White Savanna goats add meat to beef enterprise

Desmond Siteti, the Agricultural Research Council's Eastern Cape emerging beef farmer for 2021, believes that his flock of white Savanna goats is the perfect complement to his beef operation near Makhanda in the Eastern Cape.

- Mike Burgess

Desmond Siteti’s herd of almost 80 Bonsmara breeding females run side by side with a small flock of Savanna goats (35 mature ewes) that capitalise on the browsing potential of the 500ha mixed-veld farm, Tower Hill, near Makhanda, while also generating crucial cashflow. ‘’It is a good balance to have goats on the farm with my cattle,’’ says Siteti, aged 69. “They browse a lot, manage bush encroachment, and reach parts of the farm the cattle can’t while providing a valuable source of cashflow to handle expenses including lick supplements that have gone up, like petrol.’’

GETTING GOING WITH GOATS 

Siteti grew up on a commercial farm in the Makhanda district, where his father, Thompson, tended to a flock of goats, a job Siteti was more than willing to help with after school.

In the 1970s, the Siteti family relocated to nearby Pikoli in the then Ciskei where Siteti and his brother, Metford, managed a flock of Mbuzi-type goats and some cattle on communal land. However, by the late 1970s Siteti left Pikoli for the mines of the Witwatersrand (before his departure he committed to travelling back home as often as he could), while Metford continued to manage the livestock in Pikoli.

CAPITAL 

Siteti spent almost four decades on the Witwatersrand, mainly in the processing division of the Gold One Group, and contributed significant amounts of capital to the Pikoli-based livestock initiative.

As early as 1982, for example, Boer goat rams were purchased for the Mbuzi-type ewes. The brothers were deeply impressed by the conformation of the crossbred offspring and Siteti still runs a flock of 60 Boer goat-type ewes in Pikoli.