The Baily family raise goats on their New Ulm farm.

NEW ULM– For Dale Bailey, his wife Becky, and their kids Greta, Levi, Nora, and Colton, raising goats has been a work in progress since 2019. Currently, they are reaping the benefits and look to expand further.

The Baileys started farming the land they currently own in 2014. The farm was originally abandoned and had several broken down buildings. With several new buildings and more on the way, they are able to grow corn and soybeans and raise rabbits, pigs and goats. From the start, Dale Bailey said it has been no easy task.

“A lot of learning,” he said. “They were always learning from one year to the next about nutrition and about preventing diseases, making sure they’re up-to-date on all the vaccinations. Getting what their diet should be. As far as when the goats are pregnant or when they’re nursing baby goats, we’ve had to talk to a lot of people and get that part figured out too. The mitigation in St. Peter been a huge learning curve of figuring out how to set up the fence and client expectations and how that plays out.”

This mitigation project involved the Bailey family sending out some of their goats to a woman who owns a grove in St. Peter to control plant growing. It’s the first time the Bailey’s have done a project of this type before. Dale Bailey discussed the positives and negatives of this initial endeavor.

“What we’re learning with this project is it’s a little bit out of our radius of how far we should be traveling,” he said. “We’re traveling about thirty-three miles one way and gets to be a little bit much. We really need to focus on trying to keep a little bit closer [to home]. [On the positive] there’s a happiness factor. I know she’s really happy just seeing those animals in her grove everyday is a neat aspect of it. It’s amazing how much they actually mowed down. They’ve been doing a great job taking care of the vegetation.”

“It’s a neat revenue stream,” Levi Bailey chimed in.

The Baileys have heard of the recent discussions in New Ulm City Council about potentially leasing out goats to community members looking to get rid of invasive species such as Buckthorn and Garlic Mustard. Dale Bailey is enthusiastic about the use of goats as an environmentally-friendly solution and is interested in contributing.

“Yeah, that’d be a neat project to work on,” he said. “Goats are a great alternative to take care of vegetation problems. You don’t have to use chemicals. They leave a very small footprint, it’s not like they’re destroying any of the land. And they’re extremely mobile.”

From all the common information spread around about goats, the Bailey kids wanted to clear up one misconception.

“There’s a big stereotype they eat literally everything. That’s not always true.” Levi Bailey said.

“What we have out there [in St. Peter] are mostly females. Females can get picky, and they do not like to eat as fast as the males do.” Greta Bailey said.