A celebration of goats & country living

By CARL E. FEATHER - Lifestyle Editor - cfeather@starbeacon.com
Star Beacon

June 17, 2008 07:41 pm

— Yvonne Murkens loves goats. She has 70 and named every one of them.
They know their names, too.
“Come on Ivory, no Wadsworth,” said Murkens Monday morning as she separated the milkers from the rest of the herd. One by one, the does with fat udders hopped onto the milking stand and took her turn over the stainless steel bucket while calves and cats waited impatiently for their share. As her experienced fingers worked the teats, Murkens talked about the benefits of goat milk and the creature that produces it.
“Something you can milk starts at around $150,” Murkens says. “That’s gives you a gallon of milk a day. What does a gallon cost at the store? In 30 days, you’ve gotten $120 worth of milk from her.”
Murkens, who lives in Conneaut Township, Pa., is vice president of Lake Erie Goats of All Types Society (LEGOATS), a group that covers Ashtabula County, Erie, Crawford and Warren counties, Pa; and Chautauqua County, N.Y. With nearly three dozen members, the group lives up to its name and has members who have one or two goats as pets as well as herd owners who raise them for fleece, meat and milk.
Murkens’ diverse herd includes everything from five kinds of dairy goats to two meat breeds and a rare chocolate angora that looks like a poodle. Educated in dairy science, Murkens’ heart is in goats, and she can talk long and passionately about both the animals and the rural lifestyle that goes along with raising them.
LEGOATS’ second annual Goat Fest will celebrate these passions from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. July 5. Held in the Albion (Pa.) Borough Park, the event is free and will be packed with entertainment and information of interest to all ages.
“It’s called Goat Fest because we are a goat club, but the subtitle is a celebration of country living,” says Murkens.
The show promises to be a panorama of what our region’s rural areas have to offer, including Amish baked goods, wood products and windmills for the home owner. Joe Schwartz will make and sell ice cream on the grounds, and LEGOATS will serve chevon sandwiches. There will also be a goat cheese tasting booth and lots of goat milk fudge for sale.
The show will offer educational demonstrations tied to rural living, including cheese making, ornamental ironwork, chain saw carving, food preservation/canning, basket weaving, harness making, quilting, beach glass jewelry, hand-crafting dolls and bee keeping.
Goats are the centerpiece. “We’re going to have all the breeds here,” Murkens says. That includes the three meat varieties – Boer, Kiko and Spanish – as well as the six dairy and specialized goats like Nigerian dwarfs, pigmy and angora. Breeders like Murkens will be on hand to talk about each breed’s characteristics and the goat-ownership lifestyle.
Experienced cart goats will be on hand to give rides around the fairgrounds.
Other entertainment planned for the day includes rides on the borough’s merry-go-around, the third oldest in the nation, and live music. Murkens says the club is looking for groups, particularly those with a country sound, willing to provide their services at no charge.
“We don’t charge admission and we don’t make any money,” Murkens says.
To offset the expenses of promoting and holding the festival, the club sells food, holds a Chinese raffle and will raffle off an Amish quilt.
Club members use the festival to promote the benefits of goats. Murkens is particularly strong on their milk-producing qualities and ability to rid pastures of brush.
Sue and Pam Hudson of Pierpont have 11 goats, some of whom have the task of clearing the farmland of multiflora rose and other invasive species.
“We got them to eat the brush,” Pam says.
“But they are much better brush eaters than we are fence builders,” Sue says.
Unlike herbicides, these efficient eaters do their work without leaving a toxin in their wake.
“You got to love an animal that eats multiflora rose,” Sue says.
“But you don’t want them around your prize rose bushes or tomato plants,” Pam adds.
With gasoline at $4 a gallon and diesel fuel even more, farmers and home owners with lots of land to maintain should consider several goats to keep their grass in check.
“We are cutting our grass mowing by at least a third by putting the goats out there,” Sue says.
The female versions of these lawn mowers can provide a family with milk, and the male versions can be butchered at the end of the season if there’s no interest in wintering them over. A female goat will typically produce two kids a year.
Murkens says it does not take a lot of land to keep a goat or two. Even urban dwellers can maintain a goat in a small space by feeding it purchased hay and grain.
“For small holdings, you can’t beat a goat,” she says. “The neat thing about a goat is one decent goat will supply a family with all the milk they need. If you have two goats, you can have it year around by staggering them.”
Excess milk can be made into cheese; about a pound to a gallon. There’s also a market for the milk in some communities.
Goat milk, says Murkens, is superior to cow milk as a human food because it is easy to digest.
“Goat milk is one of the best things you can feed any young animal, including humans,” says Murkens, who supplied goat milk to the Erie zoo for their baby giraffe.
The Hudsons loaned one of their dairy goats to an Amish neighbor whose baby was being fussy. “Within just a few days, her baby wasn’t fussy anymore,” Pam says.
Although the taste and texture can be different from cow’s milk, the Hudsons says they quickly adapted to it. “It has a richer feel in the mouth,” Murkens says.
The milk can take on an odd taste if it’s not stored in glass and cleanliness precautions are not observed. Murkens points out that goats also tend to be cleaner than cows and there’s less chance of contamination from manure. And as a former dairy herd owner, Murkens says goats are gentler and easier to handle than cows.
“The main difference between milk cows and goats is that it doesn’t hurt so bad when they step on your feet,” Murkens says.
Albion Borough Park is on Route 6N on the west side of the borough. For information, call the Hudsons at 577-1196.

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