The Goat Rental Business - CEO Aaron Steele from Goats On The Go® - e4

Hey, Michael here. You will now hear some episodes of the Michael Girdley Show that we had branded differently, called Unusual Profits or some such like that. Same show, same person, just me interviewing people and producing content that could be helpful on your journey and mine as well. So with no further ado, here's the episode. Hey, Michael here. Sponsor for today's show is actually a product that I'm a part of called DM Bridge. And what DMBridge is, uh, is a service that we built, uh, to solve the problem that Twitter's direct messaging functionality is a total mess. So we built DMBridge to help you fix that. Um, a lot of the other solutions, uh, do things like requiring you to install a whole nother inbox. We didn't want another inbox, so we created DMBridge. And what it does is it takes all of your Twitter DMs and has them appear inside of your email inbox. So you can reply to them just like it's a regular email. You see them just like it's a regular email. You can search them later like it's one of your regular emails, all just by using DMBridge. So, uh, we're currently live with the product. Uh, would love for you to sign up and become a customer, uh, and check it out. So you can find that at dmbridge.app, uh, and go on there, put in your name, uh, and be either part of the beta or join us as part of the live use of the product. And again, check it out, dmbridge.app. All right, everybody, welcome to Industry Anonymous. It's a podcast about businesses that are in unique and interesting niches, and we have on folks that are experts in those niches and we learn all about them. So, Aaron, welcome to the, to the podcast today.

Yeah, my pleasure, Michael.

Thanks for the invite.

Yeah, super excited. I will tell you, you know, the theme for today is the goat rental business. I've been pre-selling people on Twitter and social media about the different businesses that we have that are going to get talked about on the podcast. By far, goat rental has been the most positive one that people want to hear about.

Well, good.

It's a lot of fun. People have a good time ribbing me about it and chatting with me about it. And, uh, yeah, we have a blast. So it's easy to talk about goats for a long time.

Okay, well, good. I think people want to hear about goats. So, so tell me, how did you get— so you're Aaron Steele. How did you get into the goat rental business? Or I guess you're really in the help other people get in the goat rental business, is that right?

Yeah, we started with the first, we've ended up with the latter. We live in Iowa. My wife grew up on a farm. I did not. I was a generation removed from the family farm structure here in Iowa. We moved out to a small little, what we call an acreage, a little hobby farm perhaps. I just enjoyed being in the outdoors and we both enjoyed rural living, but we have this land that is 3 acres in size that's too much to mow with a lawnmower and too small to be of any interest to farmers in a conventional way. I also had 3 sons and they were young at the time and I thought, "Boy, they need to be introduced to some chores." they need to know the Iowa farmland. And so we got a handful of goats because we had some extra grass that we could raise some animals on. And goats seemed manageable and fun. And it turned out that they're very fun. Not maybe as manageable as I thought, but very fun. And we started— that kind of awakened a farmer gene in me. And so we started trying to think, how can we get into farming in Iowa when land is $10,000 an acre? And there's a very conventional template for how you farm in Iowa that we're obviously just not going to be able to grasp on our own. Like, we're not going to be able to do the conventional path to farming. In Iowa, with land as expensive as it is and equipment is as expensive as it is, if you want to farm, you better be lucky enough to have grown up in a farm family and be able to inherit and work, you know, kind of gradually work your way into the family farm. That wasn't the position we were in. But we did recognize a really strong market for meat goats and a growing market, which I'd love to talk with you about as, as much as you're interested in that. And so we started thinking, well, how can we expand our goat herd while not having to buy land?

Yeah, how do we get other people to pay to feed our goats? And we're vaguely aware of some goat grazing operations scattered around the country. To our knowledge at the time, there weren't any in the Midwest, but we could see some market trends pointing toward a need for a goat grazing business. You know, as much as you can analyze the demand for goat grazing business, we saw that there were some trends kind of starting to converge. And so, uh, we went to another, uh, friend of ours who was operating kind of a small hobby farm and also had an interest in moving beyond just hobby scale and being profitable. And, uh, so we decided to give it a go and see what we could do with it. So we started out by running a goat grazing operation ourselves, helping property owners with their weed and brush problems in a sustainable way. and over time we started to see a demand for guiding other small startups in creating their own goat grazing businesses across the country. And that's kind of the genesis for our affiliate network. And so now we now have 30 affiliates across the country and one in, one in Canada and one in Australia. And we just see a lot of demand both from property owners who want to use goats to control their vegetation in a sustainable way, but also from folks who are interested in starting a business like the one we started back in 2012.

