Goats in Nepal: Changing Lives Through Goats

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Description

When people think about international development work, they don’t always picture goats at the center of it. In this episode, host Deborah Niemann talks with Daniel Laney, founder of Worldwide Goat Project Nepal, about how a lifelong love of goats grew into a far-reaching program that is improving lives across rural Nepal.

Daniel shares how a childhood dream of visiting Nepal eventually combined with more than 50 years of raising dairy goats and decades as an ADGA judge. What began as an effort to support dairy goat genetics—specifically Saanen goats imported to Nepal—evolved into a comprehensive, community-based project focused on education, sustainable agriculture, clean water, and long-term self-reliance.

In their conversation, Laney explains the early challenges of introducing dairy goats in a region where goats had been raised for centuries, but never for milk. From nutrition and water access to housing, forage, and mineral supplementation, he describes how small management changes led to dramatic improvements in goat health and productivity. He also shares how crossing Saanens with local khari goats created hardy, dual-purpose animals better suited to local conditions.

This episode goes far beyond goats. Daniel talks about working with schools to provide daily meals, supplies, and hands-on agricultural education; partnering on clean water initiatives to reduce parasite illness; supporting women’s cooperatives through fair-trade crafts; and helping communities build sustainable systems that continue even when he’s not there.

Whether you’re interested in goats, international development, nonprofit work, or simply what it looks like to live with purpose well into your later years, this episode offers an inspiring look at how one person—and a lot of goats—can create lasting change.

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Transcript

Intro  0:03 
For the love of goats, we are talking about everything goat, whether you're a goat owner, a breeder, or just a fan of these wonderful creatures. We've got you covered. And now here's Deborah Niemann.

Deborah Niemann  0:18 
Hello everyone, and welcome to today's episode, this is going to be a really great one, because we actually have a guest back for the first time after five years.

Today, we are joined by Daniel Laney, who is the founder of the Worldwide Goat Project Nepal. He was first here five years ago to talk about the program, and obviously, things change a lot in five years. In addition to that, because he didn't just wake up one day and decide he wanted to go to Nepal and help people raise goats. He himself actually raised dairy goats for 50 years. Has been an ADGA judge for 47 years. So welcome to the show today. Dan, it is so great to have you back.

Daniel Laney  0:58 
Well, thank you, Deborah. It's really great to be back.

Deborah Niemann  1:00 
I know a lot of people who are listening today were not with us five years ago, and even if they were, I bet they forgot a lot. So let's start at the beginning, like, obviously you love goats and stuff because you raised them for so many years. But what caused you one day to say, I want to go help people in Nepal raise goats?

Daniel Laney  1:18 
Well, it's kind of interesting story in that it started actually when I was in fourth grade. I worked on a farm in Ohio. We did not have goats. I was helping my neighbor get his dairy cattle up every morning to milk. But at the time in fourth grade, I became a little bit more aware of the world map in my classroom, and I saw this little sliver of land in Asia between India and China, called Nepal, and they had a mountain there called Mount Everest. And so I told my teacher, when I grew up, I'm going to go to Nepal and I'm going to see Mount Everest.

Daniel Laney  1:58 
And she told me, Hey, I was just a poor farm boy in Ohio, keep my nose in the books. Wasn't going to be going to know Nepal for this guy. Well, over the years, that thing just kept in my mind for one Nepal. I am not sure exactly what about it attracted me, but over the years, that was always kind of in the back of my head of kind of seeing that country. And I went through a lot of different life changes.

Daniel Laney  2:19 
Of course, graduated. Bob Seger story came out in song going to Kathmandu, and that kind of prompted it again. But bringing it a little closer to home here in 1989 I finally got it together to figure out that I really wanted to go to Nepal after having experienced a sudden passing of my mother in a variety of things that happened that really made me reevaluate some things in my life at that time, and what I really maybe needed to do. And what came to mind was I needed to do more for other people, because I had been given an opportunity to come back after actually a death experience.

Daniel Laney  2:56 
And so with that in mind, I talked to my son and decided that I love people, I love working with people. I love goats. And obviously I had a real draw to Nepal. So I went to Nepal for the first time in 1990 and for a number of years, I just went there as really just visiting the country. And then finally, about 10 years ago, I decided that I really needed to do more, because there was a lot of goats in Nepal, and I found out that we had recently shipped a herd of Saanen to Nepal from the US. And so that really triggered this fire in me a little bit more to find those goats, to see what was going on, and see what I could do at that time. And from that experience and going to Nepal, I eventually located the Saanens, and I decided that I really need to do this work, and I identified my project under my mom's memory as Worldwide Goat Project Nepal.

