Thank a Farmer: Education plays a vital role at Twin Willows farm

Jul. 24—Ten years after starting Twin Willows farm, Erica Hopkins says she still learns something new every day.

In 2011, the Logansport High School graduate and her husband, Brandon, bought a six-acre property on the city's west side. They didn't know much about farming but figured the barn on their land had to be put to some use.

Cue the goats.

After researching, the couple decided on Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats due in part to their shorter stature, high butterfat content and smaller appetite compared to standard dairy goats.

Erica Hopkins said their coat colors are also unique and they get along well with people. The breed, along with pygmy goats, were imported to the U.S. between 1930 and 1950, according to The Livestock Conservancy — a nonprofit focused on preserving and promoting rare breeds of livestock. The goats were featured in zoos and later became popular as show and companion animals.

Hopkins said learning the ropes of handling goats wasn't easy, especially with no livestock background.

"Just figuring out the feed, the balance of hay and minerals and grain (is difficult)," Hopkins said. "And then, of course, trying to keep animals healthy and dealing with things like barber's pole worm, which is a big deal. I lost a lot of animals several years ago to barber's pole, and learning how to deal with that, and trying to help them live better lives (was difficult)."

Barber's pole worm is a common parasite that attaches itself to the fourth stomach compartment of animals like sheep and goats and feeds on the blood. It can cause anemia, edema — fluid build-up in the body's tissue — and death.

Hopkins said it taught her the darker side of raising livestock. It also made her want to help others in their journey of raising goats.

"A lot of times when people first start, as I did, it's just a lot of trial and error," Hopkins said. "Sometimes that can be really heartbreaking because you do things wrong, and you should have done it this way and you lose animals or they get sick.

"I just want to try to hopefully save people a little bit of heartache. You're still going to learn the most from those heart experiences, but I just wanted to try to try to help people and help the goats that they're trying to raise."

She describes herself as an educator at heart, and as she figured things out, she began mentoring others.

It led her to author a book in 2018 titled "The Goat Chick: How to Get Started Raising Goats." According to the description, it's meant to help people considering raising goats in choosing a breed, where to get them from, how to feed them and daily care for them.

"It's basically just like how I do it," she said. "There are a million different ways that you can, there are opinions everywhere on the internet. I'm an educator at heart, so I decided a couple of years ago that I was going to develop a website and write a book to lead people who call me and contact me and say, 'Hey, how do we get started raising goats?' I can just send them to my website or send them to the book.

"And then they can ask me any questions they need. Not that I know everything, but I can just provide my own experience with stuff."

The Hopkinses focus on breeding the goats for milk and begin their day milking. They have seven does producing milk out of the 20-30 goats in their herd. Then, they make sure the herd has water and feeds them. They'll also make sure the goats' substrate is trimmed and they're healthy.

Then, she'll head off to her job as a utility draftsman at Logansport Municipal Utilities and repeat the process 12 hours later.

Hopkins sells the raw milk to breeders who will then mix it with their food. She also makes paneer cheese, butter and has even dabbled in milk goat soap.

They're also a performance herd, meaning once a month, they'll send the milk their goats produce to a lab to be tested and evaluated by the American Dairy Goat Association and American Goat Society.

One of Erica Hopkins' proudest achievements is owning what the ADGA calls an "elite doe," meaning it ranks in the top 5% of their breed nationally. The ADGA evaluates on a strict set of criteria for genetic merit based on Milk Fat Protein Dollars. She also has several superior genetic does that rank in the top 15% nationally.

"But I think my biggest achievement is just how far I've come in 10 years and, you know, not be the best but continually improve to your best ability," Hopkins said.

Hopkins also competed in her first national show in Louisville during the week. She showed goats in both the junior and senior categories. In the junior, one of her goats placed in the top 10, while the other had a top-20 finish. In the senior category, one of her does placed 21st out of 60.

Whether she's at work or nearly 200 miles away competing, she can always keep an eye on her herd at home, thanks to the livestream platform Twitch.

In 2019, Hopkins set up an account on the popular platform so people could watch her herd as they ate, played or slept.

According to a 2019 interview in Kotaku, Hopkins planned to create her own site for the livestream before discovering Twitch thanks to her then-16-year-old son. She said her son loved the video game Fortnite and would talk about watching streamers play the game on Twitch, according to the article.

With 12 cameras set up remotely, people can enter commands into the chat to change what they're viewing or zoom in and out. Donating 50 cents will also drop treats for the goats.

She can also interact with people watching. While she competed in Louisville, a moderator kept the chat updated in real time.

"That's part of the educator in me, too," Hopkins said. "I wanted to (start the livestream) because it also helps me because I can always keep an eye on my herd, change cameras and see where everyone is, and what they're doing. Even from Kentucky, I can log in and I can ask my viewers, 'How's it going?' And they'll say, 'Oh, looks like so and so didn't eat today' or whatever."

She received help from another Twitch streamer — who hosts similar live feeds of their animals and livestock — who wrote the original code. Hopkins' stream, under the username "TheGoatChick," runs 24 hours a day, seven day a week.

Then it was improved upon, Hopkins said, by a dedicated member of her stream who had a background in information technology. The viewer helped the system run smoother and made small tweaks for performance.

"It's kind of like having some free help, free eyes on your herd, too," she said. "I just wanted to share my herd with other people. The goats, they give me a lot of joy, and they're actually really therapeutic for myself, and for a lot of other people who are watching on the Twitch stream. They become really attached to some of the animals just like I have.

"It's just fun watching baby goats," she said.