Yeah. So I'm super curious. So 2012, you have a friend who is also interested in becoming a farmer without land. So it's super interesting idea. And then you said you started to guess that there was demand for this. Walk me through, how did you take the idea of you think people might want to do without And I keep calling it goat rental, but you have a better name for it than I do.

And we call it targeted grazing because, I mean, goat rental is perfectly fine shorthand for it, but yeah, yeah, goat rental kind of implies that we drive by and dump a bunch of goats out and drive away, you know.

Yeah, targeted grazing sounds, you know, much more, much more sophisticated for sure.

Yeah.

So what was your process to go through at that point from hypothesis of, oh, I think people would want to get targeted grazing from me for these goat herds to actually go into find your first customers and proving it out? Walk me through that.

Well, just a couple of those trends that we saw converging. I was working as a community planner, a city planner. Ironically, not a lot of city planners/goat herders out there, but that gave me some experience to recognize what was going on in the world of land use and development and what land development. What we were seeing was rural living and rural edge living taking on status. So, you know, there are lots of suburban places in the US where if you really want to demonstrate your status, you don't build on another suburb lot, you move further to the edge and perhaps you even start living the rural life yourself. Rural states, rural estates were becoming more and more common and whole other industries were seeing benefit from that. You know, small lawn tractors, uh, horse accessories, you know, all sorts of things. Animal feed, very expensive animal feed. Okay, all these things were enjoying the benefits of that rural life as status trend that we saw. We're also obviously seeing people more and more concerned about making sustainable choices and also making sure people saw them make sustainable choices. Yeah. And using goat grazing as an alternative to other forms of vegetation management certainly is a demonstration of your interest in sustainability. It's very obvious, you know, to your neighbors. And we were seeing, as I mentioned, the, the goat meat market, uh, develop, and that's largely because of the changing demographics in the United States. Well, one other thing too is kind of this, um, know your farmer, local foods, know where your food comes from, interest in the farm, again, interest in food production. And so our service kind of brings the farm to you for a short period of time. And so all of that mashed together and twisted up and looked at a certain way suggested to us maybe there actually was a market for this. So in our, in our first year, we thought this was too crazy to be real. So we just said, let's, we'll do some projects for some friends and neighbors and we'll take a lot of photos and a lot of video. We knew from the beginning that brand would be important for this business and that it also could be a very PR-friendly business. So we dropped a couple of press releases out there almost as an afterthought. We got some local television news coverage and our phones started ringing and we didn't, It hasn't stopped since. I guess as far as testing the market, it turned out to be pretty simple for us, but maybe the best test of the market was just as soon as we put up a website, we started getting calls from all across the country, both from people wanted to hire us, and obviously we couldn't geographically. We can't haul goats all across the country, but then also from people who wanted to start businesses like ours. That was perhaps the best indicator that we were onto something.

Yeah, super interesting. So in terms of the business itself, it sounds like there's fundamentals of you market, and it sounds like there's a lot of word of mouth and referrals at this point. And then how do the, how do the customers connect to you? Or is it all done through the web now? Or are people texting with you and saying, hey, okay, we'll put you on the schedule? Is that what's, what's the— walk me through the facilitation, you know, standpoint and how that works.

I mean, certainly the website is a major component of what we do. And as we build out our affiliate network, we have many tiny little companies acting a little bit like a larger company. So we get better search traffic, better search traffic leads to better search rankings. Pretty soon we're findable no matter where a customer might be looking for us. If they're looking for us in Alabama, they're gonna find our website and locate the affiliate closest to them to serve them. It doesn't matter where they are in the country. So that's a major component of it. With regard to on-the-ground marketing for our affiliates out there, a herd of goats in your local subdivision is a really great billboard. It's hard to miss. And so from that comes a lot of word of mouth. And again, like I said, it's very PR-friendly. It's easy to get some free media coverage about the goat project that's going on in the local park or along the local trail. And so that part largely takes care of itself. But, you know, the findability online is a critical component for us and our affiliates.

