We Have a small Irrigated place in central WA near Cle Elum on which we keep a few Standardbred coach horses. The horses weren't keeping up with the pasture, especially the weeds, so several summers ago we purchased some Boer Goats from several breeders in Washington state.
We took two of them to an ABGA/USBGA show in Western WA just to learn the ropes and where pleasantly surprised with the results so we tried a couple more shows and that was good too. Besides winning some ribbons we met some great people and learned a little about the industry.
With our first few crops, we kept the does and sold the wethers to the local 4h kids. That in itself was a great experience. The wethers did well at the 4H shows and we met some more wonderful people in the industry.
We still try to go to a couple shows a year to stay in touch but our main emphasis now is more commercial. After several generations of Boers on our place, we have kept the animals that adapted to our environment and culled the rest. All our does are sturdy animals that thrive on pasture. Some are show quality and others are just good tough brood does who can raise there own kids. We can have a very hard winter here but our girls do fine on grass hay, alfalfa pellets and minerals. Anyone can get good growth rates on Boers with expensive factory feed mixes but that sort of defeats the whole purpose of range fed animals. We are striving for good gain on as natural feed as we can.