A Goat Farm Visit - no ifs or butts!

St Helen’s Farm goat milk products are now firmly established in the dairy aisles of all UK supermarkets . On June 19th, a dozen members and partners - having lunched together at the nearby Oaks Golf Club - had the privilege of a conducted tour  of the operation at Seaton Ross by Angus who with his wife Kathleen founded the business in 1986.

The development of the  fully automated , computer controlled pasteurising  and packaging  process has been truly international with machinery sourced from Japan, Germany  Italy and most recently, Turkey .

It was fascinating to see through the windows of a totally enclosed sterile environment  machine cartons being filled at the rate of 60 every minute , packaged  and stacked by robots onto pallets without human intervention.

But the best part of the visit was seeing the  care applied to the well-being of the goats  as we followed them through the stages from birth to motherhood and then to milk production .  Each goat has an embedded chip  enabling the development of an individual  record of its ancestry ,development ,health and output.

This had led to the  creation of their own hybrid breed internationally   designated  in 2017 as The Yorkshire Dairy Goat now very much in demand all over the world. 

The final  stage in the visit was the milking parlour where  scores of goats with full udders were queuing anxiously to get into individual locations on a 76 pen carousel  needing only one person to attach the automatic milking device. A memorable conclusion to a visit to this  family owned very successful Yorkshire business that daily provides dairy products to supermarkets throughout the UK

by Frank Paterson

Their range of Goats Milk - and cheeses and yoghurts - were all delicious and we went away with plenty of samples!!