Wayland family loves its Boer goats

"I chose Boer goats because they were a hot item at the time and I knew I could easily resell them if we decided to," Carl writes on the farm's Web site, ufarmboergoats.com. They purchased two does and four doelings.

By Mira Cash-Davis

It started in May 2002 with a need to clear some brush on their property, and the desire for a second income. That's how Carl and Jenny Unternahrer came to raise Boer goats on their farm in north rural Wayland.

"I chose Boer goats because they were a hot item at the time and I knew I could easily resell them if we decided to," Carl writes on the farm's Web site, ufarmboergoats.com. They purchased two does and four doelings.

"We kind of grew attached to them," he told the Mt. Pleasant News. Soon afterward, they purchased a buck to breed with the does.

Now the brush is clear. Since 2007, the Unternahrers take their goats to shows, when Carl isn't working in his chosen field of computer science.

Jenny takes care of the children.

The goats nibble on the blanket of Sarah, 11.

Two-year-old Jessica helped spread straw in the pens the other day, Jenny said. "(Jessica)'s been here since she could walk." Jessica runs around and talks to the goats and they run away. "There they go!" Jessica says as the Boers escape.

Carl mentions that she could be a good herder someday.

"I think Jessica's going to be a big helper," Jenny said. "(She's) already hanging out with the mamas, walking around with them. She's not shy."

Jessica tries to feed a goat straw, and Jenny gently tells her they don't eat that. They have to explain to Jessica that goats eat hay in the winter and graze on timber in late spring through fall.

In showing Boers, three types of breed are evaluated: full blood, purebred, and percentage. Everything in a full blood Boer's ancestry is Boer goat. "You can never be bred back to a full blood," Jenny noted. A purebred has slightly lower standards of ancestry at fifteen-sixteenths. Anything one-half to seven-eighths Boer (50 to 89 percent) is called percentage.

The Unternahrers have all three types of Boers, "mostly full blood," Carl said.

All else being equal, full blood would be the most desirable breed. However, with other things factored in, these genetics mean less. Even percentage Boers with other desirable traits can still sell for high dollar amounts, Carl noted. Last year at the April goat sale, percentage Boers brought in anywhere from $60 to $750.

"I've seen a percentage doe sell for $2,000, so a percentage doe can still be worth a lot," Carl said. He bought one prizewinning percentage doe at a sale in Illinois for almost $2,000. She has a Roman nose, a subjective desirable trait for Boers.

The American Boer Goat Association classifies show goats as well by whether they are traditional or non-traditional. There are nine qualifications for a traditional Boer. All registered Boers must be tattooed with their livestock number inside the ear. They must be 10 months or older when showing. They must have shadings between light and dark red. Qualifications four through nine deal with the placement and size of red patches on the body. Anything not meeting all nine of these qualifications is classified as non-traditional by the ABGA.

The visual inspection as defined by the ABGA includes a "fault-free" mouth and udder and pigmented hairless parts, including the skin under the tail being at 75 percent pigmentation. Judges also feel along the goat's back to check for musculature. A goat can be disqualified for abnormal pigmentation or teat structures, for example.

"Most of it (the ABGA standards) is to make sure they're a good quality breeding animal that will do well," said Carl. For meat goats, anything that will contribute to fast weight gain and good cuts of meat is desirable. Goat meat is lean and won't marble like beef does. "Their fat separates out," Carl said.

Aside from traditional or non-traditional, judging is subjective. One man Carl knows won all the shows with a particular goat one season and later "didn't even make the cut (in the first show)," he said, "and it was pretty much the same set of does in the class that he was in."

They have butchered a couple of goats. A recent batch, they had made into brats. Carl took some to a potluck at work and "everyone that tried them liked them."

Goat meat "pretty much takes on the flavor of whatever you're cooking it with," Jenny added.

In the year they've been showing Boers, they've learned some ins and outs of grooming the goats for shows like washing, drying, trimming and brushing them, as well as to shampoo them with "shampoo for white-haired ladies," Jenny said, which is tinted slightly blue for a cleaner white look.

"I think our biggest learner is the health," Jenny mused. "You've got to figure out why they (are sick) and fix what it is why they have." In addition, she said, one must "learn to read signs of the birthing process."

Carl's computer science degree has come in handy monitoring the goats. The Unternahrers watch their furry friends in the barn via a Web camera Carl set up on their home network. They could see and hear the goats, but the goats couldn't hear them. A baby monitor corrected that problem, Jenny said.