Document type : article by Reporterre
Author : Inès Léraud
Preview: Jean-Yves Ruelloux is a goat farmer and cheese producer from Priziac in the Morbihan area, who has been following traditional practices for fifteen years. Having observed the exhaustion of labour, he has gradually revolutionised his working methods [...] Jean-Yves began by experimenting with continuous milking for some of his herd, avoiding the need for further births. The success of the experiment led him to extend this approach to his entire herd. It has meant that, since 2005, his goats only have to give birth only once in their lives, after which they enter into a state of "continuous lactation", for as many as twelve consecutive years.
Over time, Jean-Yves Ruelloux says he has discovered many advantages to this practice:
- most veterinary interventions are required, as in all farms, at the end of gestation, parturition, or if there is a sudden onset of mastitis after parturition. Now that this last has almost disappeared from his farm, he has seen great improvements in his goats' health and he has saved money. As a bonus, he no longer needs to take kids to the abattoir;
- the average age of the herd is higher than on conventional farms, meaning that social relationships between the goats are longstanding, allowing older animals to pass on their experience to younger ones and making the herd calmer in general;
- since Jean-Yves Ruelloux's goats are no longer pregnant, they give milk all year round, even in winter. The annual milk production per goat is thus higher than on a traditional farm.
Reducing the herd to become autonomous
With the gain in milk volumes, and having completed repayments of his bank loans, Jean-Yves could decide to reduce the number of his goats to fifteen. The practice of continuous lactation combined with the small herd size enabled him to achieve autonomy on his farm:
- he can milk by hand, which [...] allows him to avoid outlay on a milking parlour and an electric milking machine, saving still more on operating costs;
- he uses only leaves, brambles, grass and a little wheat bran bought from his neighbouring farmer-baker as feed for his goats;
- by selling his cheeses directly (at 2.60 euros each) at one weekly and one fortnightly market, this model allows Jean-Yves Ruelloux to generate a good basic net income each month, without having to apply for Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies [...]
- last, he is able to keep his older goats "in retirement" until their natural deaths. [...] Jean-Yves Ruelloux's story has [...] attracted the attention of several veterinarians. His farm is now being watched by Aziliz Klapper, whose practice is in the northern part of the Finistère area [...]. She emphasises that continuous lactation is just one of several ways to alleviate animal suffering and avoid wasting the lives of young animals in the dairy industry, citing cases where the kids remain on the farm, are not fed with powdered milk, or are even raised under their mothers. [...] For his part, Michel Bouy, who practices as a veterinarian in the Drôme area, has been supporting several farms that have been experimenting with continuous lactation for a year. During this Lactodouce programme, he has observed the natural production of milk by goats that have never been pregnant. This phenomenon has also been observed in the past two years by Robert Episse, a goat farmer from the Ardèche who opted for long lactation in 2020, and by Jean-Yves Ruelloux, who humorously refers to it as"immaculate lactation". The world of low-tech dairy farming is undoubtedly only at the beginning of its road of discovery.
Podcast on the same subject broadcast in the Les Pieds sur terre series of programmes on October 24, 2022 (28 min) : Un chevrier qui fait des émules
