Home of Calico Acres - Calico Fields - Calico Lane - Calico Patch

           Welcome to Raintree Dairy Goats, home of Larry and Deb Macke and Sharla, Doug, James, Michael and Samantha Nagel. Our farm is located on 200 acres in the north woods of Rusk County in NW Wisconsin. Along with our dairy goats we also have a herd of Angus beef cattle and raise corn and alfalfa. Our dairy goat herd consists primarily of Purebred LaManchas with a few remaining Americans. Sharla's herd name is Calico Acres; James' is Calico Fields; Michael's is Calico Lane and Samantha's is Calico Patch.

        We  have been raising dairy goats since 1985 when we started with a pair of grade Alpine does as a 4-H project. Over the last nearly 23 years we've been involved in all aspects of the industry including 5 years as a commercial goat dairy. We first added the LaManchas to our herd when we were purchasing animals to build up our commercial herd. A shortage of dairy does led us to SW Wisconsin where we found a lovely herd of very well-cared for grade LaManchas. It was there that we found "Jorja" and her herdmates. Nineteen LaManchas came home with us that day and so began our love affair with this short-eared breed. Living way up north with the dairy markets in the south made it very difficult to market milk and in 1993 we made the decision to focus our energies on developing a select herd of breeding stock and show animals. The commercial does were exported to a dairy in Canada and what remained was the basis of our LaManchas of today.

          When our son, Kevin, was old enough for 4-H he wanted a top quality purebred LaMancha to start with and we looked to Haute Caprine for our first purebred doe. You can still find the influence that Haute Caprine animals had on our herd in the pedigrees both past and present.

          We currently milk a herd of approximately 20 show quality does. We try to show at as many shows as our schedule will permit while still allowing us to keep a working farm going. Our herd is linear appraised annually and we are on DHIR milk test. Being dairy farmers, we believe that those show does should still be able to milk and we maintain a+2400 pound herd average.

           We are very proud of our herd's accomplishments but we still continually strive for improvement.  Over the past few years we have added genetics from South-Fork LaManchas, Altrece LaManchas, Lucky*Star Farm, Heart-Mt.-Carter-Kids and Shady Lawn. Our appreciation goes out to them all for allowing us to add such lovely animals to our herd. We also thank them as well as Cindy Silva of Rockin-CB for sharing her beautiful photos for our website. Take a few minutes to visit each of these herds and see what they have contributed to the LaMancha breed.

            Join us now for a visit to Raintree Dairy Goats. Let us know if you see something you like or have any questions.

WELCOME!!