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.

We have adopted a different approach to herd management. Many breeders will change out their herd sires to avoid inbreeding. We have elected to keep multiple herd sires. We presently have three, with a fourth "in training". Using this approach we are able to keep the best of our doelings as breeding does ending the inbreeding concern.

You may have noticed the unusual names we give the animals. Each year we have a theme for their names, 2006 was singers, 2007 cartoon characters, 2008 presidents and their wives, 2009 candy and for 2010 minerals and gemstones. This enables us to know in what year the goats were born. For Spring 2011 we have bred 15 does with our four bucks. The name theme for 2011 will be US cities and towns.