Kikos Shine

AT FIRST-GENERATION GOAT FARM

Story

photos by Michelle Kunjappu

Adams County, PA

Shawn Lawrence did not have a background in raising goats, but that hasn’t slowed him down.

“I stumbled into it,” says Shawn. “A buddy I worked in construction with raised goats, and I thought it would be a good idea to have goats one day,” he recalls. “I started with a small pen and just kept running with it; I never looked back,” he says.

Shawn and his wife, Nicole, together with their daughters Bailey and Isabella, operate Lousy Run Farm in Adams County, Pennsylvania. The farm is named for the creek that runs through it. The family leases 90 acres and raises around 150 goats, most being purebred Kikos.

Kiko goats, a hybrid breed from New Zealand, are the Lawrences’ breed of choice because they are “hardy and tougher than nails,” he says. These goats are parasite resistant, which Shawn boosts by rotating them through clean, parasite-free grazing pastures each week. “If there’s something I have to worm more than once a year, it goes,” he says. “That’s what the breed was designed for and what draws people to this breed.”

Working full time as a self-employed contractor, Shawn spends his days on the jobsite, then comes home to take care of the goats. He’s been working to make the former dairy farm more efficient as a goat operation by slowly fencing more pastures, “taking back a field a year,” and adding crops.

The award funds received through the Farmers on the Rise program allowed Shawn to construct a compost area near the goat barn, where manure and bedding from the barn and the dry lot is stored. Composting kills the bacteria “so it’s not being spread back over the fields and containing it prevents runoff,” which is especially important, given the farm’s proximity to the creek, says Shawn. In addition to building the composting area, Farmers on the Rise award funds allowed the Lawrences to reconfigure a gate and nearby fence, allowing equipment to access the barn and composting area.

While he enjoys many aspects of raising goats, genetics and breeding are especially interesting to Shawn. Each year when kids hit the ground, “you can see what you work for.” It’s so much fun to watch all of these kids mature. “You get to see what different bucks are going to do for you and then build and grow from there,” he says. “It’s interesting every year to see how it all works out.”

For more information about Lousy Run Farm, visit their website at lousyrunfarms.com.