Magazine covers tell story of meat goat industry


By Terry Hankins Goat Rancher Editor


A walk through the Goat Rancher warehouse is like a walk back through the history of the U.S. meat goat industry. Many of the first issues featured stories from Texas — because that’s where all the goats were in the early days. If goat rancher wannabes wer- en’t traveling to Texas looking for breeding stock, then Texas ranchers were sending truckloads of goats eastward.


Eventually the Boers, Kikos, Savannas and other meat goats spread across the land and goat events began popping up around the rest of the country — especially in the South- east and Midwest.


Recently I pulled some of the old issues from the storage shelves and photographed


them. In the beginning we were a tabloid and published that way for our first 15 years. Eventually, technology improvements made it feasible to convert to a slick magazine with the October 2011 issue.


When we converted to the new format, we also were able to publish the magazine online for the first time. All the magazines from October 2011 forward are archived and can be accessed with a digital subscription. As you can tell by looking at this sam- pling of old magazine covers, we have written about every breed and every topic imaginable — from basic goat husbandry to shows, sales and breeder profiles.


In recent years we have expanded to in- clude special issues each year dedicated to Kiko goats in May, Spanish goats in Sep- tember and Savanna goats in November. n


The first issue, May 1996, featured my then 6- year-old daughter, Lindley.


June 1996


July 1996


August 1997


May 1998 6 Goat Rancher | May 2026


September 1998


December 1998


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