By Fred Patton

In the morning you would pick all the nannies that looked like they were close to giving birth, which was called kidding out. These nannies were staked by a peg and rope to one front leg in rows with a swivel in the middle. Daily you would have to go out with the pick-up at noon and pick up the nannies and kids that had birthed out. After kidding, the kid was pegged there by the same method except tied by one hind foot. A kid box was placed near the kid for protection from the elements, and the kid and nanny were numbered using a small brush and house paint so you could match the nanny with the kid if they became separated.

I knew one friend that never numbered any and had three hundred mothers and kids; yet he knew each one. It was really remarkable to be able to do this. The kids were kept tied for a month to be sure the mother would claim them. 

When a kid was turned loose, it was comical. Being so used to hitting the end of the toggle, they would start floundering around on the ground being used to hitting the end of the toggle and just using three legs. After awhile, they would get up and learn to walk on four legs. 

My uncle John Resley owned the Bud Webb Ranch from 1919 to 1948, and Jack Medd owned the A-Bar-V ranch during that time. The Medds were one of the first families we met when we came to Ferguson Valley in 1921 to my uncle's ranch. We were friends for life. 

Both of these men, Resley and Medd, had a small band of 50 or more registered goats they raised. They sold billy goats, or bucks, as we called them. They would go to several states looking for the type of buck they wanted and pay as high as $750 or more for a real good one. They got a good price for the bucks they later sold. 

There were two types of goats -- the flatlock and ringlet. The flatrock had thin layers of hair about an inch thick. The ringlet had hair that put me in the mind of a woman's hair that was curled with a hot iron in long ringlets. The mohair grew about one inch a month with the flatrock growing less than the ringlet; but, because the mohair sold by the pound, the flatrock made up the difference by being oilier and weighing more, so they sheared about the same. 

Everyone in the surrounding area took their sacks of mohair to Kirkland where it was sold and loaded on the train. Sacks weighed 350 to 500 pounds. Mrs. Warren (later Irving), who owned the Skull Valley Store from about 1925 to 1962, bought mohair and got a commission on it. She also bought it from other places in the state. 

To fence a goat pasture or keep them off of a road, in those days you needed wood posts and page wire about two and a half feet to three feet with the bottom a few inches off the ground then two barb wires spaced over the page wire making it four feet high, also to hold or turn cattle. If you used just barbed wire, it took eight strands to be spaced up to four feet. 

A hard rain might make a gully below a fence and one or more goats might get out. They would try to get back to the bunch and usually were found along the fence somewhere else trying to get back in. Every evening you would ride out horseback and see if any stragglers were staying out. If you found one, you would have to go catch it. 

Cattle technique could be used to catch a goat. In addition to loose goats over the fence, the rancher had to catch one after shearing - the goats would usually have quite a few cuts and nicks post-shearing that would invite screw worms and require doctoring. The ex-cowboy goat-rancher would rope them from afoot. If you weren't a roper, you used a pole about eight feet or so with a hook on the end and catch them by hind leg. Roping was the best because you could reach out further. Sometimes you had to run and rope to catch one. 

One big ranch owner had goats and cattle. He used to say that he raised goats so he could afford to run cattle too. 

Goats were considered fairly smart animals. The sheep ranchers would put ten or more goats with every band to lead the sheep on bridges, highways, into pens, and on to railroad cars. Sheep were hard to handle together and hard to move without a leader. 

Once in a while a lion would kill a few goats. My uncle lost 14 to a lion in the corral one night. Another rancher lost 17 in one night. In a pen, a lion was like a cat in a room with lots of mice, killing for fun. When you were checking the fence you always looked over the fence to see if there were any tracks. If there were, you hunted the varmints up and brought them in to the ranch. 

(This was the second part in a two-part series on goat ranching in Yavapai County. Fred Patton came to Skull Valley in the early 1920s when he was four years-old) 



Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (pb164f37i8). Reuse only by permission.
Nanny and kid goats were staked near these boxes to protect the animal from the elements. The kids were staked quite young and when they were finally untethered they would walk around a little erratically until they figured that they were not at the end of a rope. (Whitehead collection, Sharlot Hall Museum Photo)