Right.

Well, that's—

it sounds like that's another trend that you probably just didn't mention, which is, you know, the internet has percolated all the way out into these rural areas now where it wasn't that way 10 years ago, for sure.

Yeah, that's true. And I think also something we probably underestimated is just how connected everyone is. Obviously, we're connected through social media and that sort of thing, but word of mouth is no longer word of mouth with your friends and neighbors. Word of mouth is word of mouth nationally, internationally. And so, you know, we, we keep having, you know, news coverage pop up. And when one of our affiliates in Denver, Colorado gets some nice news coverage, it— our search results and our website traffic increases for our affiliate in Connecticut, you know. So that's That's been a really nice development to see.

So let's walk through the economics a little bit. So if, if I have 2 acres, right, how long does it take a herd of goats to kind of go work through that, given your typical herd size?

Yeah, if we have 2-acre, 2-acre project, we'll typically send 40 goats.

And we'll do that project in a week to 10 days, probably a week to 10 days. And then if I'm a landowner, how much does, does that cost me to get visited by a herd of goats?

Yeah, so of course depends regionally, market to market, and each of our affiliates sets their own prices. But we're looking at anywhere from, say, $800 to $1,500 per acre, just as a broad sampling of our, our various markets.

Got it. So that's, let's say I have, I'm just trying to get the idea of what a goat, what is it? I guess there's a KPI of a goat week, revenue per goat week or goat day. Like, what is, what is it, what is the average revenue per goat day? Per goat?

Yeah, so, you know, we've actually calculated that before and it just seemed too silly. So what, it doesn't seem silly?

I just came up with it, super genius.

Just sitting around talking about it made us feel too sheepish, so we've, uh, no, I don't remember what that number is off the top of my head, but well, here, like, it's $1,500 for a herd of of 40 goats, you said, for 2 weeks.

So that's $750 a week. Uh, so then that you divide the number of goats you have, so that's $750 divided by 40.

Yeah, so about $19. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, so you can start to do the math. And then, so you, you keep the goats. How long do, how long do the goats live? Because at the end, you, they get sold for meat, right? Is that the idea?

Yeah, so these 2 businesses, the, the farm production of meat goats and the goat grazing operation for vegetation control really complement each other nicely. We're of course keeping our herd of female goats to produce new goat kids every year. And we're, we're typically only selling the males. And we actually have so much demand for our grazing service that we keep those males a lot longer than most farmers would. So the typical farm might sell those at 6 months and 60 pounds. But in order to meet demand, it's worthwhile for us to actually keep our goats through an additional winter, which no farmer wants to do. No farmer wants to feed more animals than he or she has to through the winter. But we do because the numbers pay out for us. So our goats will actually go to market at 18, 19 months old and more around 90 to 100 pounds.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah. Which we really like that because we're able to deliver a product to market that nobody else can because the economics just don't pan out on your own farm. Yeah, take carrying an animal that long. Yeah, but they do for us.

So there's— you're a business that is affiliating and doing lead gen for the people that are doing the actual goat herd, goat farming service underneath. So you're not set up as a franchisee, franchisor, you're doing affiliate licensing style model, correct?

Correct.

At its core, our affiliates are licensing our trademarks, um, and then It's almost, probably looks more like a membership club than it does a franchise. They get access to some of our resources by virtue of licensing the trademarks.

So I'm definitely curious why you chose to do that instead of full franchise. I know CrossFit, that's the CrossFit affiliate model. Then they just distinctively decided not to become legal franchise, a franchisor. Why did you decide now that you have this, the business, which is, it's Goats To Go, correct?

Goats on the Go.

That's a great name. So sorry to butcher it. The good news is I pronounced your name correctly. So at least we're 1 for 2. So no, but thank you for being awesome. But yeah, so walk me through why did you decide for the Goats on the Go business? Why did you decide to make that an affiliation model instead of going down the full franchise path? Because there's, there's got to be a trade-off there, right?

