something like that. So I think there's some struggles there with the industry.

But the On-Farm Slaughter that is being done close to, and even the abattoirs that are specializing in sheep and goats, you know, they're busy. They're trying to keep up. And the one thing that we're trying to do in Alberta and in Canada in general, is getting producers to understand that they need to be getting those animals to 60 pounds at the auction or at the abattoirs. A lot of producers, they're not putting a lot of the work. And they're getting to an average of, you know, 50 or 45 and it's just not cutting it, right?

So they get a little discouraged from being in industry. And I think that's kind of what's happening in America too, talking to some of the American groups that I've been a part of, is that educational piece to be a part of it, right? Where I think the cattle industry is a little more forgiving, especially with cattle prices being amazing right now. But on average in Canada here, we're eating about $150 a kid, not going to be a great exchange right now, but it's so $104 American to $150 Canadian is what we're getting on average.

And that average has been there for a while. But obviously, in January, February is what the auction markets has been telling us is a better time because there's less animals, and there's still demand coming into all the religious holidays that are happening. But for producers, it's when there's been so much hay shortage, and hay has been quite high priced. It's hard to, you know, to keep those animals back for that long, right? So there has been some subsidies and programs, but that's only if that drought has been declared by the provincial government that you can get some relief for the hay, so. But there's definitely a big demand for it. It's there.

Deborah 27:21
Do you have any current health challenges right now with goats in Canada?

Mallory 27:26
So one of the big things that we're dealing with in relations to the border is our scrapie status. And with traceability coming in, that's supposed to be helping as one of our checkboxes off that goats have to have traceability, so that would include the abattoir. They know where the animal came from if there is a scrapie case. But another issue that we've been having, we're really lacking genetics. And we used to be able to, through different programs, to get genetics from the US for semen and live animals, but with recent changes at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency about who's in charge there, they've really restricted.

So in, I believe it was in 2021, a herd of cattle in Saskatchewan went to the US to go to an abattoir, and when they opened the cattle up, there was clear that there's TB in their lungs. Goats and cattle are, when it comes to susceptibility of TB, are on the same level. And so that froze the border for TB for the goat and cattle industry. The cattle, they kind of figured it out. It was isolated to one farm. They moved on. Everything was fine. But then the goats, we got put into a gray zone, and nobody told us that our status got changed for TB.

So when it comes to importing semen from the US, it used to be that the buck that the semen was coming from, he had to be tested for TB, bluetongue, and Brucella. And that was fine. But since 2021, the herd of origin that that buck came from has to also be tested for TB in the same time frame. So if you want to get straws from that buck, you have to go to that herd and get that herd tested within 30 days for that buck semen to be considered to be able to come into Canada. And nobody wants to pay to do that in the States. I don't blame them. And some of those herds have been dead for years.

And so we're left with, Okay, well, we can't get it from there. And the same thing with Europe. Europe can't send us any semen straws because they're not happy with our TB status for the goats. So this past year, or couple years we've been working on it now, myself and some Kiko producers and some sheep producers were already getting some semen straws from New Zealand. And New Zealand and Australia are considered disease free countries. They were just the beginning of this year or end of last year. It was the World Animal Health Organization has deemed them no longer to be able to have that status anymore, and I'm not sure why and/or when that takes effect.

So we were able to get semen straws last summer from New Zealand of some Kikos. So new Kiko genetics were brought into Canada that way, and the Boers were invited, goat groups were invited, but not everybody wanted to jump on it, or just organized, or however they felt. So we got four new buck genetics into Canada from New Zealand, so. And that was the only country that we could import from, because they were considered disease free.

The US is considered to have TB in their livestock, in their herds. Now, certain states, is my understanding, they do a lot of testing for TB, and there's other states they don't. So the Canadian government doesn't recognize the US as being TB free, because not every state's on the same page kind of thing. So that's been a really big issue for genetics, and we've been pushing really hard to try to get some, you know, explaining that we're not, we don't have enough to diversified genetics in Canada, and that this whole border thing is really affecting us, to be able to grow and and make better animals, right?

Deborah 31:27
Yeah, yeah. In the US, most of the states are TB free, but it does jump around. So, like when I got started in goats in 2002, you know, when I got goats from Michigan, I had to make sure that the certificate of veterinary inspection included TB testing. Like the whole herd had to be tested negative within the last, I think, six months, and then, like the animal I was getting had to be tested negative like within the last couple weeks or something.

So what I'm not clear on is, if there's TB in Canada, why do other countries not want to send you straws of semen?

Mallory 32:12
Because there's not enough traceability for the goat industry to remove their TB status. There hasn't been any positive TB cases of goats in Canada. Like there hasn't been any cases of it at all, but we got kind of fallen into this gray zone of, Well, you know, (I'm pretending to be the government) We don't have a lot of data on goats. And then, you know, so until you guys get traceability (which is the Canada Gazette that I was talking about earlier) these are going to be the rules for you guys. Frustrating.

Deborah 32:50
Yeah, so are they worried that if they send you semen and then there are positive goats, they're going to get blamed?

