Family breeds show goats, as well as other livestock
MAYSVILLE, ARK. – The cattle industry is in Whitny Haley’s DNA. It was something her family was involved in and it naturally became a passion for her growing up. That’ s especially true of showing livestock; Whitny and her brother competed at an early age.
While she was winning ribbon at shows, like the Commercial Heifer Show at the Arkansas State Fair, Whitny also found herself partaking in another function.
Now, as part owner and operator of Town Creek Livestock, Whitny has added registered Boer goats.
“I actually made fun of goat people when I was young,” Whitny said. “Now, here I am, I’m one of them. I like to tell people it’s a lot cooler now than it was 25 or 30 years ago.”
Town Creek Livestock is a 15-acre property in Maysville (Ark.). Whitny runs the goat and sheep ranch with her husband Pat Whitny and their two children Garrett (14) and Brooks (9).
“This is a hobby for us and our two boys,” Whitny said. “We raise goat kids for our children to show and hopefully other 4-H/FFA kids to show. We run commercial cattle and also show pigs.”
Town Creek Livestock started business in 2018 after the family moved from Bentonville. However, the roots of the goat-showing portion sprouted in 2014 when the Whitnys decided to pick up a little hobby. Something they could do with their children and wouldn’t take too much time away from their cattle and livestock duties.
“Our son (Garrett) when he was 5 years old, but we didn’t want to mess with calves for him at that time,” Whitny said. “So, we bought three little Boer doe goats (Nell, Ron and Dent) from our neighbors in Bentonville, Ark., and Garrett showed those three little goats as a 5-year-old and did very well. So, we decided we would try to have some babies out of them thinking that they would be easy. And then we found out that it is not easy to raise goats.”
However, those three goats became the foundation Town Creek Livestock. The Whitnys went on to purchase three goats, who’ve produced 32 heads of doe.
“We started out with those first three does that we bought; they were registered does,” Whitny said. “We have transitioned and shifted over to weather bread goats because we want to try to compete in like junior market shows and like more commercial doe shows.”
According to Whitny, Town Creek Livestock raises and sells goats for competition purposes.
“It is strictly for junior livestock market shows,” Whitny said. “That’s what we try to breed to. And we do a little bit of AI work. We’ve done a little bit of ET work and are just trying to keep improving our genetics so we can hopefully just keep producing better goats.”
When it comes to selling the goats, Town Creek does most of its business online.
“I think this year we sold about 15 in our sale,” Whitny said. “That’s what we’ve done for the last two years. We have done an online bid board sale. We’ll see what we want to do next year.”
Along with his work at Town Creek, Pat is still heavily involved in the cattle business. He works for his father-in-law managing 600 head of cattle in a cow cap operation.
However, for Whitny, her full attention has turned to goat realm. But making the transition has been a learning experience for the former competitive cattle shower.
“They’re very similar. Nowadays, especially with the competitiveness of the goats, they’re very similar,” Whitny said. “We’re working hair, we’re rinsing, we’re trying to grow hair, all that type of stuff on these goats, like I did when I was growing up with heifers and steers. We put a lot more effort into exercising. My kids have to exercise and work these goats more than I did. With steers or heifers really, other than just walking them and kind of getting them where they would lead with steers and heifers; you didn’t have to put the real exercise program to them. These goats exercise everyday walking and we try to walk them every day to build muscle and to keep them lean and looking, right.”
Whitny has even gone as far as to say that goat showing is a tougher gig than cattle showing.
“I don’t want to throw rocks at my cattle showing people. My son shows cattle now,” Whitny said. “I think it’s probably harder. They’re both very hard and different in different ways. The reason I have stayed in the goat deal is it is so competitive. I want to try to figure it out. It is amazing to me how they can make these goats look the way they do. When I was growing up 30 years ago and showing in Arkansas, you would have 300 head of steers at the Arkansas State Fair. Nowadays your numbers aren’t as big. That’s what I just say when a part of me says, give it up and just go back to what you know mm-hmm. But my oldest son loves the goats and the pigs.”
The area that has really captured Whitny’s interest is genetics. She knows AI is the key to producing a prize-winning goat.
“When we started, we didn’t know what a wether-bred goat was from a registered goat,” Whitny said. “We just thought a goat was a goat; it’s been genetics. It was just having to find the bucks and you don’t want the mass of depth of the body for the junior livestock shows and market shows. So when we started, we were going down one path and we said, no, we want to be over here on this path. So we kind of had to stop and it took us a few years and we had to go the weather-making path. What we did is we bought a couple of doe that were more on the weather-bred genetic side. We bred and flushed one of those doe and were able to produce a buck kid and we kept that. We’ve used him on our doe and now we’re going to look at a different buck weather bread. The kits to keep improving our genetic line.”
In the six years Town Creek livestock has been showing and producing show animals, they have not taken the top prize at any of the competitions, but they have come close.
“We had a little girl who showed and got sixth overall market goat at the Arkansas State Fair; that was from us,” Whitny said. “Then, we’ve had a very young man, who I think was reserve champion in the heavyweight division at the Arkansas State Fair. We’ve had some pretty decent success. We’ve also sold some that have finished in the top three of class, which is a pretty big deal at our state fair.”
However, Whitny would love to see her son take home a championship ribbon before he graduates. Yet, she would be just as ecstatic if one of their goats wins for someone else.
“Our goal here is to produce something that my son would ultimately win a major show in Arkansas and even compete at national shows,” Whitny said. “A lot of people think we just try to do it for our kids and that was the beginning goal. I’ll be honest, I probably get more excited when we have a kid that’s done something with something we raised more so than I would with my own children. I don’t care who wins as long as if they’re winning with our stuff, we get really, really excited.”