Right. So right from the beginning, our bias was toward people like us, people who had an interest in small farming, didn't want to be gigantic and conventional in terms of a farm, but wanted to produce really great food for people. And so we gravitated when we started building an affiliate network toward people who kind of fit that mold because that's where we were coming from. So most of our affiliates are using the goat grazing operation as a side hustle, as an additional revenue layer on top of some sort of farm operation. So they're not seeking— I'm sure some of them would love it. In some markets, this can actually happen, but they're not really seeking to replace a full salary or make their goat grazing operation the entirety of their income. And in most cases, that's a pretty good thing because this is a seasonal business. I mean, you would have to make that income in the 5 to 6 month growing season in most of the country.

Oh. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that just totally shows you where I live in the US, which is, you know, I live in South Texas. So like everything grows all year round, right? We mow our yards 10 months out of the year, maybe 11. Sure. Yeah, sure. Faster in the summer. But yet you guys are in Iowa, you're like in the tundra.

We're in Iowa and we've got an affiliate in Canada, you know, so one in Vermont who, you know, they're not going to be free of snow until the middle of May. So yeah.

Yeah.

So even in more southern locales, there is a dormant season that lends some seasonality to our business.

Okay.

So even if it's warm enough to be out there, the vegetation really needs to be green and growing in order to make this work in most cases. So we've got a side hustle business for most of our affiliates that happens in about half the year. And so in order to make the numbers work, we couldn't manage the full regulation, all the expenses that go with a franchise in every state of the US. So instead, and we also had strategically a desire to get our brand recognized where we had an opportunity at the forefront of a new and growing industry to grab hold of a leadership position in the market and have our brand recognized as a leader in targeted goat raising. And it's always been our goal to also put a professional face on this business that some people— it's easy to view as flaky and gimmicky. And so that's what we are after. And so there was also some real benefit to us strategically in keeping the affiliate fees low and making multiplication simple.

Yeah, totally dig it. Well, how much do the affiliates pay you? They pay you a monthly stipend, is that right?

Yeah, they pay an annual flat fee, typically $2,000 a year.

Yeah. So then if I'm just kind of backing in the economics, let's say they're— your typical licensee is doing 6 months of targeted grazing a year. It sounded like you were talking that there's— they're making somewhere between $500,000 and $1,000 per week on the herd. And so let's say they're getting— they top ending— they might be topping out at $250,000 to $300,000 top line revenue as, as an affiliate. Is that kind of ballparky of the size of these things as a side hustle at the top end?

Yeah, I would say actually what's more realistic is an average, you know, across our affiliates, because the markets vary so much. You know, we're probably— we're talking somewhere south of, um, $100,000 of revenue.

Okay, and that includes the selling of the meat and potentially goat milk and stuff like that, or that's just from the grazing itself?

Just from the grazing itself.

Yeah.

Okay, so it's just— this is a— this is a cool side hustle, but in, in the end, this is much more of a It's like what you talked about at the beginning, farming without a farm, right? Fabless semiconductors, if you're familiar with that, like there's these semiconductor manufacturers that don't have fabricating plants. That's exactly what this is.

Right. Yep. We've been pretty pleased with the model so far. You know, there's going to be, there's some things that might, you know, point us in a different direction in the future, but to date, it seems to be, it seems to fit what our target audience for affiliates is looking for.

Yeah, no, super fun.

Okay.

I did go out to Twitter and told Twitter, which, you know, Twitter was very excited that we're going to be talking today. So I asked them for questions that they wanted to have answered. So if it's okay, I'll ask you a few of those. And the good news is at least half of them appear to be serious. So I will start with the least one, the least one. So I said, hey, I'm talking to an owner of a goat rental business today. Targeted grazing. Do you have any questions, you know, for someone in the goat business? And this person said, you can rent Tom Brady? Like what, for parties? So he's the GOAT. Yeah, pretty funny. So that was the least serious one. So questions from another person, they do actually goat rental at the golf club that they're at, they bring in goats, evidently. So that's pretty cool. They— he says it brings cool ambiance in terms of that sort of stuff. He wanted to know what are the biggest unexpected liabilities So curious, like, do you have to get special goat insurance? Do people have to worry about kids getting trampled and stuff like that? How do you— are there any liabilities for the individual affiliates that they need to be mindful of?

