By Ulla Skovsbøl

Hundreds of black goats swarm around the visitors as the agricultural scientists of the SOLID project approach the Pérez Family Farm in the Andalusian countryside outside Granada on for a farm visit.

José Luis Perez Peula and his brother Antonio Perez Peula  run the farm with two milkers and a an elderly goat herd, while his daughter Belén is in charge of the farm dairy producing a delicious goat cheese using 20 percent of the milk produced on farm  by his daughter Belen Peréz Peula  – the rest is delivered to the local dairy.

The Pereéz Family farm has been involved in the project as a case farm and the owners have tested new low-input feeding strategies based on by-products in cooperation with scientists from the Animal Nutrition Institute at the research institution CSIC in Granada.

Started as a teenager

The two brothers grew up on the farm, and José Luis Pérez Peula is happy to be able to continue working the family farm.

“When I was fourteen years old I started working with my father.  We were sitting in the shade of the olive trees and milking the goats by hand. I had to milk 200 goats once a day by hand,” he remembers.

It was hard work, but he liked it and he has never regretted following in his father´s foot steps. Yet, the farm has changed a lot since he was a teenager.

The family now cultivates 400 hectares of land with  grain, cauliflower, a mixture of oats and barley meant for hay and and also with more extensive pastures for 1200 Murciano Granacina goats.

Benefit from feeding by-products

The farm has benefitted from being involved in the SOLID project. The Pérez were already using by-products before being involved in cooperation with the animal nutritionists from Granada, but the experts have helped improve their feeding strategy. They now use waste from the cauliflower fields in a more efficient way than before.

“Cauliflower is rich in protein – 25 per cent in the fruit and 12 per cent in the leaves,”  David R. Yañez-Ruiz,  animal nutritionist  at CSIC and involved in the SOLID project.

“Based on estimation of daily intake of the by-product the farmer was advised to reduce concentrate supply to animals by 25 per cent during the period that animals had access to the by-product. This represented a significant reduction in feeding costs without compromising milk production at all,” he says.

Facts about the farm

• Area: 400 ha
• Crops: Grain, cauliflower, oats and barley for hay, grass, extensive pastures
• Goats: 1200 Murciano Granacina
• Lactation: Eight month (250 days).
• Milking frequency: Twice a day
• Yield: 2.5 kg per goat per day on average
• Milk composition: 5 % fat, 3 % protein
• Cheese: 20 % of the milk used for on farm cheese production

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SOLID visit to the Peréz Family Farm – May 2015

Based on research from the SOLID project Spanish nutritionists recommend Mediterranean  farmers to apply a low input strategy using by-products from the olive- and greenhouse industry as feed for dairy goats.

By Ulla Skovsbøl

Tomato salad with rich olive oil is a simple but delicious dish on the Mediterranean dining table. But tomatoes and olives are not only suited for the human diet  – silages made out of waste from the olive and tomato industries have also proved to be an attractive feed for dairy goats.

Within the SOLID project the scientists at the Animal Nutrition Institute at the research institution CSIC in Granada have tested a broad range of by-products fit for husbandry production on low input farms.

In particular, leaves and pulp from the olive oil industry and wasted fruits from the intensive greenhouse production – primarily tomatoes – appeared to be promising as goat feed.

Both types of products were fed as silage and tested in vitro as well as in vivo at the institute and also on case study farms. Silage made out of tomato waste mixed with straw and barley appears to be very well suited for feeding ruminants, although the challenge is the high moisture of the tomatoes.

Olives in tomatoes for dinner

The tomato and barley silage has a moderate content of protein and provides good energy for dairy goats. However, Spanish goats are not used to silage, and thus often reluctant to eat it – contrary to what is popularly believed, goats are quite conservative when it comes to new types of feed, David R. Yáñez-Ruiz, nutritionist at CSIC, explains.

Also olive leaves mixed with both barley and olive pulp turned out to suit the small ruminant very well. The pulp cannot be fed separately as it is too wet, but the dry leaves can balance the silage, and olive silage proved to be a valid replacement for medium quality hay. The energy content (from the remaining olive oil in the pulp)  is higher, but the olive silage contains less protein compared to hay.

The project has tried to identify the ideal composition of the silage made out of by-products and has developed specific recommendations for the farmers:

The ideal Mediterranean by-product silage

• Olive-silage: 50 % olive pulp, 25 % olive leaves, 25 % barley.
• Tomato-silage: 85 % tomatoes, 15 % straw

Although, silage made out of by-products proved to suit the small ruminants well, the farmers turned out to be as skeptical as the goats when it came to using it, as silage is not commonly used in the region.

However, when the goat farmers saw the positive results, they changed their minds, and even more so when it appeared that they could save money using the by-product silage.

Low-input a promising strategy in the South

In general David R. Yáñez-Ruiz is very satisfied with the out-come of the research conducted within the SOLID project in Spain.

“In my opinion, the low input aspects are the most important, in particular in Southern Spain,” he says.

“Organic systems are quite well-defined, whereas low-input farming is more vaguely defined and therefore in general complicated to address. But in particular, in Southern Spain the perspectives of using by-products to much larger extent are quite promising.”

“In Spain, we have to differentiate between North and South. In the North they have sufficient pastures and grass available, and farmers can “afford” to run low-input farming, whereas it is more difficult to run a farm with less input in the dry Southern part of the country,” he explains.

However, during the last years, the interest in low-input farming has increased even in the South:

“During the last years, prices have been going up on feed, fertilizers and all other farm input. Therefore, more farmers are going back to less intensive farming strategies with lower inputs to reduce the costs of production. And under these circumstances, our research appears to be even more useful,” David R. Yáñez-Ruiz concludes.

The SOLID activities at CSIC, Granada

• Developed sustainability assessment tool based on data from various farms.
• Held meetings with farmers in order to identify their needs for advisory services.
• Conducted a number of experiments with different by-products and analysed the sustainability of these products as animal feed

The farm has been involved in the participatory research conducted by the Animal Nutrition Institute at CSIC in Granada aimed at finding the means to reduce livestock feeding costs as part of the SOLID project.

Apparently, the goats also enjoyed being involved in SOLID, in particular as it implied new and interesting diets such as self-service dinner in the cauliflower field, humorously documented on the video.  They also tested silage made with waste from the tomato and olive industries but self-service cauliflowers was the winner!

Read more about the tomato and olive silage

…. and watch a video about feeding goats with byproducts.