A wise old sage once told us that the only way to to find out if a fence will keep your goats in is to throw a bucket of water against it. He said, "If any of the water gets through, then so will your goats." Well, he was right. Within 24 hours, six of our seven goats found an opening and headed off for parts unknown.

Next, we learned that stray dogs will kill goats. We had also been told that a good donkey would protect the goat herd. We figured that if one donkey was good, then two would be even better. We figured wrong. The two donkeys found one another to be better companions than a bunch of pointy-headed goats. We now have one donkey.

Every day we worked with our goats we learned that we had much more to learn about raising them. In the Spring of 2005, a pack of four dogs slaughtered 21 of our animals over a two week period. We were left with just seven young kids, six does and one buck. A different twist to the lesson learned during our very first experience with goats is that not only must the fence around your property hold your goats in, it must also keep dogs out.

In October of 2005, we introduced a registered, full blood, Boer buck, Ricardo, into our herd from Bedford Meadows Boer Goats in Waco. He was the rebirth of our goat farming enterprise. We now raise Boer Full Blood, American Purebred and percentages for breeding stock and show. On the 4th of July 2008 a red, full blood buck, Marmaduke, was added to the herd from the Yes Mam Farm in Burnet. Always wanting to produce high quality animals, we made the decision to add CODI genetics to our herd. We bought Red Hawk from Memory Acres Boer Goat Ranch in Howe. He will be bred to some special does in the Spring of 2010 for fall kids.

You may have noticed the unusual names we give the animals. Each year we have a theme, for instance 2006 was singers, 2007 cartoon characters, 2008 presidents and their wives and for 2009, candy. With that knowledge the names aren't all that unusual, now are they? We bred 12 does with our bucks, Marmaduke and Ricky, for Spring 2010 kids, the result was 25 beautiful kids. The name theme for 2010 is "Gemstones and Minerals", a suggestion made by the Eickenloff brothers, two very bright young men we met last Spring.