The adult dairy nanny is going to cost $801 a year in capital (cost of capital 3.75% x $400 purchase price over 60 months = $8/month or $96/yr), feed (3 pounds a day x 10 cents/lb = $12/mth or $144/yr), medicine/vet (CDT, Worming, 'Today', 'Tomorrow', balm, teat spray, etc). Our Vet bills seem to stay north of $250 a month for the seven years we been doing this with an average herd size of 100. Lets make it $2.50 a month for med/vet. Abundio and his wife Carmela milk and feed in the morning for $21 and Carmela milks only in the evening for $14. Tommy our neighbor has a ten stall milking parlor and pipeline system. He milks 70 goats in three hours single handed. Using $35/day x 30days divided by 50 nannies gives us $21/mth labor just for the milking operation. We currently only milk half that number but Abundio and Carmela milk four days a week and we share the pain on Friday, Sunday and Monday. Our labor cost doubles to $42/mth and if we pay ourselves $6/hour we can uncover an infinity of chores to drive us out-of-business sooner. Langston University and an Arkansas study came up with $1.78/gal cost of production. If I use $21 for monthly labor my per gallon cost is $537/300gals = $1.79. $663/300gals = $2.21. What is really scary is divide your cost of living (goats, people, mortgage, utilities, truck payment) by the number of milking nannies. Our breakeven experience: $120,000/yr/50 nannies/300gal/each = $4.80. Again we currently milk only 25 nannies, making our fully loaded per gallon cost $9.60.

 Each adult doe or nanny is going to cost us at least $537 and most probably $663/year. You can sell the raw milk as a grade 'B' dairy to "Lone Star Cheese" for $3/gal. Raw milk that Lone Star will sell as Ultra-Pasteurized fluid milk in the store, requires a Grade 'A' license and brings $3.40/gal. Raw goat's milk sold for 'Pet Use Only" to dog, horse, exotic animal breeders and adventurous health food consumers goes for $5/gal. Because we live in Texas we can get a grade 'A' raw dairy license and legally sell raw fluid milk to the consumer only on our farm - not in the store or off premises. White Egret www.whiteegretfarm.com in Austin, TX, got on www.realmilk.com before us and sell raw goat's milk for $3.75/quart and $7.50/half gallon, which equates to $15/gal. Before we had our grade 'A' raw license we sold to the brave and adventurous for $8/gal. Now after $2,000 (an annual charge) we sell fluid on the farm for $10 and frozen in town for $12/gal. The following chart illustrates operation expense and revenue for 25 Saanen nannies producing 300 gallons each.