Our ranch has been in the family since the year of 1942. It began as a 160-acre parcel bought by my father from the state of Oklahoma for back taxes. It is nestled in a remote little valley in southeastern Oklahoma about 15 miles (as the crow flies, 35 miles if you drive) southeast of McAlester. Over the years we have added to it, divided it, cleared it, cleaned it, abandoned it, leased it, rented it, and now returned to it. The total acres owned by the family are just over 700. Our part, the Jack Fork Valley Ranch is 360 acres, which includes 80 acres of the original 160 acres. We (my immediate family) have been living in Arizona for several years. My wife, Pat, and I had always planned on early retirement here in the valley so we could really go to work!! Our plans became a reality in June of 2004. We made the move and decided that since we had been gone for so long and the ranch had grown up considerably with underbrush, weeds, briar vines etc. that goats would be the perfect livestock.
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Over the past four or five years we have been doing research on various breeds of goats and after visiting several operations and talking with several goat meat producers we settled on the Kiko breed. We joined a new organization, The International Kiko Goat Association, stands to reason; we are starting off on a new venture, as are they. In less than a year IKGA has became the most innovative and progressive meat goat organization in existence, hopefully we can follow suite in our venture. We attended the KikoFest in Tennessee in September of 2004 and bought the beginning of our New Zealand Fullblood heard. We made several road trips across the southwest and have been adding to our heard since that first purchase at KikoFest. We also bought some American Premier Fullbloods and purchased some half-breed Kikos from a breeder here in the valley to use in the breed up program in IKGA. At this point our heard is not so large and most are young, but we have the acerage and goats grow fast!! With the goats came the need for Livestock Guard Dogs as we have a predator problem, coyotes, bobcats etc. Again, with much research on the subject we decided on the Anatolian Sheppard breed of dogs. Our dogs are all working dogs and have been exposed to goats at an early age. Parents of all dogs that are for sale are onsite and working. We have also added Great Pyrenees blood to some of our dogs and have found the crosses to be exceptional LGD'S. All are here to do a job. If they don’t get the job done they become someone else’s pet. |
