Published: April 10, 2008 11:41 pm      

Getting their goat

Group launches children's project

Coalton — Try to keep track:

Each kid gets a kid. The kids take care of the kids and then take them to the fair. The next year, the kids’ kids have kids and the kids give the kids to some other kids.

It’s really pretty simple. The Tri-State Goat Producers Association is launching a program to get children interested in raising goats. They’ll donate a young goat to a child in the spring; the child cares for the goat and enters it in the fair.

The children breed the goats and donate the kids back to the association. That gives the association a supply of goats to donate to the next round of young exhibitors.

“It’s for kids who wouldn’t have the chance to show a goat,” said Jennifer Coffee, a member of the association.

The program is starting out giving goats to three children. It’s a small start, Coffee said, but the association hopes more children will be interested in years to come.

Isaac Evans and his sister, Elli Cook, are two of them. They live in Lawrence County and both love goats. They’ll be taking their goats to the Lawrence County Fair.

Elli likes to feed them when they’re babies and is looking forward to watching hers grow.

It will be her first fair exhibition, although she’s had experience with a number of animals in her nine years — dogs, cats, ferrets and snakes, mostly.

Isaac, 12, had a goat once and has been wanting another, but his family hasn’t been able to get him one, he said. He thinks it will be a fair exchange to donate a kid next season. “It will be sad to have to give up the first baby, but at the same time, I’ll be glad because it will give another kid great joy,” he said.

The association hopes the program will expand interest in goat production, Coffee said. Most picture cattle and hogs when they think of agricultural livestock, but goats are raised for both meat and milk.

Also, goats have a well-deserved reputation as four-legged lawn mowers. “They clean off hillsides,” Coffee said.

Representatives of the association plan to present the goats at the Boyd County Fairgrounds on Tuesday.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2652.