I mean, there are always liabilities, there are always risks, but I think that as a general rule, people who hear the concept versus when they actually see it in play, actually see it happening. Well, let's take for example, if I went and grabbed my local insurance agent who's never heard of goat grazing before as a business, and I just guide it to him in his office, and then the next week I take him to see a project. Usually his, his stress level about the whole thing really goes down when he sees it. There's actually less risk and liability, I think, than most people anticipate. But, you know, we're dealing with live animals in public places oftentimes, and so obviously there's some risk associated with that. You know, if our goats were to get out and get on a highway, cause a car accident, you know, those are, those are real concerns. But it's just not, you know, when you see it actually happening, it's, it's just that the same heartburn isn't there about it. And it's really simple, it's really calm, it's really stress-free almost all the time. We do use some electric fencing on our job sites. I mean, we use a lot of electric fencing on our job sites. And so again, the perception of that is much worse than the reality of that. Electric fence to If you don't have a lot of farm experience, electric fence might sound really scary. It's not scary.

Isn't that just like a single wire, 24 inches off the ground, that kind of electric fencing, or is it something more sophisticated that you guys need?

Yeah, same concept, except the fencing that we use is kind of woven into a net so that we have several horizontal strands of conductor that is electrified. But I tell people, first of all, I think people think that there's this constant high flow of electricity through the fence and Actually, it's just a momentary pulse about every second, second and a half. And that pulse, if you grab it, you know, I describe it as think of the worst static shock you ever got in your house after shuffling around in your socks and touching the doorknob. You know, that's what it's going to feel like in the most condition.

Yeah, totally dig it. Okay. So another question here, we've talked, it seems like we've talked a lot about kind of residential or oddball kind of usage so far. Somebody was suggesting that maybe solar fields become a pretty good use case. Are there folks in your affiliate network that are doing commercial applications, or is that a different subset of the market?

We are doing commercial applications. There is kind of a fork between institutional customers and residential and small business customers. Big project, large projects, we call it, you know, and the logistics are significantly different. Profit margins tend to be higher in, you know, more suburban customers, municipal parks, that sort of thing. In the, oh, under 10-acre size. And then we get over 10-acre size and the profit margins get tighter. But there are some benefits to doing larger projects, you know, some efficiency of scale you can get there too. As for solar grazing, and our affiliates will do any and all depending on their capacity, a lot of them find the profit margins in that kind of more boutique suburban style project to be appealing, and they tend not to, you know, grow to 400 goats and do projects that are 80 acres in size. Out west is a little different story. We may touch on that here in a little bit. But, uh, as for solar grazing, it actually has a name— solar grazing. I— that's a huge opportunity in the future. I really see that industry growing. It's— however, solar grazing tends to be done most often with sheep instead of goats goats have a tendency to climb and jump on things and chew on cables. So sheep tend to be the answer in most solar grazing applications. But our affiliates, it all comes down to can you handle livestock in a professional way and in a mobile way? And if you can do that, well, you're well equipped for both goat grazing for weeds and brush and the management of solar fields with sheep.

So why goats then? I guess that brings up a great question. Why not sheep? Why isn't sheep on the go?

Well, it's funny you should mention that. We actually did just add a new trademark, sheep on the go, to be targeted at solar farms. Goats are unique in the livestock world in that they like brushy, woody plants and broadleaf weeds. And many of those Many of the invasive plants that we're struggling with in the US right now fit that profile to a T. Right.

Like kudzu and stuff like that.

They'll eat everything.

Right. Exactly.

Okay.

Most of the stuff we hate, the goats love, but other livestock won't eat it. So sheep won't eat a lot of what the goats eat. And the stuff causing the most nuisances for us in North America right now are ideal goat foods.

Do they eat cedar? Are you familiar with that? It's like a—

Yep.

It's a nasty, horrible tree here in Texas.

Yep, goats do eat various kinds of cedar. Eastern red cedar in the upper Midwest here is more of a problem. Salt cedar, yeah. Pretty much you name it, if you don't like it, goats probably do.

Yeah, super interesting. Okay, so if I'm like a schmuck, say like some guy in San Antonio, 6'5", really handsome, "and I wanna get into the business of being an affiliate, what do I have to do to start up?" Right? So what are the steps I have to go through and stuff I have to buy? What should I get my head around?

