Breeder's Bio  Pam Gripp

I came to know goats in a round about way. I was always an animal person trying to save every little animal by bringing them home to my parents. By junior high I owned my first horse and was working at a veterinarian's office as the kennel girl. While working for the Vets in Durango, Colorado, one of them suggested I challenge the State Exam for Veterinary Technicians. I was going to school for an animal behavior degree and working in the operating room as a surgical technician trainee at that same time as well. I passed the State Exam and began to work full time at the mixed practice in Durango. I married my first husband who was a dairy farmer with the family 50 milking Holstein herd. During that 17 year marriage I became the heifer replacement and calf raiser, part time milker, and did the artificial insemination on the cows. I also took the training from CSU to become a DHIA Tester for the local dairies. I even had one Nubian herd on test in Durango. With the birth of three children and all the dairy stuff, I took time off from college to spend more time with my children. There's nothing like spending time at home to finish off an already failing marriage complete with an alcoholic father in law who was unable to keep focused enough to milk the cows. As a last ditch effort to make our marriage work, we moved to Alamosa where my husband was planning on returning to college for a teaching certificate. Oddly enough, moving away was not a cure and myhusband left me and the kids and returned to Durango. My old boss from theDurango Animal Hospital lived in the San Luis Valley and offered the children and me a house in trade for work. Work it was. I loaded five ton of hay every morning on a flat bed truck and fed part of his cattle. I also trained colts for him for their Arabian Horse ambitions. While it was a safe place to have the small kids for a while, I needed to have some kind of income and we moved to Crestone where Amy in sixth grade, Melissa in third grade, and Corey in first grade attended school in a very small K - 12 school with a total of one hundred students. I moved from working with animals and medical stuff to becoming the office manager for a company that manufactured and sold HO, N, and O scale model buildings to model railroaders. After several years at that job, Steve came to work there as a machinist. It was love at first site for me. Steve also had three children he was raising on his own. They are just stair stepped down from mine and they include Eric, a year younger than Corey, Jennifer, a year younger than Eric, and Jeremy three years the baby of the group. We married and became the "Brady Bunch". Our life was VERY full for a while. A day didn't go by when there wasn't some function to attend for a kid. During all of this change I had become interested in volunteering for our local ambulance crew. By the time the Model Railroad Company moved away I was in Paramedic training and began working full time as a nurse at the local Clinic. After seven years, I took over as full time Administrator/Paramedic for our Association. Oh, yeah, how did the goats come into the picture......... One of the old time ranchers in the area had become dependent on oxygen and needed monitoring at his home. I had become good friends with he and his wife and was boarding my horses on a parcel of his land. I was a week late with the board and when I went inside he told me he couldn't take the money from me any more. I thought he was kicking my horses out for late payment so I began to apologize profusely. He stopped me mid stride and said that they couldn't charge me board any more because it was now my land! So, Steve and I ended up with 159 acres with two free flowing artesian wells. We put up a modular home and have lived out here for six years now. OK, I'm getting there, Anita! A friend of mine had a couple registered Alpines she milked and kept for company for her horses. I liked those girls a lot. My friend was forming a small group of folks with an interest in forming a goat cheese coop. I was missing my dairy days and liked the idea of a smaller, more gregarious, less dangerous milk producer to say nothing of the chance to make a sustainable life on our land. Steve and I jumped in with both feet. We are still working on our cheese coop and have five goat producers and one sheep milk producer in our core group. We have completed a feasibility study and have received a grant for a business plan and a pickup and refrigerated trailer for hauling milk. Jim Schott from Haystack Dairy in Niwot, Colorado is helping us with the business plan and our plans for the cheese plant itself. Steve and I are moving steadily, albeit slowly towards the construction of a grade A facility. The decision on which breeds to use stemmed from my earlier experience with our dairy and with other cattle breeds. When I look at a hereford all I can think of are the many cancer eyes removed. My first inclination was to go with Alpines but they were too aggressive in the herd with the La Manchas and Saanens. We loved the amount of milk from the Saanens but felt very uncomfortable with that white color at this altitude. We live at 8,000 feet and have very few cloudy days. A friend of mine called me over to see this anomaly born to her Saanen. It was a beautifulblack sundgau colored kid. She said even though the buck was alpine, she had never had a colored kid born from a Saanen. That was our introduction to Sables. We bought the kid and then began researching the Sable breed. That brings us to this year where we have a fine mixture of Sables, Saanens, La Manchas, with three Boer does and a Boer buck we use on them and some of the first timers of the other breeds.

