Purity Mbae Musyoka, the co-founder and director of the farm at Banga-Mpatta in Mukono district, says when constructing houses for goats, they should be raised on stands, allowing the droppings and urine to pass through. Also, the droppings should be collected daily.
She says at her farm, “The houses that have the mature goats and the kids (one day to five months), are raised. This allows workers to collect the droppings. We also constructed channels through which the urine flows to the collecting tank that has a capacity of 600 litres, from which it is pumped to the tanks, then transported to the gardens loaded on our tractors to be used as fertilizer.”
Mbae says dairy goats are highly susceptible to infections. For this, they need a lot of care, especially regarding hygiene and cleanliness because even their own urine causes infections to them.
“It is, therefore, important that you keep the houses clean and dry always,” she says.
Mbae adds that these goats are disturbed by cough, flu, and worms and a farmer must have drugs ready to treat the sick goat as soon as possible, because dairy goats can die in just hours.
“Our goats are sprayed every month to ensure they don’t have parasitic insects like ticks and fleas that are spread by rodents,” she says.
The housing
Mbae says the goats are rough and will always fight each other, especially if they did not grow up together from a young age.
“For this, we have three structure designs on the farm. In the first design, the house is raised from the ground and each goat has its partition since we bought them from different farms when they were mature. These are between five months and one year,” she says.
However, they discovered that this design was expensive. So, the second is a dormitory setup housing goats of eight months to two years in one unit and because they grow together, they are friendly to each other.
