Champion goats make great milk, products

BOYCEVILLE, Wis. — When her children experienced difficulties digesting cow’s milk, Heather Berg looked elsewhere to meet their needs. Since then the Bergs have developed a dairy goat farm, bred champions and created a line of goat milk skincare products.

“We’re taking the champion goats we’ve bred, and making champion milk and champion milk products,” Heather said. “It really is a family effort and business. Our daughters, Havilah Eggert and Lisah Thomas, don’t live on the farm, but they help make and package product. We all work together to make the farm and business successful.”

Heather and her husband, Brian, their son, Logan, and his wife, Jasmine, and their sons Josiah and Nathan, and their daughters, Rachel and Kali Poehnelt, are all involved in the family business. Their dairy is located in Dunn County near Boyceville where they milk 85 goats. They ship their milk to LaClare Creamery and also market a line of skin care products under the label Nanny n Kids.

The first goats came to the farm in 2007. A few years later, Logan expressed an interest in joining 4-H and showing goats. The Bergs sold their original goats and purchased four registered goats that would become the foundation of their current herd.

“This is all an overgrown 4-H project that has turned into a commercial herd, and yet we’re still very much involved in showing,” Heather said.

Discovering their passion, the Bergs began making plans to build their goat dairy in 2015 and began shipping milk in March 2016. The herd now consists of Alpines, Saanens, LaManchas, Nubians and recorded grades.

Shipping to LaClare Creamery requires the Bergs to produce milk year-round and to ship at least 300 pounds of milk per day. In order to reach those goals, Heather said they strive to keep at least 30%-35% of their herd as milk-throughs, meaning goats that maintain certain production levels have extended lactations.

Logan is in charge of directing the Bergs’ breeding program.

“Logan has been picking out our bucks since he was about 16,” Heather said. “He studies the goats and the pedigrees. If there is a goat to be known, he knows it. I don’t have that same passion, so I let him make those decisions.”

The Bergs source their bucks from other herds, using the parameters and criteria they have set.

“Logan wants show type, but I need milk — I can’t pay the bills on pretty,” Heather said. “I want them out of herds that are free of caprine arthritis encephalitis and caseous lymphadenitis, because we maintain that status here.”

In addition to using bucks, the Bergs have forayed into A.I.

“Logan and I have both taken classes, we have tanks and semen on hand,” Heather said. “We just need to take what we have and apply it. What we’d like to do is use the semen on the doe we want, then keep that buck. Then we can stay more in-house — we’re bringing in a nice buck, without having to actually bring the buck in.

The Bergs have sourced their breeding bucks from as far away as the West Coast and see A.I. as another avenue to bring desirable genetics into their herd.

“We have some really exciting things in the tank that Logan wants to play with,” Jasmine said.

Logan and Jasmine oversee most of the showing of the Bergs’ goats. Kali, Rachel and Trisha Berg all help with show preparations and at the shows.Last month they kicked off this year’s show season with their recorded grade doe, Bergs Sky-high ST Flawless, winning two best in show titles at Wisconsin Dairy Goat Association Badger State Show.

In total, the Bergs have bred and developed a dozen does that have completed their permanent championship titles, having obtained three different champion titles.

Their commitment to milk production and show type requires the Bergs to always be working to improve their herd. This year they have revamped their nursery program for raising kids, trying a new feeding system.

“We used to bottle feed all the kids and it just wasn’t working for us,” Heather said. “It was very labor intensive and we never got the growth or vigor we wanted. This year I decided to go all-in on making changes.”

Those changes include small-group auto-feeders that the Bergs have set up for their kids, giving them access to milk through the day and night. The Bergs are feeding milk replacer through their auto-feeders, avoiding the potential of transmission of CAE and CL. This means they are getting small amounts to eat, over long periods of time, instead of two bottles a day.

Heather said the results have been great so far, and the labor reduction has been valuable for their family.

“We’re getting the growth on them that we haven’t before,” Heather said. “Now we’ll have to see if we have kids that we want to take out and show — the grandkids are getting big enough they’ll be wanting to show in a couple of years.”

The Nanny n Kids skincare line was not a business Heather expected to develop when she began making bar soap from the milk produced by the family’s first goats.

“I started dabbling around making bar soap in 2010,” Heather said. “People were interested in buying it and things started to really take off. We started making lotions and then foam soap and now we’re making shave bars, too. We’re wanting to stretch out into whipped body butter and I’m working on developing shampoo and conditioner.”

Developing the Nanny n Kids brand was a labor of love, rooted in family, Heather said.

“I wanted something to pass on to my daughters and daughters-in-law,” Heather said. “It’s getting harder for families to live on a single income. This business can allow them to raise their kids and still provide a second income for their families. That is my vision: to build a business working with family that helps everyone succeed.”