Mallory 32:55
Yeah. Now, even though they're coming from a facility where the bucks had been tested from, or from a state where the animals were tested from, that's not good enough, that the whole herd has to be tested. And there's some evidence, I don't know if it's how strong the science is on it, that TB can be spread through semen, so they're just trying to reduce the risk. But the same time, how I think a lot of us goat producers are feeling is that our benchmark is too high for risk and that we're drowning from it.

We can't, you know, expand our herds. We can't expand our genetics. We can't expand our milking genetics to be putting out those, you know, those higher liter amounts, and because we're getting cornered as the bad guys. But at the same time, I have to admit that the goat industry hasn't been very cooperative. You know, 2013 and 2018 the goat industry was invited to be a part of traceability and to be a part of this. And I started in the goats in 2015, 2014-ish, and so I was kind of green. I didn't have a voice or any knowledge on it, but those who had more–and again, there was a stronger voice more on the east than there was in the west, that said, “No, we don't want to. We don't want to be having to report. We don't want to be putting tags in animals’ ears. We just want to keep doing what we're doing.”

But not realizing that the repercussions are Okay, well, now we can't get genetics at all from the US or from Europe. We're getting, you know, our pipeline is down to New Zealand and Australia, and that's it. We can't. And now all of a sudden, now we can't bring in live bucks or does from the US. We're getting, you know, left behind.

So I go into these meetings and express it, and they go, Well, here's your checklist in big bold letters, it's always gonna–it's the traceability. And I know a lot of people aren't happy about it in Canada about having to spend more, but at the same time, I, you know, express that, like, “Look at all these things that we can be happening and we're being restricted on and that you're upset about. Well, here's the solution. This is what the government wants.”

And I know they're making some promises here, but, you know, talking to the other vets, and being delicate in these conversations, it's like, Okay, well, that makes sense, right? We need to have some sort of data and some sort of mapping of it, especially at the, you know, abattoir level. One of the things is, in Canada, is that 300 goats a year are supposed to be randomly inspected at abattoirs. Doesn't have to be a federal or provincial abattoir. It can be any abattoir.

An animal over a year old, a head is supposed to be submitted for scrapie tracking. Well, the federal government is not keeping up to that mandate. They're only getting like 100 and some, instead of 300 across the country. And, you know, so I push back on that, and I go, Well, that's not the producers’ fault. That's the government's fault. You guys, why aren’t you guys pushing on the abattoirs more and saying, like, “Hey, you guys gotta be at least submitting however many abattoirs there are, you know, a certain percentage of heads, because we don't have enough records for scrapie or TB or whatever monitoring.”

But at the same time, the argument is, Well, we can't trace back where the animal came from. You can trace back where it just came from, but not where it originally came from. So I have to, you know, I can't argue with that. So what's exciting about the traceability is we are going to get what's called a herd mark for our goats. Nobody else other than pigs ever herd mark in Canada. But for kids, goats that are underneath a year of age, you can get a herd mark.

And as long as those animals are going straight from your premises straight to an abattoir, you don't have to put an RFID tag in their ear. You just put a herd mark and be like a sticker that goes on them, kind of thing. So and that'll be a lot less cost comparing to putting a tag in their ear. So that's one thing that I'm really glad we were able to work out with the federal government.

There’s just a lot of dairy kids that we didn't want people, because some of those tags get really expensive, especially like we have a leg band tag that's about $5-$6 a tag, and we just didn't want producers being unethical and being like Well, it's not worth the time to put a tag on this dairy kid…and bonking them on the head having animal humane issues. So we found a way to work it where you can have that herd mark.

Deborah 37:44
What exactly is a sticker? I just can't think of anything other than, you know, like a sticker that's got some kind of a cartoon character on it or something.

Mallory 37:52
It's thick. It sticks to their fur. So it's essentially, it's a little sticker that can be slapped onto the skin of a pig but for the goats, it'll be a little sticker that slaps onto their fur, and it goes with them on their way to the abattoir.

Deborah 38:10
So it's only meant to stay on them for like, a few hours or a few days at most?

Mallory 38:15
Yeah. Yep.

Deborah 38:16
Okay. All right, that's understandable.

Mallory 38:18
Yeah, because I know in the States, like, I know tattooing is a big thing. And in Canada, we have a Shearwell tag which is like a tag that's about as big as my pinky. We sometimes call it a tail tag, but it can go in the tail webbing, but it can go into the ear as well. And then we had the Allflex tag, but Allflex canceled their contract with us which is really disappointing. And then we have, I believe it's also a Shearwell leg band tag, so. And then we have a Shearwell dual tag thing as well for the RFID traceability stuff.

Deborah 38:59
Well, thank you very much for joining us today. This has been really interesting. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?

Mallory 39:05
I just hope you guys still keep in contact with us. We're still up here. We still have some really good goat genetics as well, and we're hoping that we can eventually work on some sort of deal between our two governments. That we can eventually start, you know, using your border to have some more trade with our livestock to get some of those better genetics into Canada, and maybe some genetics you guys will have into the USA, so.

Deborah 39:30
Awesome. Thank you so much.

Mallory 39:32
Thank you.

Deborah 39:33
And that’s it for today’s show. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to hit the “subscribe” button so that you don’t miss any episodes. To see show notes, you can always visit ForTheLoveOfGoats.com and you can follow us on Facebook at Facebook.com/LoveGoatsPodcast. See you again next time. Bye for now!