Brian:  Our dairy segments today have focused on bovine by products.  But as we found out, there’s a new fad sweeping the state, and it’s goat cheese.  Lacie Stockstill shows us how one family farm is adding value to their dairy.
Lacie:  Meet the Byrd family.  There’s Larry, Virginia, Tyler and Skyler, and about 300 of these.  They’re dairy goats, and almost all of them have a name.
Tyler, what’s that one’s name?
Lollipop.
Lacie:  The Byrds haven’t always had such a large herd.  The reason?  There just wasn’t a market for the milk.  Pontotoc Technology Center’s Hershel Williams was determined to come up with a solution.
Hershel Williams:  We had to look at what do we need to make our producers be able to grow and expand, and the only thing that was to do, was to be able to produce our product and take our raw product and develop it right here in Oklahoma.
Lacie:  Hershel found the answer in Longmont, Colorado, at Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy.  A growing company that, with a little urging from Hershel, decided to expand, opening a cheese-making facility in the Pontotoc Technology Center Business Incubator in Ada.
Williams:  And we partnered up with USDA and got some grant money in there to come in there and help with our incubator program.
Lacie:  And the cheese making began.  A team, made up of Hershel and master cheese-maker, Keith Blok, makes cheese each Tuesday and Friday.
Williams:  From beginning to end, by the time the milk is in the vat, and it reaches the molds, it takes approximately 90 days before the cheeses are ready to go out onto the market.
Williams:  Not a task for the impatient, but the current high demand for healthful goat’s milk products makes it worth the wait.  But is the goat milk movement a fleeting fad?
Williams:  That’s the number one question that I get asked daily. The demand is so much there, through the health food industry of it, I just can’t see this thing going away.  Haystack has been in business 14 years.  Their demand has done nothing but increase.  Their profit sharing has done nothing but rocketed every year.
Lacie:  And so has the Byrd’s, in large part, thanks to their high-quality milk.
Williams:  Not just in Oklahoma, but Haystack said they’ve never seen this clean of milk, even in Colorado.
Lacie:  Larry and Virginia found this success by treating their herd like they treat everything else in their lives, with care and respect.
Larry Byrd:  If you’ll take care of your herd, they’ll take care of you.
Lacie:  Which is something the Byrds are counting on as they build their family business.