Our goals are to become able to make a living off our land and the goats. The feasibility study showed it was quite possible to that with a herd of about 60 milking does. This year we have seventeen dairy does bred. The slow progress of the cheese plant has given us the luxury to cull pretty hard. Our short term goal for this year is to change over to mostly AI breeding. We have four bucks for twenty one does. That seems grossly inefficient to say nothing of sometimes just gross. Let's just say you wouldn't want to hang clothes out to dry in our yard this time of year:). For the time being, I work as the Administrator for our ambulance service and am on the State Emergency Services Advisory Council. Steve is working fifty miles away in Alamosa at the airport repairing electrical equipment and doing maintenance on airplanes. Amy is a geo chemist developing software for oil exploration and is in Golden, Colorado. Melissa has a degree in Equine Science and is completing her paramedic training. She lives in Crestone and is the night time dispatcher for our fire and ambulance service. Corey works for the Property Owners Association and has an Associates Degree in Ag Diesel. Eric is going to school in Denver and still trying to find his niche. Jennifer is living in Denver and going to CU extension for a degree in engineering. She has another year and a half and would like to work for NASA. Jeremy just graduated from high school and is looking into a career in commercial art. For the time being, our hobby is goats. We show some but have had severe qualms over bringing our naked, shaved goats home to bug, sun, and cold hell after the shows. The kids always seem to get some kind of viral upper respiratory thing and share it with others. We are trying to juggle our desire to show with the problems associated with showing. We like the hairy goat shows. This summer we'll do the Wyoming hairy goat show and maybe take a few of the older girls to a couple other shows. We're on DHIR and Linear Appraisal every two years. Last year was the first time we appraised the whole herd. Our lowest score was 74 on the milkers and the kids were all + or above. We're headed in the right direction and Klisse Goodey assured me that a score of 74 was not reason enough to get out of the goat business. As far as the Sable association, Steve and I feel like we should take advantage of what other breeds have learned. There can't be anyone out there now that can deny what a huge leap in quality La Manchas have taken in the last several years. Selection for udders has made that breed a consistent leader in the show ring. They chose not to shoot themselves in the foot by closing off their herd book too quickly. They arguably had a larger gene poole to begin with that we do. We will live with what ever we choose or a very long time so we need to start right. I'm afraid that the dairy goat business is turning into the same as other elitist type registries ie. Arabians with no white allowed above the knees, Holsteins that almost bred out all the red and white pattern, Persian cats with their increasingly mooshed in faces, ad nauseum. I would like to see us be conscientious stewards of our goats. It is time to honor the original visions for dairy goats of the world and to not do harm by following fads and outspoken personalities because it's the easy thing to do. Editors Note: What an oustanding family Pam and Steve have. I was not aware of all of Pam's accomplishments, and I am really proud that she is a member of our association!   The Love of Pam's Life Steve ...and the goats.... Granny's Story Time Heartwarming Children's Stories about Goats, Animals and Children of All Ages Available on Computer Disk Titles include The Apply Dapply The Hairy One Sam The Old Doe and many more by Delores Gerst, accomplished Story Teller Send for a complete List of stories today!  Granny's Story Time % Delores Gerst PO Box 156 Gladstone Illinois 61437 shdyglen@hcil.net

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