Brock Creek Farms in Washington County, which was started by the Kelley family in 1995, has a herd of both commercial and show goats. But as the Kelleys – Steve, Angela and their children Courtney and Clayton – tell the story, the goat herd happened pretty much by accident.
“When our daughter was about 4, she decided that she wanted to show, and goats were a lot less commitment than show cattle, which we also raise,” Steve said. “So that’s kind of how we got started.”
“I always joke that our herd got started by accident,” says Courtney Kelley. “We went to a farm to pick up two wethers – two boys – and came home with a boy and a girl.”
Brock Creek Farms, named after the creek the farm sits next to, consists of 134 acres. Because both Steve and Angela work off-farm – Angela works for Farm Credit Mid-America and Steve teaches special education at Salem Middle School – most of those acres are rented to a neighbor.
But the Kelleys have about 18 acres of hay and pasture used for Hereford heifers as well as the goats.
“We also enjoy showing livestock so depending on the time of the year we will have additional show cattle, pigs and lambs along with our goats,” Angela said.
They currently have 50 head of goats, half of them purebred Boer goats (along with some Kiko goats) and half commercial does. Most of the Kelleys’ goats are sold to 4-Hers and other people who want to show them. In fact, the family held an online sale in March. But some are sold for meat.
Goat meat is popular in many parts of the world, and Angela noted that the U.S. doesn’t produce enough goat meat to supply all of the consumers in the country.
Boer goats are now a common breed in the United States but they weren’t when the Kelleys got started, Courtney said. The breed originated in the early 1900s with the Dutch farmers of South Africa, and the first full-blood Boers were brought into the United States in 1993, according to the American Boer Goat Association.
Because of their ancestry, heat doesn’t bother them very much, said Clayton, but cold weather and snow do, so the Kelleys keep the herd in barns through most of the winter.
The traditional color for Boer goats is a white body with a red head, and many of those on Brock Creek Farms fit that pattern. But nowadays Boer goats can come in a variety of colors and patterns: dappled, polka dotted, some that look like Oreos, some black ones and some gray ones, Clayton said.
Another characteristic is their friendliness, Courtney said.
“Boer goats have a very calm manner, they’re very friendly, they kind of always want to be around you,” she said.