About Us
We are committed to offering our customers truly natural products that benefit their health and wellbeing.
Local farms. Local plants. Local pride.
To fulfill our commitment of producing farm fresh 100% Canadian goat dairy products, Happy Days Dairies uses 3 processing plants and has 6 dairy farmers under contract in British Columbia and Alberta. We are Western Canada’s Goat Dairy. The processing plants are located nearby our family farms, ensuring all fresh goat milk is processed immediately.
Happy Days takes pride in keeping our operations local in the communities we serve, ensuring the freshest and highest quality goat milk products make it to market. Our operations are set up with sustainability in mind — we minimize the distance our products need to travel to reach the store shelf, helping reduce our carbon footprint and impact on the environment. Happy Days processes all goat milk dairy products with the utmost professionalism, care and knowledge. Each plant must pass rigorous inspections by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). Goat milk, like all milk, is very sensitive, and careful processing practices are extremely important to maintain product quality controls.
We are committed to producing the highest quality goat dairy products for both humans and pets. We take the utmost care of the animals that supply us with their milk. We produce, handle and transport our products in the least invasive way possible. We are committed to offering our customers truly natural products that benefit their health and wellbeing.
Donat Koller, Founder
Happy Goats. Honest Products.
All of Happy Days goat milk products are guaranteed free of antibiotics and growth hormones. All batches go through multiple testing to ensure purity. There are no artificial additives used at all.
Our committed and motivated dairy farmers take very good care of their animals to produce the highest quality goat milk every day. Our goats are humanely treated and have access to clean fresh air and water. All our goats live in open air barns with access to the outdoors at their leisure, weather permitting, as they don’t like to venture out when it’s cold or too hot. The barns are clean and the goats are all together in large open areas with straw or shaving bedding. The goats’ diet is a nutritious year-round diet of natural alfalfa hay (up to 90% of total diet), and a grain ration.
They are happy goats and you can really taste the difference in our products! The consistent care and routine of our herds ensures consistency in the taste of the milk. Most folks who try our goat milk for the first time are extremely surprised how good it tastes. There is no “goaty taste” with our goat milk — only a clean, smooth, bright and very delicious taste.
Our pet products are produced according to the same high standards as our regular products. We use raw milk to keep all the original goodness of our goat, sheep and buffalo milk in the product. We only use the best natural ingredients to give variety to our pet products.
We take pride in keeping our operations local in the communities we serve, ensuring the freshest and highest quality goat milk products make it to market. All of Happy Days goat milk products — human and pet — are guaranteed free of antibiotics and growth hormones. All batches go through multiple testing to ensure purity. There are no artificial additives in any of our products.
Our History
From a Swiss farm boy’s passion for cheese, to Western Canada’s Goat Dairy — three chapters that built Happy Days.
A Swiss farm boy’s passion for cheese.
Happy Days Goat Dairy was founded in 1993 by Donat Koller and his family. Raised on a small family farm in rural Switzerland, Donat knew from a young age that he wanted to farm. He graduated from Agricultural College and took up work farming in Australia and Switzerland — it was back home, while milking cows and goats on a dairy farm, that Donat began experimenting with cheese and realized his true passion.
After making the famous “Swiss Cheeses” at several Swiss cheese plants, Donat enrolled in Cheesemaking College, graduating in 1993. With opportunities for cheesemakers scarce in tiny Switzerland, he emigrated to Canada with his wife that July, leasing a small vacant dairy farm in Salmon Arm, BC. That year, Happy Days Dairies opened for business with a herd of 70 goats, a mobile processing plant, and approval from the BC Government to sell across the province.
Oh, Happy Day…
The name Happy Days Dairies was inspired by Donat’s wife Jasmine, who would sing the gospel song “Oh, Happy Day” with her family at church — and after meeting Jasmine, Donat was known to sing it once in a while too! Jasmine’s father was a very engaging Minister and her mother a fantastic gospel singer, together bringing American-style gospel music to the very traditional Swiss churches.
“Oh, Happy Day” has been sung by many different musicians over the years, and was even a Billboard hit in the 1950’s with a non-gospel version of the song that was very popular with teens at the time.
Meanwhile, back on the farm…
Business was going well, and people were welcoming of the new goat milk product line — accounts were set up all over BC’s Okanagan valley with independent grocers, specialty food stores and grocery chains. Donat bought his own property and built a permanent processing plant, selling his herd of goats to a local Salmon Arm farmer who became the first Happy Days goat dairy supplier.
The larger plant earned CFIA approval, opening the market for Happy Days products across Canada and then Western Canada. To keep meeting demand and stay true to being a local producer, an additional plant was set up in Ponoka, AB. Today, the goat dairy industry is growing in Canada like never before, and Happy Days Dairies is committed to producing the highest quality, 100% Canadian, pure and natural goat dairy products.