Happy Goat Productions

Promoting Sustainable Family Farming in Northern New Mexico

On this page, you find some of the other residents at Happy Goat Productions. We are devoted to making this small farm truly sustainable by balancing high productivity with the perfect health and happiness of the land and all its inhabitants, from our noble mustang Boo to the just as noble beetles and cabbages feeding on his manure. This ideal requires constant tinkering as we learn more and more about what the land, plants, and animals can give back to us and each other.

1. Poultry

We raise different breeds of chickens, ducks, and geese, as well as the gorgeous Rio Grande Native turkeys. Every year, we swear not to start more chicks, ducklings, or goslings in our small bathroom (it's quite messy!) and then we do it anyway because we can't resist the temptation to start yet another funny breed. We continuously experiment with numbers and with housing, feeding, breeding, and laying arrangements.Our birds are mostly expected to feed themselves, on grass, alfalfa, hay seeds, apples, garden, field, and kitchen scraps, and bugs. In the winter, we supplement with dumpster-dived compost from the local healthfood store and receive organic compost from a restaurant, plus a little bit of grain and, for the chickens only, layer crumbles, depending on the season.The water fowl are expected to feed themselves, as a result of which their eggs are deep deep intensely orange and the true food of life.

Currently we have found that chickens may not be the smartest or most adorable animals out there, but they are the perfect addition to any barnyard and an easy source of pocketmoney and first project for any kid interested in raising livestock. They are perfect in the horse and goat pens, but don't work well when combined with either turkeys or waterfowl. Cheaper and easier than a garbage disposal and compost system, their manure is priceless for its intensity (we use it to heat up the compost pile or make manure tea in a bucket for direct application to the garden), they are great fly control by scratching up manure, and they make formidable rototillers in the garden. We currently raise

Araucanas: in spite of their flightiness, for the turquoise eggs that our customers love;
Rhode Island Reds: not my favorite (overbred for egg production, in my opinion), but great layers;
Barred Rocks: beautiful, and a nice old-fashioned dual-purpose bird because they also get big enough for eating; for the sake of peace and quiet, we only have one rooster, namely gorgeous Bobby Jack, who doesn't have a mean bone in his body (see picture below);
Buff Orpingtons: big, functional work machines. I have found them to be very efficient foragers and just a wholesome presence. I can't describe why I like them but I do. I actually have a hard time eating them...
Giant Blacks: one of these is our best ever brooding queen Big Mama;
and a single tiny fluffy bantam Silkie hen: supposedly the best brooders but ours is too young and has not yet started sitting. She sure has a very friendly, human-oriented disposition and the visiting kids love her.

Ducks are very cute, great foragers and pest controls with a voracious appetite for insects, fun to raise because they have much more developed personalities than chickens, can be turned into extravagant fatty meat dishes for special occasions, and lay beautiful and in my opinion much healthier opaque eggs than chickens. Ours are very happy because they have a big acequia (irrigation ditch) to play in all day long. But they are very dirty, can be quite loud, and tend to hide their eggs where you can't find them. Seeing how much they love water and how quickly they turn any stagnant water source into a brown smelly stew, I would not want to raise them anywhere without access to running water or a big pond.

The geese were an unexpected addition last year, when a neighbor passed the goslings on to us. They have turned out to be an extremely valuable asset to our farm because they make better, louder, more attentive watchdogs than our dogs. They are a BIG PRESENCE, but their bizarre kind of intelligence fascinates and teaches us something every day. We were supposed to only keep them until the fall and eat at least one of them as a "Weihnachtsgans" (christmas goose) but couldn't butcher any of them. They bond in pairs for life, as well as being a very very tight and fiercely protective flock, they mother and father each other's offspring with devotion, and they contribute royalty, grace, playfulness, pure male vigor and fierceness, and shining female earth-mother presence. If you want to know more or see more pictures, read my Goose Story.

The turkeys are still an experiment. The Tom is too aggressive for our taste and has to be locked away when we have visitors, especially during breeding season, as impressive as he is. The hens are very sweet and great foragers, looking very pretty as they roam the orchard. The Tom's feathers make great gifts. They love to fly short distances but stay on our property and thus bring the wild mountains to our backyard. I cannot see locking them up in a pen because they are such wild powerful creatures and supposedly the closest living relatives to the dinosaurs.

2. Dogs, Cats, and a Mustang

In addition to all these birds, we have two dogs, two barn cats, and a mustang, ostensibly to keep the birds safe from the rapacious packs of stray attack dogs, for which the village of Talpa is famous in this area, as well as the occasional bear, coyote, fox, rat, or human thief. But more than for their guardian function, we love them for their company and the beauty they bring into our life. The mustang is a complete luxury because we don't produce enough hay to feed him year-round, but he is also a prolific producer of composting material for our gardens, fields, and orchards. Most importantly, he reminds us every morning of the meaning and blissfulness of life when he greets us with a kiss and a wild race around the orchard, and he takes us out to the nearby mountains when we need a break from all the farming responsibilities. Some day, in our wildest dreams perhaps we will have enough land to support and use a draft horse, but Boo is too small for that. Boo was a wild mustang who a lady in Tucson adopted but could not afford to feed any longer. He is a sucker for human attention, a kid-magnet, still green-broke and in need of much training, but loves to kiss and tease and chase and kick all four legs in the air. He is also very obstinate and has quite a different personality from more "civilized" horse breeds. A creature from a different world.

And last, but most definitely not least, the dogs:

If you liked the contents of this website and found any of its information helpful or would simply like to support our work at Happy Goat Productions, please consider making a donation by clicking the "donate" button below. Alternatively, use the feedback form to send me a message and discuss arrangements for donating any of our services (e.g. weekly milk, egg, and veggie delivery to a family in need, a visit with my animals to a local school class or club, or anything else you can think of....).