So you wanna get some livestock experience and probably some experience with goats before you start a goat grazing business. We have people call and say, "I'm about to get goats and I wanna start as an affiliate next week." And I usually tell them that's, too much learning curve all at once. You know, we got to tackle the goats first. Goats are actually a difficult livestock animal to raise and a unique animal to raise. So we usually advise them to get some experience with goats first, then become an affiliate. So yeah, we ask— we just do a lot of communication with potential affiliates, understanding where they're coming from, trying to make them understand that the way we operate and the best practices that we recommend they follow aren't necessarily what they see on YouTube videos. And, and eventually if we're all on the same page, we'll sign them up and we'll, we'll get them started. We'll give them access to all of our resources and we'll insist that they come to a training that we have every year. It's coming right up actually.

And so you charge for the training. So your, your affiliate business has basically, you get, you're getting affiliate fees from folks, few grand a year from each, and then you charge for the training also.

The initial training that's required just to get started as a business with Goats on the Go is included in the affiliate fee, but we are offering additional training options now that we do charge for. Yes.

Okay. And are you selling them equipment also, or no? I'm just— this is all the CrossFit model, by the way, in case you're interested in how CrossFit flies around in a private jet. I'm telling you all their secrets.

Yeah, the difference for us, you know, CrossFit's— that's where the real profit center is, is in this is the sale of the training. And not so much for us, that's more sideline for us, but we, you know, we do sell some products to our affiliates. You know, we are able, because we're buying for a large number of folks, large number of businesses instead of just for one tiny little business, we're able to buy some promotional materials and swag and that sort of thing in bulk and then allow our affiliates to repurchase it from us and spend less money doing so. So we, we are going to continue to be offering them things, uh, more and more. And we do have a partnership with a company that makes the fencing we use and some of the other equipment that we use. And at the moment, we're using that as a lure, as a benefit to our new affiliates, that they get a discount on that equipment rather than buying directly from us.

Do you, do you personally still have a day job, or is this your day job?

I do a little bit of marketing consulting on the side, but this is the bulk of it.

Fascinating. Okay. So you gave up on being the urban— well, you're an urban planner. I was just thinking about it. I was like, how many cities are there in Iowa anyway?

Yeah, that's what we call it. We call it community planning just to be a little more broad about the urban nature of it, or lack thereof. No, I started to exit out of urban planning and working for local governments and started, started a business degree and then started working into some marketing and, and yeah, management opportunities. And so still actually do some of, some of those tasks for on a contract basis for a former employer.

Yep. Well, it's, it's interesting when we dug into how you would, how you went about starting the business, your thought process to give you indications that it was going to work was exactly the opposite of the way an urban planner would do it. Right? Urban planners, just, just, I mean, when I heard you talk, I was like, there's no way this guy was an urban planner. Like, that's just like, like, or if you were, you were miserable because you were spending all your time in the weeds and you're, you're a big, long, visionary thinker, which is great. Like, that's what entrepreneurs should do. And it's also why I think you've been successful taking this idea that you saw and having the vision to be able to translate it into something that could be really scalable and a nice little business. Like, Kudos to you. So anyway, maybe that was just an insult and a compliment at the same time, or you can take it both as compliments, but either way. Well, it might have been an insult to urban planners all over the country, but the funny thing is, if you tell them that they think that way, they'll be like, yeah, of course, everybody thinks about the details first and then you build it up from there. That's how it works. Yeah. We have rules that we follow.

Yeah. Right. Well, you know, part of, I like to say that part of the motivation, part of, I've, I became an entrepreneur because I was in a corner. I mean, I really had to be cornered before I would take the risk and take the leap to start a business. And I was being cornered by the slow cubicle soul death that I was in. And so no, urban planning was not for me. And yet, it's amazing how many of those experiences have been applicable to the business that I started.

Yeah.

You wouldn't think that there's any connectivity there at all, but it's amazing that there is.

Yeah. Well, you seem, you seem like a hugely self-actualized person. So kudos to you. So super good.

Thanks.

A couple more, couple more questions and I'll let you go. I know you got some goats or something out there to deal with, but I don't, I haven't seen any goats yet in the video. So I was like, oh man, maybe we'll walk in your, want to walk in your kitchen or something. That'd be awesome. So, so how much should a person who's starting up an affiliate business expect to be investing? Is that a $10,000 or $12,000 initial investment to get up and going, or how much is the typical outlay from those folks?

