Growing a herd — Goat project grows into family enterprise

When 8-year-old Millie Paulton chased a goat around the show ring at the Weston County Fair, a year before she was old enough to join 4-H, she was hoping to catch an animal. She did not know she was also laying the foundation for a small livestock operation that would eventually provide projects for her brothers and another local 4-H member.

After catching a goat within the allotted time, she later received a doe donated by Matt Rabel.

Millie showed and sold the doe, but the buyer donated it back to her. That gave her the opportunity to breed the animal and begin raising goats of her own.

Now 14, Millie expects to take about 11 goats to the July 25-Aug. 1 Weston County Fair. Goats raised through her project will also be shown by her brothers, Henry and Lawrence, and another 4-H member.

The project has grown alongside Millie’s knowledge. When she began, she said, her family arrived at the fair with little more than a goat and a halter.

Reagan and Hale Redding stepped in, helping her prepare the goat and teaching her what to do in the show ring.

“Now I can do it by myself and teach my brothers and my friends to do it too,” Millie said.

Other mentors helped her branch into additional projects. J.J. Lipp and Jace Rich taught her how to fit and show cattle, while Alana Lilly and Sally Chord helped her work with horses. 

This year, Millie plans to show her steer, Captain; heifer, Sassy; goat, General; and 2-year-old horse, Marco. She will also enter chickens, dogs and static exhibits, including drawings of horses. Millie has also written and published a children’s book, “Junior Goes to Fair,” about her first steer.

Her younger brothers have followed her into the show ring and exhibit their own projects.

Henry, 12, plans to show a steer named Sergeant, a goat named Princess and some chickens. His other projects are welding, drawing, LEGO creations and a display about Civil Air Patrol. For a previous fair, he created an entomology project, which involved collecting and displaying insects.  

Millie helps him with his steer, while his father, Travis, has taught him to weld. Henry and his siblings helped their father build a large grain bin to hold feed for their steers.

Lawrence, 10, will show livestock projects, which include a steer named Private, a goat named Freckles, a chicken and other birds.

He also enjoys painting, welding and baking. His past welding projects include a model of the Golden Gate Bridge made from nuts, bolts and washers. It doubles as a holder for bottles of coffee flavoring.

The children are the oldest of Travis and Kendra Paulton’s seven children. The four younger siblings enter static exhibits at the fair, and 4-year-old Martha plans to show her bottle calf, Jellybean, in the open class and participate in the peewee goat show.

The Paultons are fourth-generation ranch children at Dakota Canyon Beef on the Wyoming-South Dakota state line near Dewey, South Dakota. They grow up helping with the ranch’s commercial Angus cattle, but their 4-H livestock projects give them greater responsibility for individual animals, Kendra said.

That work continues through summer heat and winter cold. Kendra said the children feed their animals twice a day, wash them and monitor their condition. They also learn that diligent work does not guarantee the outcome they want, she said.

She said animals sometimes die before fair, and market animals that fail to reach the required weight cannot be sold. Even then, the children must finish their projects and present the animals to the best of their ability.

“There’s a lot of things that they can control through consistency and diligence, but then it’s just life, and just like in real adulthood life, there’s a lot of outside circumstances that we can’t control,” Kendra said. “This is a really awesome, adult-guided way to help them navigate that as kids.”

She said 4-H also teaches practical financial skills. The children record the money and time invested in each project, calculate what their market animals cost to raise and determine their earnings after the sale. 

“They learn to manage their money to plan for and fund their future projects and goals, both short and long term,” Kendra told the News Letter Journal.

For Millie, the return has not been limited to money or ribbons. About six years after mentors helped a young girl who arrived at the fair with a goat and a halter, her herd is supplying projects for other children — and she is the one showing them what to do.

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