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REGIONAL NEWS
Tue, April 24, 2001
Got their goat Moos give way to bleats at ranch
Hanaba Munn Noack, Times Record News
UNION FLAT -- Goats are nibbling away at cow country, little dots on the spring landscape across North Texas.
At Union Flat, a few miles northeast of Childress, a mostly white goat flock provides a sharp contrast on a green hilly meadow against the backdrop of a red clay arroyo.
At a glance, the goats look like a diminutive version of their bovine peers. Small but prolific, goats are growing in number and displacing cattle on some farms across the area.
The flock behind the woven wire fence at Union Flat belongs to Dana Morris of Pitter Patter Ranch. Size-wise, the nannies and kids are easier for her to handle than a cow-calf herd.
"If I had cattle, I'd have to hire every single thing done," Morris said.
As it is, besides seasonal and weekend help from out-of-town grandchildren, she does virtually everything herself.
Morris is a veteran goat-raiser and goat superintendent of the Childress County Livestock Show. She and her husband, the late Jim Morris, started in the goat business raising Angoras in 1990.
But when the federal government ended wool and mohair incentive payments, the Morrises switched to meat goats.
"We could see the handwriting on the wall," she said. "There just wasn't as good a market (for mohair)."
Besides, Angoras are not known for being easy to raise.
"It was so labor-intensive during kidding season that we just couldn't make it," she said. "It took all hands and the cook just to be able to handle the babies and get them on their mothers. They have to be born in the winter." The current Morris flock of Boer and Boer-cross goats kids in the late winter and spring. She keeps a close watch on the nannies, does (first-time mothers) and kids.
The Boers and Boer crosses are much larger than the delicate Angoras, but carcass quality -- longer and thicker bodies -- is Morris's aim.
The meaty Boer goats, much heavier than Spanish goats -- the traditional Texas meat goat -- signal a new era in the goat industry in America.
Named for the Afrikaans word for "farmer," Boer goats made their way to the United States from South Africa via New Zealand, Australia and Canada, in that order, Morris said.
"The first got here in 1994," Morris said.
Like some breeds of sheep, two crops of babies are year are possible. Morris -- who has a day job as office manager for a medical clinic in Childress -- is putting off the more intensive semi-annual kidding program.
"I will do that when I retire," she said.
For now, she selects her goats not only for long, thick bodies but also for the ability to survive well on the range with little supplemental care. She's counting on a solid future for range-raised goats in the U.S. Her perspective is global.
"There's more goat meat consumed world-wide and more goat milk consumed than any other meat or than any other milk," she said.
She culls her herd with the perfect goat in mind.
"I keep back my very best does," she said. "I cull the ones with bad bags, broken horns, foot problems."
Sometimes she bends the rules for pets like Lilly, a nanny who squirrels away food in her jaws.
"She's the only one that does that," Morris said. "She's a pet, so I won't cull her. ... You can tell which ones the pets are because they always like to come up and chew on your pants and untie your shoestrings. I've got all kinds of pets out here for all kinds of reasons."
But having a heart for goats, even to the point of making pets out of them and keeping some around past their prime and despite some imperfections, goes with the other requirement to raise goats: lots of patience.
"I think that's a prerequisite ... especially with yearlings when they're kidding for the first time," she said.
But if anyone was kindhearted toward the goats and every other animal on the place, it was Jim Morris.
His horse Roanie was a favorite. The horse died last year at age 34, just a few weeks before Morris died at the couple's goat barn last November.
"He was down there feeding," she said.
After his death, Dana Morris took total responsibility for the goats -- not an easy task with winter coming on and her grief hard to bear.
"Staying busy has saved my life," she said.
And she also has the company -- and help -- of several dogs, including a border collie named (Vivian) Leigh who herds the goats for her on command.
Other dogs, named Whiskers, Dagwood, Speckles and Silver -- crosses of varying degrees between Great Pyrenees, Akbash, Anatolian and Kommondor -- guard the goats from coyotes and other predators. Their barking at night helps Morris sleep. For her, it's evidence they are protecting the goats.
The guard dogs are crucial in rugged country where coyotes roam -- one of the extras recommended by Morris for anyone who would raise goats or sheep.
For goats, closely woven wire is also a must -- the kind they can't stick their heads through or catch their horns in.
"They are escape artists," she said.
 © The E.W. Scripps Co.
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