It is not your average family business, but the Mannions have found great success mustering feral goats on a large scale.

The day starts at 4:30am as an outback sunrise is breaking the horizon.

The kettle is on in the farmhouse kitchen and 20 or so kelpies are being loaded into a truck ready for the job ahead.

Michelle Mannion is packing "smoko" and lunch for about 15 staff and family.

When daylight breaks, another Mannion will check the new chopper; the two small green gyrocopters will be wheeled out of their hangar.

These kelpies play a key role in mustering the goats. ( Landline: Tony Hill )

It is just another work day for the extended Mannion family — Paul and Michelle, and their three adult sons, Philip, Denis and Nick — who are making a very nice living from mustering feral goats.

"We're just like a shearing team, but a contract goat mustering team," Michelle says from the shady verandah of the homestead at Nundora station, about 200 kilometres north of Broken Hill.

"We're passionate about it."

"It must be in our blood because we all do it — the whole family does it," Paul said.

They have a circuit of dozens of properties they muster.

Customers come to them and the Mannions, charge a fee based on a percentage of the number of goats they catch and the price the abattoir is paying.

It is a business model which now supports four families — Michelle and Paul's three sons are all married with young children of their own.

"That's what they live on, and they have a good living I think," Paul said.

"But it's kept them at home too and in the area," adds Michelle, "which is nice to have young people still working in the area."

Paul and Michelle Mannion's business model now supports four families. ( Landline: Tony Hill )

All three boys were encouraged to complete apprenticeships when they left school, but goats were more lucrative than any of their trades, so they came back home, learned how to fly and last year lashed out on a new helicopter.

When Landline visits the family has been commissioned by the Beven family, about 100 kilometres down the Silver City Highway, to push feral goats out of the Barrier Ranges, and round them up into temporary yards, ready for trucking to an abattoir.

The family and their regular bunch of long-term staff tackle the muster with the calm precision of a team which has done this many times before.

The Mannion family have made a living off mustering feral goats. ( Landline: Tony Hill )

In the air, with youngest brother Nick at the helm, the helicopter presses the straggly small groups of goats out of the ranges; the gyrocopters get in low and six motorbike riders on the ground tear up the rocky, red dusty soil, pressing the animals out from behind trees and corralling them towards the growing mob.

Although the aircraft and the bikes are flashy and dramatic, it is actually the dizzying display from the dogs that Mr Mannion says are the team's secret weapon.

"We couldn't do it without the dogs," he said.

Two kelpies sit on each dirt bike. One on the handle bars, the other on the seat behind the rider, somehow managing to grip on while bouncing along at breakneck speed.

On command they leap off the bike and circle the incoming goats.

Mrs Mannion is in charge of "fresh dogs".

Helicopters, motorbikes and dogs are used to get the goats out of the ranges. ( Landline: Prue Adams )

When the working dogs become tired, a new batch is dispatched to take over.

When the goats are yarded, they are counted and on many properties in outback New South Wales, the male goats or billies are sent to the meatworks, while many of the females are kept for fenced-off breeding.

The Mannions are experimenting with such a semi-managed herd, but their main game is definitely the mustering.

The price of goat meat hit a record high in August this year, rising to $7.50 a kilogram, meaning each goat was worth up to $100.

"It was good, very good," Paul said.

"And it kept us very busy because everybody wanted that [money] at the time."

The Mannions say the dogs are their secret weapon. ( Landline: Tony Hill )

The industry is worth around $200 million and is driven largely by international demand.

In 2016, 66 per cent of the processed Australian goat meat was exported to the United States, where the Latin population is particularly partial to the meat.

The Goat Industry Council president Rick Gates, refers to the Mannion family as "self-made".

"They started with nothing, you know," he said.

Mr Gates maintains the Mannions really pioneered the mustering on such a large scale, although there are many others who have also mostly abandoned farming "traditional" stock, to muster goats.

Paul and Michelle's main game was Merino sheep and Angus cattle and they still run their wool and beef enterprise.

But it is the goats that have set them up financially.