Hi everyone! We are Jess & Ken at JK Herd It All, and we thought we’d share a little info about ourselves. Our mission is to help preserve and promote rare heritage breeds, along with a couple modern designer ones we couldn’t resist.
After years of moving from place to place in the Navy, Ken met Jess in Illinois and whisked her away to start a new life in NE Wisconsin. He grew up on a horse ranch in East Texas, and she was born & raised in the Chicago suburbs with a zillion traditional & exotic house pets; both always dreaming of having acreage on which to farm and raise livestock.
We both hold full time jobs on top of managing the farm, so please be patient if you try to contact us and don’t get a response right away! Ken is a senior nuclear operations instructor and Jess is a senior in software engineering.
Every farm has different goals in mind as they select and improve their offerings. Ours are, more or less in order:
1. Friendly personality
2. Ability to thrive on our land
3. Adherence to breed standards
4. Quality of production
5. Quantity of production
We sourced our stock from the very best lines that we could find, including top Master Exhibitors throughout the US. Feel free to check out our website, follow along on Facebook or Instagram, or send us a message if you’re interested in learning more! For our goats, we annually test clean for CAE, CL, and Johne’s. For our birds, we are members of the National Poultry Improvement Plan, certified Salmonella Pullorum-Typhoid and HPAI Clean, and cleared to ship to almost every state. We’re happy to work with transporters, too!
DAIRY GOATS
• Mini Nubian (MDGA & TMGR • JKShrunkTheKids)
• Oberhasli (ADGA • JKHerdItAll)
• Guernsey (BGS & ADGA • JKHerdItAll)
POULTRY
• Chickens (All Large Fowl)
– Self-Blue (Lavender)/Black Split Ameraucana
– Wheaten/Blue Wheaten/Splash Ameraucana
– Svarthöna (Swedish Black Hen)
– Buckeye
– Partridge Chantecler
– Buff Chantecler
– Welsummer
– Experimental Green Egger
• Pilgrim Geese
• Welsh Harlequin Ducks
We care for our land and animals as naturally as possible, and we are working towards becoming certified organic within the next few years. Our livestock are out in our woods or pasture all day, and we supplement their diet as needed with untreated grass/alfalfa hay and soy-free organic feed.
We use herbal preventatives and treatments as our first line of defense wherever possible, but we will use conventional medicine if needed to save a life. We do not currently vaccinate, although some herd members have arrived to our farm with CDT and Pneumonia vaccines.
Because we're relatively new to goats and brought them in from breeders around the US, we DO pull kids and bottle raise them - after a few years of clean health tests, we plan to transition to dam raising.
All of our goats are polled or disbudded, as it's a requirement for live shows. We also participate in DHI Milk Testing and Linear Appraisal.
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Parasite Protocol: We do not routinely deworm with chemicals. We provide herbal preventatives and have implemented rotational grazing between our goat and bird flocks. We just transitioned to a mineral buffet to see if that helps with the few parasites we've seen (lice and coccidia). We regularly check FAMACHA scores on goats and run fecals for everyone. If we do see a high parasite load, we first try a treatment dose of herbal remedies. If those don't seem to have an effect and we fear that an animal's life is at risk, we move to conventional treatment for that animal.
Vaccination Protocols: No Vaccinations
