Mixed Milk and Meat Farm: A Step-by-Step Throf Setup Guide

This guide is for the owner of a mixed farm who milks part of the females, usually goats and sometimes ewes, sells the milk or uses it at home, and keeps the rest of the females for lambs and kids while fattening the males for market and Eid. With Throf you group animals by purpose, see the cost and income of each group, and find out which line really pays.

Mixed farms are very common in the Gulf: milk brings money almost daily, live sales bring larger amounts in the seasons. The trouble starts when both share one pen and one notebook, and nobody can say whether the milkers cover their cost or the fattening males carry the farm.

The mixed farm at a glance

Details of each plan are on the plans page. If almost all your income is milk, the guide for dairy goat and sheep farms fits you better.

What you need to track

• Milk per milking female: to know who earns her place in the milking group and who should move to breeding or be sold.
• Weight gain of the fattening group: average daily gain, and which males are ready to sell before Eid.
• Mating, pregnancy and births: so you have fresh milkers and lambs or kids of the right age for Eid at the same time.
• Feed per group: milkers and fattening males need a richer ration than dry females and replacements, and this is where most money leaks.
• Expenses and sales per group: to work out the net profit of the milk line and the meat line separately.
• Health: udder checks on milkers, vaccinations following your vet's or the local authority's schedule, and isolation when needed.

Step-by-step roadmap

1. Day one: create groups by purpose. In Throf, create groups (pens) with clear names: "Milking", "Breeding females", "Fattening", "Replacements", "Breeding males", plus "Isolation". One animal, one purpose at a time. Ideas for the layout are in our guide to organising pens and groups.
2. Day one: add the animals. If you have a list, use the Excel import; otherwise add them from the phone with number and tag colour, breed, sex, birth date, mother, father and group. Automatic classification by age and sex sorts young stock, adults, mothers and breeding males for you.
3. Day two: set the stages. Give each animal its stage: pregnant, close to birth, lactating, drying-off, fattening, breeding male. You can change the stage of a whole group at once.
4. First week: record starting weights. Weigh the fattening group once and record it.
5. First week: add workers and permissions. One account per worker, with permissions that match the job: the milker records milk, the feeder records meals, and only you see finance. Assign daily tasks from the app.
6. First week: link expenses to groups. When you record a feed or treatment expense, link it to the group that used it. Each animal's cost starts from its purchase price or production cost, then expenses add up.
7. Every day: milk and feed. Workers record milk per animal or per session, the meals of each group, feed taken from stock in kg, and water.
8. Every week: fattening weights and health checks. Weigh the fattening group, check the milkers' udders, and record any treatment or isolation. Reminders warn you before vaccinations are due.
9. Every week: open the feed-conversion dashboard. On Gold and above it shows average daily weight gain and the animals whose weight changed most, up or down.
10. Every month: finance per group. Open the finance report scoped to the milking group, then to the fattening group. Compare income and expenses for each line, and check the milk dashboard for production.
11. At sale time: record each sale per animal. Every male sold is recorded with its price, and the finance dashboard updates total sales, total expenses and net profit. You can share a buyer-version PDF of the animal with the buyer.
12. Every season: plan breeding. Record natural or artificial insemination per group and follow pregnancies and births in breeding tracking, so you get new milkers and young males that grow in time for Eid.
13. Every season: select. Using milk and weight reports, move low-yielding does from milking to breeding or sale, and keep replacement females from mothers with good records.

A fixed routine

Example: milking group vs fattening group

The figures below are invented round numbers for illustration only, not market averages. What matters is the method of comparison.

Fattening income comes in lumps, often in the Eid month, so compare both lines over a full season; Throf gives the same report for any period.

Common mistakes on mixed farms

• Milkers and breeding females in one pen: dry females eat the costly milking ration. Fix: a separate milking group, and move does to drying-off, then to breeding, when their milking period ends.
• Feed recorded for the whole farm: both lines then look the same. Fix: record meals and expenses against the group that used them.
• Judging the meat line on a month with no sales: Fix: review the finance report over a whole season, from birth to the Eid sale.
• Leaving mating to chance: births spread out, so you get neither enough milkers nor males of the right age for Eid. Fix: a planned mating season counted back from Eid, remembering that pregnancy is about 147 days in ewes and 150 in does, and that Eid comes about 11 days earlier each year.
• Double work in a notebook and an app: Fix: one record in Throf; workers record in the pen, you review on your phone or the web app.

If you also buy extra animals to fatten and sell alongside your own, the guide for the livestock trader who buys and sells shows how to follow each purchased batch.

When to move to the next stage

• You pass about 800 head, or you have more than 4 workers who need their own accounts and permissions.
• Several mating seasons a year and too many pens to follow from a phone alone.
• You need regular reports for a partner, a lender or a farm manager who runs things for you.

Then the setup for a commercial farm of about 1,000 head fits better, and above 840 head the Throf team prepares a custom offer through WhatsApp, on +966 920033734 or from the plans page. To see every profile in one place, go back to the guide on which Throf setup fits your farm.