Strathbogie Goat’s Linda McKenzie breeding Boer goats at Mangalore

Linda McKenzie had bred cattle, but never goats when she took on a herd of Boers. Find out how the Mangalore breeder has adapted her business this year.

Say hello: Boer goat kids at Linda McKenzie’s Mangalore property. Picture: Chloe Smith.

NORMALLY going out to check the herd is a pretty quick job for Strathbogie Goat’s Linda McKenzie.

But with kidding season just finished, she has a bit of fun watching the baby goats playing.

“It takes me a very long time to check the stock at the moment, especially on a sunny day,” she says.

Linda runs Boer goats at Mangalore, north of Seymour. Buying the 80ha property six years ago had initially been a compromise between living in the country, while also staying close to Melbourne airport — Linda’s husband, Peter, travels overseas for work, and two of their four children live interstate.

While livestock had been part of Swan Hill-born Linda’s life before — her dad had been a shearer, and Linda and Peter had previously bred Charolais cattle — goats were something new.

“When we got out here there were Boer goats on the property and the couple were retiring into a caravan to travel around Australia. And she said, ‘what will I do with my goats?’ and we said ‘we’ll buy them off you’. And that was it.”

Although Linda has been selling goats for six years, it is only in the past 18 months that she started growing the Strathbogie Goat brand as a premium source of Boer goat meat, successfully applying for last year’s MLA collaborative marketing program.

She initially aimed to slaughter 10 goats a month, year round, producing a 22kg carcass.

Linda McKenzie. Picture: Chloe Smith.

Linda’s herd is currently about 160 with the kids, but normally hovers around 100. Pre-COVID she was selling Strathbogie Goat meat wholesale, to about six customers around the Strathbogie and surrounding regions.

“I didn’t want to do retail, I just wanted to develop an identity for the Strathbogie region for producing goat meat because we’ve got the right soil,” she says.

“It grows the type of food the goats need. I’ve got half pasture and half scrub and 30 per cent of their diet needs to be small browse. So it’s a product we can produce without having to put in a lot of inputs.”

However, COVID-19 hit Linda’s business with a “big, big bang” — she had just slaughtered 12 animals when hospitality venues were forced to close their doors.

She received funding from MLA to develop retail products and social marketing plans, and worked with a local butcher, Taurus Fine Meats and Smokehouse Seymour, to develop a line of goat meat products including rolled loin and cutlets, as well as burgers and sausages.

Picture: Chloe Smith.

“It has been fairly popular. We’re probably doing $1000 month so we’re not talking big figures here, but going nought to $1000 involved a big social media campaign,” she says.

“I’ve got recipe leaflets on the counter in there, I run a social media campaign where I publish some of my own recipes and we gave it a red-hot go … and it worked. But it’s something I find if I don’t keep up with the postings it really drops off. I need to keep refreshing people’s memories of goat, goat, goat.”

Another win for Linda has been the decision to join the Click For Vic campaign, after some initial doubts.

“What I was doing in a month I’d do on a week on there. I shop there as well because some of the producers buy from me and I thought I really should share the love,” she says.

Linda says she loves the Boer goats for their calm temperament. There are now four bloodlines in her own herd, and she buys in wethers from three other bloodlines from registered breeders to make up her slaughter number. “It’s about promoting the Boer goat meat brand as well as Strathbogie Goat,” she says.

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