Sleepy Hollow Farm


Jim and "Leo" Stoltz
(nearby St. Louis)
Midwest Meat Goat Network
29086 HWY AA
Wright City, Missouri 63390
jimstoltz@socket.net
leostoltz@socket.net

Telephone: 636-456-3658

Our business is raising high quality meat goats and helping others to do the same. Clearly, the producer side of the goat industry needs many more active, profitable family farms. We work with people who have 10 acres where they need to have that land become profitable and with those who have several hundred acres and want that land to work for them.

Known as "Stoltz’s Sleepy Hollow" our farm is the life-long dream of one woman, Leora “Leo” Scholten Stoltz. It has been that way for 40+ years. When times were hard she worked four jobs to retain it. Our small slice of the Midwest is just 53 miles west of the St. Louis Arch and two miles north of Interstate 70.

It is a cabin in the woods. You can fish on the lake….or just enjoy a restful escape from life at a more hurried pace. And now…..there are GOATS!

Coming from the white-tailed deer business after 20+ years of joy chasing newborn fawns, we wanted to build Stoltz’s Sleepy Hollow around an animal that was an answer to a real market need. We wanted to produce a profit to augment retirement income and trim those retired horse pastures where fox trotting palominos once played. Now the center of our animal world is the Kiko goat. We are building toward a herd of 130 productive mamas.

This tranquil oasis and planned, park-like countryside is a fun place to be. Oh yes, there is still plenty of time to relax and truly enjoy it all. But only when the goats are resting after newborn kids give fresh meaning to the word, frolic! During that relaxation it is sometimes hard for us to comprehend our good fortune. Oh yes, it took a couple of years researching ag opportunities after the politics associated with Mad Cow Disease effectively ended the opportunity to farm white-tail deer profitably. We worked hard and consistently at that research and found an exploding need for meat goat production.

This animal species is, in America, only at the beginning of an upward trend in popularity for the small acreage land owner. Vast quantities of goat meat are being brought into the U.S. to meet a market saturated with "need". Bottom line, farmers can’t grow these animals fast enough to meet market demand! We believe it to be a profitable, joyful endeavor. And so much so that our efforts are focused squarely on BOTH livestock production and new farm expansion.

These animals are a joy to be around. There is high fertility, great mother ability, fast maturation, parasite resistance and the exceptional ability to grow and prosper with minimal human input and related cost. And the purebred Kiko – which we also produce for other commercial herd owners – makes an outstanding contribution when cross bred with other breeds like Boer or Spanish goats.

We have become enamored with the potential of the Kiko breed and with the people who are part of the "goat world". Our friends in the International Kiko Goat Association have been extraordinarily helpful as we continue to both study and teach about the breed daily.

We are breeder members of the American Meat Goat Association and participate in state-wide organizations in most of the Midwestern United States

That’s a bunch of meetings! So we distill all that material and that of the major academic institutions doing research and publishing about goats. We are developing the Midwest Meat Goat Network (MMGN) which is our own privately held effort. We now have serious new farm members developing profitable, sustainable new goat farms being built from North Carolina to Kansas and Minnesota to Oklahoma.

The MMGN goal is to develop more meat goat farms and – to the extent possible – ensure their profitability.

Here we intend to Enlighten, Empower and Encourage potential new goat farmers.

During 2009 we are enjoying our 27th year in the animal business and are concentrating on goat farming as the key to a profitable future. And that future looks like fun. Come visit us!!

"Use What’s Helpful"