After exhibiting her wares she came home to Wylies Flat with a swag of ribbons including the best udder in the dairy goat classes.

A well bred Saanen doe Miss Kitty is jointly owned by local breeder Alex Berry, Banfield Park/Down Udder dairy goat studs and former Singleton resident Lynda Coffey, Tamworth.

Alex literally took a truck load of goats to the Royal showing 63 head in only his second time in Sydney and winning two best of breeds in the Anglo Nubian and Australian Melaan sections.

The drought in 2007 and a drastic cut in water allocations promoted Alex and his family to look at alternative income to their traditional Holstein dairy herd.

Goats looked promising as they didn’t require the irrigated pastures of a cow to produce milk and they would fit in with the dairy’s labour requirements.

Four years later and the property now supports a herd of 140 milking goats made up of six different breeds producing 3200 litres per week.

All the milk is sold to Binnorie Dairy, Cessnock owned by Simon Gough.

Binnorie specialises in soft cheeses which are sold throughout Australia and locally through their retail outlet at Tuscany Wine Estate.

“The goats have provided us with a sustainable weekly income and that is important for a farming operation,”said Alex.

“In addition to the milk sales we export live females to countries including Malaysia, Taiwan and Turkey where they are used to improve the local dairy herd genetics.

“Sri Lanka is looking to take its first shipment once the export protocols are established.”

Among the other major ribbons to be won by Banfield Park include champion Toggenburg goatling and this female went onto win the all breeds reserve junior champion ribbon.

One of the problems of exhibiting goats is they can get easily bored down in the big smoke and to pass the time of day some of them decided its was okay to chew on their own winning ribbons.