The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WAITSBURG – Waitsburg FFA member Sydney Fowble got an extra-special Christmas present this year: a $1,000 grant from the National FFA Foundation for her Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) goat production project. Now she has the enjoyable task of figuring out how to spend the money.

Fowble was selected from hundreds of applicants nationwide for her SAE project. An SAE requires a member to create and operate an agriculture-related business, work at an agriculture-related business, or conduct an agricultural research experience. The grant money is to be used to enhance the member's project.

Fowble, who lives outside Dayton and attends school as a junior at Waitsburg High School, breeds and shows registered Boer goats in the Corral Wranglers 4-H club, FFA, and the American Boer Goat Association.

She got started in the goat business in 2008 when she lived in Pe Ell, Wash. and began raising Nigerian goats. Her family moved to Dayton in 2012 and Fowble got her first two Boer goats shortly after. She fell in love with them and eventually sold off her Nigerians.

"There is a better market for Boers here, they're a lot more fun to show, and they're easier for me to handle. They're taller, and because I have Fibromyalgia, it means I don't have to bend over as much," Fowble said.

Fowble breeds her goats and shows them in local fairs and at sanctioned American Boer Goat Association shows in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. She has made enough of a name for herself showing, that she has breeders pay her to show for them. She said breeders keep an eye out for fair showmanship winners and then hire them.

"At my last show in Chehalis in August, I made enough money showing goats for others that it covered my own show fees," Fowble said.

Fowble says she really enjoys showing, but her favorite part is when the goats have babies.

"It's the most stressful part, both emotionally and physically, but being able to bring new life into the world and experience that is really, really cool," she said.

The most challenging part of raising goats is one the FFA grant will help offset – the money.

"You have feed, equipment, vet care – there's nothing cheap about it. If you try to cheap your way through it's usually not going to work," she said.

Fowble said she started out with goats just because she liked them but, as she grows older, is paying more attention to the bottom line.

Fowble and one of her Boehrs

"I'm thinking more now of turning it into a business, though that's not my main focus. I do want to be making a profit. My parents help me out now, but I want to continue when I'm on my own and make it into a lifelong side business," she said.

Fowble just learned she'd won the grant last week and still hasn't decided how to spend the money, but she has plenty of ideas. She says it is between a new show and breeding doe or new clippers and blades, a new fitting stand, and a new feeder.

Fowble is currently on a winter break from showing, but says the cold increases her workload, since the goats eat more and keeping their water thawed is a "never-ending struggle."

She said she breeds her goats to kid in the spring.

"That's kind of neat because my birthday is in March. One of these days, my hope is to have a kid born on my birthday. But it hasn't happened yet," she said.