Hello, we are Jason and Jennifer Slagle of Slagle's Hillside Savannas!

Jason is a Marine Corps combat veteran who retired after 20 years of service. Jennifer is a Veterinary Technician who's spent over 30 years working in an animal care and veterinary medicine career. After spending years moving around several states and countries, we decided it was time to settle down in one place.

Choosing to slow life up a bit, we opted to move to Jason's home state of Kentucky. Our farm sits in the back of a hollow located in the hills of Rockcastle County, KY. The property consists of steep hillsides, grass lined ridges, spring fed creeks, ravines and rock cliffs.

Raising goats started as a bit of an accidental endeavor for us.  It started with a wildfire on the news close to us, a casual conversation with a senior neighboring farmer about how his goats cleared his woods of underbrush, a gift of a newborn rejected goat from said neighbor while he was in the hospital from a stroke, the purchase of another bottle baby so that one could have company and having about 4 hours to make somewhere for them to live using pallets and a chain-link dog kennel.  Definitely was not the ideal start.

This led us to decide that if we were going to raise goats, we would want to do right by them and build a proper home. This started the process of demolishing old structures on the property, putting up fencing, build a barn and turn our property into a goat farm.  We are still a work in progress, but step by step we are getting there.

What made us chose to raise Savanna goats? The babies! LOL.

We wanted goats to help us clear the forest, so first and foremost they would have a job to do. Deciding meat goats would best fit our needs, we turned to Google and started looking up different meat breeds. Jennifer came across a picture of a newborn Savanna baby and said, "Oh my cuteness! That right there is what I want!" Jason came across the average cost of the breed and said, " There needs to be more to them than cuteness, keep looking." The following days were spent researching different traits and characteristics of various meat goat breeds to see which breed would best fit us. Low and behold it was the South African Savanna that kept standing out to us. 

They are a more parasite tolerant breed, they're aggressive foragers and have exceptional mothering skills. With vigorous and fast-growing kids, they tend to have higher wean weights.  They have strong legs and hooves, require less producer input and have good muscle carcass yields. These were traits that we needed. Our goats have to be durable, strong enough to traverse our terrain and have good survival instincts. 

Savanna goats have unique features to their appearance that are represented and maintained through breed standards and are key elements to achieve throughout breeding regimens. These features include an all-white coat, gently curved (roman) nose, horns that are dark grey and curve back in an ennobled fashion, heavily muscled frame with long pendulous ears and any exposed pigment is black in color. These were key features that we needed our goats to have. The white color would make the goats easier to spot in the deep woods and the dark pigment keeps them from getting sunburned. The horn structure that the Savanna breed has, is a shape that would be less likely to "hook" in the underbrush and get caught up. The long ears help cover the ear canal and protect the ears from insects and woods debris.

The characteristics and traits of the Savanna are aesthetical and functional. They solidified our decision in wishing to own the breed. (That and the kids are the cutest, floppy eared, bouncing, white bundles of joy and hyper-chaos that are impossible to resist!)

Curious about whether or not the breed lived up to its stated durability, we thought it best to sample the breed and start off with a couple of Savanna/ Boer cross does. We were pleasantly pleased with the fact that they exceeded our expectations. That led to a back and forth on whether to continue with crosses, go with unregistered fullbloods or go with registered fullbloods. Several plans and mind changes later, we decided to add a couple of registered fullblood Savannas to our starter herd.  Those also exceeded our expectations. Falling more in love with the Savanna breed, we decided to raise registered fullbloods. 

When the time came for us to pick a name for the farm, we really just went with simplicity. Our last name, a physical description of our land and what we raise.  Putting those together gave us the farm name of Slagle's Hillside Savannas. Nothing elaborate, just simple.

We operate a small herd to focus on health and development individually. We aim for our goats to be balanced in a way that makes converting to other regimens easier.  Our Herd is primarily foraged eaters. They are given hay, but they spend their time roaming the hills foraging the woods, ravines and grass fields throughout the property. We do call them off the hills once daily and give them small, measured amounts of feed. This allows us to put our eyes on each goat and monitor their wellbeing. Our young are handled at feeding. We check mouths, ears and hooves. This gets them used to being worked later in life. We needed our goats to both be wild and be tamed. Raising our goats this way has created a good balance, making them happy to roam the hills and be left to their own devices yet calm enough to be worked or interacted with. 

We recognize that a lot of work, planning and dedication has gone into preserving the South African Savanna goat in the USA. We choose to respect and honor this dedication through quality production. 

We selected our base herd at a young age to in order to grow them out, conditioning them to our terrain.  We selected bloodlines tracing to antique lineage, viewing each bloodline as a puzzle piece coming together for a perfect fit. We choose each line for specific inheritable traits, that we felt when put together would create the best adaptability here on our farm.  We look forward to seeing the desired traits of these lines pass and persevere throughout the offspring of our herd. 

Our goal is to produce quality, durable, environmentally balanced kids that can convert to other regimens with ease. Kids with the desired traits of their ancestors.

We register with Pedigree International and are a DNA certified herd. Our herd is tested and is negative for the goat diseases CAE, CL and Johne's Disease.