Yeah. So that's probably a pretty fair estimate. One thing we have to keep in mind is that a lot of these folks are coming from a place where they're already operating some farm at some scale. And so a lot of the resources that they will need, they can use, borrow, or rent or lease from the farm. You know, they can apply equipment they already have, a tow vehicle to pull livestock trailer, that sort of thing. It's— you're just going to be able to squeeze more use out of that capital you already invested in your small farm. And beyond that, they need to buy some of that electric fencing I was talking about, some other gear. They need to pay our affiliate fee. They need to find liability insurance. So, you know, for not counting the investment in the goats themselves and in the tow vehicle and the livestock trailer, then yeah, we're looking at south of $10,000 probably to get, to get rolling.

Yeah, gotcha. Are there other uses for the goats besides grazing? Like I had one person on Twitter asked if goat yoga was part of this, but, you know, birthday goats, like, or is any of that stuff that people are also using the herds for?

Yeah, so some of our affiliates It's kind of important to know that large goats are typically better, you know, um, goats that could eat a lot and stretch up high. And so the goats that we use for goat yoga or petting zoos or some of those more entertainment options are a different breed, literally a different breed of goats. And some of our affiliates are keeping a separate herd and making that available to goat grazing businesses or to yoga instructors who want to hold one-off events for goat, for goat yoga and that type of thing. So yeah, there are definitely some options there.

Yeah, got it. What would surprise people about the, the targeted grazing business? What, what sort of facts do people learn and their minds are just blown? Besides the fact you can rent goats.

But anyway, yeah, you know, we, we get a lot of comments when people say the unload of the goats at a new site is always the big thing that people want to watch. And, uh, it is, it's really cool to see, depending on the project size, anywhere from 40 to 240 goats pile off of a trailer. But the thing they're always surprised at is how quickly they go about their jobs. Our goats have been used so often on the trailer, off the trailer, always going to new and really great food at a new project site that there's zero stress in it for them to travel.

Yeah.

Some animals, if they've been in a livestock trailer for 40 minutes or something like that, it's going to take them a while to get reoriented when they jump off that trailer. But our goats are literally often eating before their feet hit the ground. And so I think folks are— folks think that we starve them, that we hold back food from them in the day approaching a new project. But it's actually the opposite. They just know that they're getting off in a new spot and there's going to be great food there, and they go right at it.

So that's great. Do you guys— do you take the pregnant goats out? Like, is there a danger, like, you could bring a goat to my house and like there's a— we have a goat, a goat birth out in the, in the yard? Or how does that work?

Well, we try to schedule, um, the kidding season. Goats have baby kids. Um, we try to schedule kidding season around, uh, our goat grazing season and have that all done before we ever go out on a job. But accidents happen. Sometimes some goat mothers are just a little slower in the whole process. And so we've had some born on a job and that typically ends up being a good thing, something that the public and the property owners really think is fantastic. And I think it's a really good education too.

Yeah. And then I assume the other end of the spectrum is there's got to be here and there just random deaths amongst the herd and stuff like that that may happen, or is that just a total rarity that that unnatural deaths are— well, I mean, natural deaths are just something that doesn't happen with the herd, or how does that work?

Well, as, as any Iowa farmer will tell you, that if you have livestock, you're going to have dead stock. And that's just, uh, that's a reality. It does, it does happen. Um, you know, we're, we're pretty careful about monitoring the health of the goats that go out on these projects because that's not really good PR, you know. But, uh, it It happens occasionally. And, you know, sometimes a goat will stumble onto something, a plant that ends up being toxic to it, and it'll, you know, it'll die from that.

Or—

but deaths are rare, and, uh, but they're inevitable too.

Very cool. Well, great job. How— if, if people are interested in becoming an affiliate or, or supporting you or renting, renting a goat herd for targeted grazing, how can they do that?

GoatsOnTheGo.com is the best place to find us. We're also on, you know, the usual social media channels under Goats On The Go, so you'll find us there.

Dude, awesome job. Thank you so much, Aaron. You killed it today.

Oh, thank you.

I appreciate it. Well, thanks so much for the invite.

That was a lot of fun.

Right on. Thanks for being here.