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Edward Lenehan is one of the only pedigree goat breeders with an eligible health status to export from Ireland to some European countries.
Last week, 10 of his goats set a new milestone for Irish-bred exports as they began their journey to Poland.
Lenehan has been breeding pedigree goats for 33 years and now specialises in male British Saanen, British Toggenburg and Anglo-Nubian goats, with currently 80 in his herd.
Although the goat farming sector is still rather small in Ireland, he hopes that the abundance of products will improve demand for small scale producers.
“The market can be very volatile. Our tastes have changed, we are more into goats’ cheese and that,” he said.
“There were these commercial farms setting up so I saw a demand for pedigree males going into these herds to improve milk yields and components.”
Meanwhile, he added that the Irish market is reliant on only one main co-op to supply milk to.
“It’s all dependant on one processor, Glenisk. If they ever went under then there would be no one else there.”
Health export status
Lenehan earned his high health export status from being involved in the Department’s scrapie testing scheme.
More recently he has also joined a necessary scheme to monitor the herd for TB.
He has also been restricted that he can only buy goats from farms with the same status.
The extra work needed to gain this status has left Lenehan frustrated that some goats are allegedly illegally transported between Northern Ireland and the Republic without these checks.
“There are goats going north and south all the time and that’s illegal.
“To send a goat to the north, you must send it with a health certificate and I can do that but unfortunately, with no border, that doesn’t happen all the time.”
Originally, most EU goat farms, including Lenehan’s, sourced their replacements and breeding males from the UK but since Brexit and the prevalence of bluetongue, this has been limited.
Bluetongue
Due to Lenehan previously importing British goats yearly, he now has a great source of high-quality Irish-bred UK breeds which have been noticed by European farmers through social media and breeder groups.
He has previously exported goats to the Netherlands.
Lenehan believes that Ireland has a great health status for exporting livestock.
“We’ve kept bluetongue out so far, we’re caprine arthritis encephalitis (CAE) free so Ireland has a pretty good standard of health when it comes to goats and I think that’s why people in Europe are looking to here now.”
Genetics of choice
Lenehan chose these breeds of goats due to their milk production characteristics. The Saanen and Toggenburg can produce a large proportion of milk while the Nubian produces a very high-quality milk for cheesemaking.
Primarily, he produces breeding male goats of high health and high genetic merit status mainly for the Irish market but last week’s export could be the start of more international business.
He said his system of AI has a high conception rate.
Lenehan added that he has no intentions of growing the farm as he likes to focus on the genetics of the goats he has.
“I do this as a passion. I’ve done it for 30 years and I’ll it for as long more as I can.”
Goat census returns for 2023 show that there were 7,303 goats kept in 1,075 registered goat herds at the end of December.
Numbers were down 21% or 1,900 head on December 2022. It is the lowest number of goats recorded over the last 11 years. Goat numbers peaked in 2015 at 10,796 head.
Last year 371 goat farmers declared that they had no goats at the time of the census and of those, 74 declared that they would not be re-entering goat farming in 2024.
The highest number of goats were kept in Tipperary where 708 goats were recorded in the county and it was followed by Cork with 592.
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