Mary Lager:
Judge, Competitor, Teacher - She Does it All

Mary Iager and her husband run a huge farming operation about twenty miles north of Washington, DC. They milk 130 cows, crop 800 to 1-thousand acres, and raise 20-thousand turkeys for retail sale. She's won national awards with her Holstein cows, and is involved in the developing business of selling cow embryos to Japan.

But she manages to siphon time away from all of that to stay active in the world of dairy goats. She the Superintendent of the Dairy Goat Show at the Maryland State Fair, is on the Training Conference Committee and Senior Judges Committee of the American Dairy Goat Association, and co-chairs the spotlight sale at the Association's annual meeting. Several of her does have won their classes at national shows, and she has ribbons for her Best of Show wins.

Why dairy goats, when cattle and other agricultural activities could consume all of her time?

"They are incredibly unique, remarkable animals. There's nothing quite like them. Once you're hooked, you're hooked."

In the past, she's raised both Alpines and American La Manchas. Right now, she has a few La Manchas on the farm. One champion doe and a daughter are at a farm in Vermont, where they are doing what dairy goats are supposed to do, in her words. "They are being milked, and they are generating income."

And they are contributing to the growing market for dairy goat products. It's an industry whose time has come, and something that Mary could not have imagined many years ago. "When I was a kid and we tasted goat cheese at some function, rarely was it something that was enjoyable. But today, goat cheese is exceptional." Goat products are no longer found just in gourmet shops. "I go to my local grocery store and I can buy goat cheese, goat milk, goat butter. Five years ago, you'd never see it."

That doesn't mean the demand for goat products is as strong as it could be. Better marketing is needed to establish a positive image of goat products in the mind of more consumers. She's had some experience in that herself.

"Goat milk, to the general population, has a stigma that it doesn't taste good." Last spring, while traveling to Canada with a group of dairy cattle people, Mary had them stop at the dairy goat farm where her does are. "The farmers gave us milk that they were bottling to drink. The people with me were amazed. The quality, the flavor was so exceptional. Better than the cow's milk you buy in the store. I guess what I'm saying is that goat milk is a very healthy product, and when it is handled in a top-quality operation, it is really exceptional."

It can also be profitable. While dairy cattle farmers are struggling to survive while earning less than ten dollars a hundredweight, dairy goat milk is bringing as much as thirty dollars a hundredweight.

"People are getting so tuned into natural or organic type of foods, and the goat industry is really something that is in that niche. The big turn in events was dairy goat cheese." Novice cheese makers in the U.S. started copying the French methods of making goat cheese and have created a trendy food product.

That's the upside of the new industry. The downside is that there is no organized co-op or other method for mass marketing the milk or other dairy goat products. "Unfortunately, a lot of the products people are making, they have to find markets themselves."

The Iager's farm is halfway between Washington, DC and Baltimore, just a few miles from I-95, the major highway between the two. Encroaching suburbia threatens a lot of agriculture, but goats are one animal that seem ideally designed to adapt to suburban living.

"It's a great project for suburbia, because you can have a farm-type domestic animals on your property. When I was a 4-H leader in Montgomery County (adjacent to Washington, DC), some of my kids lived within eyesight of the National Institute of Health Complex in Bethesda. Instead of having rabbits, with goats, you can have a real productive animal on a small amount of land, and learn a lot."

Goats are among the most popular 4-H projects in Maryland. "We've had 4-H dairy goat shows at the Maryland State Fair with 300 entries. For as small a state as we are and as suburban as we are, that is very big. It's very competitive, with very high-quality animals."

Mary's main job at the Maryland State Fair is as Superintendent of the Dairy Goat Show. She's volunteered for the job for nine years, recruiting volunteers, getting the goats in, inviting judges, running the show, and making sure winners receive their checks. "Whatever it takes. All of the details. It's a wonderful time, if I don't pass away," she laughs.

Like anything else, the popularity of dairy goats waxes and wanes. Right now, "We're in a downslide for a couple of years, which is kind of a relief, because it's hard to get all of these goats and those kids in and out, and do all of the different activities we have planned for them."

The support of the other people involved in the show keeps her going. "The show is amazing because the exhibitors work together beautifully. There are always people offering to help. It's just a really great group of people there."

One innovation at the show is combining the 4-H dairy goat judging with the State Fair dairy goat show. The 4-H contest comes as soon as the State Fair contest is over. It's a good move for all concerned. First, with all of the entries arriving for the State Fair, there are enough animals for all of the judging classes. Moving it to an open class means the 4-Hers have more goats to choose from, most of which are unfamiliar to the youthful judges.

Secondly, "these are not the 4-H kids' animals, so they aren't judging their own animals." That's not always a good thing. "You've got the emotional attachment. You have the memory of how the judges placed them yesterday and then they're supposed to come out with an open mind and place these same goats."

Some livestock judging appears more than a little biased, which is another reason Mary prefers working with goats. "With dairy cattle, it is very much a male domain. My mother was an exceptional evaluator of dairy cattle. She won the National Collegiate Dairy Judging Contest. She was the only woman contestant. She won the International Dairy Judging Contest in England. She was presented to the Queen. She was never asked to judge one show in her life. That's how biased it was towards men."

Other biases also startle her. "Hog shows - I'm flabbergasted. You buy a hog based on who's going to be judging at the end of the summer, because he likes something different than the other guy."

One of the appeals of dairy goat shows is the relative lack of that sort of thing. "In dairy goats, there is less personal preference involved in placing as a whole than in many of these other species. We have an excellent training program in the American Dairy Goat Association, and we try to keep it very uniform. We have a dairy scorecard which is almost identical to the dairy cattle scorecard." Licensed judges must renew their certificates every two or four years. Senior judges don't have to re-take the actual tests, but meet every four years for a refresher. "We try to keep everybody pretty much on the same line."

Like her mother, Mary started judging as a teenager. "I started judging when I was 18." Remembering her mother's experiences, she chose to refine her skills judging dairy goats. "The nice thing about dairy goats and the whole dairy goat thing is that a woman can be asked to judge as many shows as a man."

The contacts she makes as a judge are worthwhile to her as an owner and a competitor. "If you are breeding goats, being competitive, it's invaluable in what you can learn and see. With dairy goats, you don't have the information available to you about what sire or what maternal line is doing what. With dairy cattle, this kind of information is mailed to you constantly. With dairy goats, you've got to go. It's kind of touching and feeling, seeing it on your own, and making your own ideas. So getting out and seeing things has really been terrific."

While Mary will be busy getting goats and exhibitors to Cedar Rapids, Iowa for the annual meeting of the American Dairy Goat Association, she's not so overwhelmed with her duties that she won't compete herself. She's planning to enter at least one class. With all of her other commitments, she doesn't have much time to do more. " I go to maybe one show a year now, so you don't do a lot of winning if you only go to one show a year."

No matter how demanding the farming operation gets, she knows she will never completely leave the dairy goat world. "It's funny how it grows, but it does become all-consuming. All of a sudden, there you are, seven days a week, but if you love it, it's terrific."
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