FODDER FOR THOUGHT
Goat Rancher magazine celebrates 30th anniversary
Thirty years. It’s really hard to believe it has been that long since I started a fled- gling goat publication.
Many magazines are facing tough times in this digital age and many have disappeared completely. Goat Rancher is the only goat magazine now covering the industry. We’ve been able to succeed with our ability to continously provide quality content and a medium for nationwide advertising. Over the years, I’ve tried to keep the mag- azine relevant, the readers happy and the advertisers satisfied.
Of course we have had to adapt with the times. In addition to the print magazine, we have a digital version that can be read on a desktop computer or easily scrolled on a smart phone.
Much of our breaking news on shows, sales and seminars is broadcast through Face- book to our 14,000 followers.
Goat Rancher’s beginnings One day in early 1995 when I was work-
ing at the Clarion-Ledger, the daily news- paper in Jackson, Miss., the business editor dropped a notice on my desk in the newsroom about an upcoming “goat meeting.” One of my jobs at the newspaper was to write a weekly agribusiness column. Thinking there might be a story here, I went to the meeting. I did a few interviews and be- fore long I had the bug — the goat bug. I even joined a local meat goat co-op. I proposed a meat goat newsletter for the co-op. I would publish it if they would help fund it. The board members thought a newsletter was a great idea, except for that funding part.
Three decades later, the details are fuzzy but somehow I convinced my family (and my- self) that it would be a great idea to quit my good-paying job, sell our house in the suburbs and move to my family farm to raise and write about goats. That was the beginning of Goat Rancher magazine.
In late 1995 we moved into the old farm house I was raised in. On weekends I was traveling to every goat sale and seminar I could find. I was selling subscriptions to a magazine that didn’t yet exist.
4 Goat Rancher | May 2026
This is the seed that would eventually grow into Goat Rancher magazine — a column I wrote for the Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger somewhere around 1995. Thanks to Kipp Brown who found this old clipping and several others as he was packing up to retire as Mississippi State University’s goat expert.
In just a couple months I had sold 300 subscriptions, enough to fund the first issue of Goat Rancher in May 1996 — 30 years ago this month.
I took that first issue to the American
Boer Goat Association show in Tyler, Texas, that summer and also hit goat conferences at
BY TERRY HANKINS Goat Rancher editor
Langston University, Prairie View, Tuskegee and anywhere else I could find an audience . It took about three years for the maga- zine to really catch on. I’ve always felt that the Lord blessed me and my family for the opportunity to start a business that seemed to come along at just the right time. n
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