Couple turns their love of showing goats into a busy side-hustle
SULPHUR SPRINGS, ARK. – Tara Hicks didn’t imagine this is what she would be doing when she first talked to her husband about getting some goats in 2013. But, what started out as a conversation about finding an alternative to riding has turned into a popular goat-grooming business that has Hicks receiving requests from as far as California.
“We used to ride horses and break colts and stuff for people,” Tara said. “And my husband got burned out on riding. I was like, well, I could get goats and I can throw two or three in the back of my truck in a crate and go to a show by myself. I don’t have to have a trailer. And they were easier to handle and I could do it myself. And that just kind of started it.”
Along with a 30-acre ranch with 60 show goats, the Hicks run Rock’N Heart Dappled Boer Goats in Sulphur Springs Ark.
The grooming portion of the Rock’N Heart Dappled Boer was not part of the plan. It wasn’t until the couple began to see their monthly bills for showing goats that they decided they needed a side hustle to fund their “expensive hobby.”
“We try to raise show goats and depending on genetics, you can get a decent one anywhere from $600 to $10,000 plus,” Tara said. “And then if you are looking into being competitive and traveling for shows and stuff, and this is with any livestock, it’s expensive. You have your hotel fee, you’ve got your food, you’ve got your travel expenses for fuel, you’ve got your entry fees, all of your show supplies and equipment.”
What started out as a small side job quickly grew into something bigger. “When we started, we had our own goats and we did our own grooming on our own goats,” Tara said. “I was helping 4H kids and stuff and local farms helping them start it. And they’re like, you could do this full time. And I was like, nah, I’m not going to do that full-time. Well, here we are, three or four years into it.”
Just this year alone, Tara estimated they have already worked on more than 1,200 head this year. She said that doesn’t count their own goats.
“People don’t have the equipment to do it,” Tara said. “People don’t really know how to do corrective trimming. We have clients where we’ve brought their goat home to work on them to get them back where they need to be. It’s kind of an art, just like horseshoeing. It has taken a lot of practice, learning the angles and stuff. And every goat is different.”
On average, the husband and wife team estimates it takes anywhere from five to eight minutes to complete one goat. But in some instances, it goes well beyond that.
“It depends on how long it’s been since it’s been trimmed, how dry it has been the past couple months,” Tara said. “We’ve been very, very dry. So the hooves are a little harder to break through. We’ve got pretty decent clientele with the trimming that we do. We’ll pick up a few here and there and do some. I think the most we’ve actually trimmed in a weekend was 120 by ourselves. And that’s not with a lift tilt table or anything. That’s putting them on a grooming stand and trimming all four feet. We do it kind of old school.”
Despite how much time and work the Hicks invest into their grooming, they admit it doesn’t guarantee they will even see a profit that month. “I’m not saying I might break even if we’re lucky,” Tara said. “So I actually work, I have a full-time job. My husband works for himself building fences and miscellaneous stuff. So that kind of offsets a little bit. But we also travel on the weekends off and on trimming those goat hooves. We go to Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and here in northwest Arkansas.”
The Hicks could grow the grooming side of the farm even bigger than it is now. But that would mean being on the road a lot more and away from their actual ranch. “We could do it full time. We’ve been asked to go up north into Indiana, Illinois,” Tara said. “We’ve been asked to go down to South Texas. We’ve been invited to go to Kentucky and California, but we just can’t. We try just to stay local, just close enough to if something happens, we can come back home. Because we do have our farm to take care of too. So I Know we have that expense if we’re traveling all the time. So either we would have to get rid of the farm or pay somebody to stay there and take care of stuff.”
Instead, the Hicks just try and combine their hobby and work whenever they can. When they are heading to a show they put the word out on social media that they are accepting clients while they are in the area.
“We’ll trim feet the day before the show on some show goats and it pays for our fuel sometimes up there,” Hicks said.
Tara doesn’t envision Rock’N Heart Dappled Boer getting any bigger. The size of the grooming business and the farm is just enough for the two of them to handle. And after selling off the last of their cattle earlier this year, the Hicks have finally made it officially. They are goat people.
“We had five or six head of cattle that we sold. Prices are way too good,” Tara said. “We are goat people. We have two horses that we don’t ride. They’re just pasture ornaments. We don’t have time. We’re too busy all the time with the goats.”