Deborah Niemann  3:56 
Awesome. So how did that actually get started? Like, how did you find the people in Nepal who had those goats? I mean, did you just say, hey, I want to come help you raise the goats, or how did you develop a relationship with them?

Daniel Laney  4:08 
Okay, again, because of my involvement with the American Dairy Goat Association, a lot of my friends knew that I was going to Nepal, and had been going for a number of years as just a visitor. And so one of my dear friends, Helen Snyder, from Pennsylvania, was in a connection with me, and actually informed me that there was this herd that she and Daniel Considine had put together through a funded project to send 50 Saanens, 40 does, 10 bucks, and then 50 Boers from Australia again, 40 does and 10 bucks to Nepal.

Daniel Laney  4:43 
In our conversation said, "Dan, maybe on one of your trips you could find the Saanens and see how they're doing", because the herd of Saanens started here in the US, would be interesting to pick up the thread of where they are. So I went to Nepal. I had started approaching the government already with a Worldwide Goat Project Nepal idea, that was to bring semen from the US over to Nepal and help improve their stock. That particular project took a sideline once I found out that the Saanen herd was actually in Nepal, and I decided that really, I should take a look at that herd and see what I could do with the goats that are there, as opposed to, you know, working on trying to get semen and another thing going on.

Daniel Laney  5:28 
And so I approached the government with the idea that I like to visit the farm. At first, basically, I was kind of given a little brush off. I should say that they were telling me, "Well, the goats are up in these mountains, and there's a transportation strike right now, and it'd be difficult to find them". And I went, Oh, well, I'll be here for a while. And I kept going back like three or four times to the government, as I was in Nepal already, and I was very persistent, but at the same time, very respectful of their decorum as well. One of the gentlemen at a meeting said, "why don't you come up to my office after we're through here"? And I did, and he told me that they had the goats in two different herds, and one of his friends had the goats, and they were a bit reluctant to have anybody see him, because they were not really sure how to handle dairy goats, and they didn't want to, kind of have, I guess, have that. You know, they were still learning. And so I said, "Hey, I totally understand". All I want to do is support what you're doing. And so the guy said, "You know, I really think you're a good, honest person here. Let's put you together with our friend and see what you can do with the goats".

Daniel Laney  6:36 
So that's how I got started. And I got put on a bus, got to a bottom of a mountain. Had two people meet me on motorbikes. I had my backpack on and my computer bag in front, and they took me up the top of this mountain where these Saanen herd, one of the two groups where Saanens were kept, and that was at a goat research program up in Bandipur and the people there were extremely nice. It wasn't really that they didn't want any help, they just weren't sure how to get it. And they had raised goats for many years, of course, hundreds of years, in Nepal, but they had not been involved with dairy goats, and there's quite a difference. And so they were struggling, and they were trying to do their best, and I give them a whole lot of credit, because the goats had survived 11 months there, but they were not doing well. They hadn't had the right feed, they weren't getting exercise.

Daniel Laney  7:25 
So I just started working with that herd in Nepal, and I tell you what, it's just been amazing to see the results, because it took a lot of work on both the people at the Centers' Art and me being continuously going back to the site, but they now have a very thriving, beautiful herd of purebred Saanens.

Daniel Laney  7:48 
And as part of the whole program, what we've done is we've crossed the Saanen breed with the local Khari breed and had a hybrid vigor that's now been bred and bred and bred to we actually have 98.5% Saanen that has khari blood in them, but they're basically a Nepali Saanen as opposed to an American Saanen, and they're disease-resistant, doing extremely well, and those animals, particularly the males, are being now distributed into the villages to help provide a dual-purpose breed, where they have the milk from the Saanen part and the meat from the khari. It's really doing extremely well.

Deborah Niemann  8:28 
That's awesome. So you mentioned that they, you know, weren't feeding them correctly and stuff. So what were some of the challenges that you faced when you first got there?

Daniel Laney  8:38 
There were several. One of them was that they had kept them because they were concerned about their health. They were loving them to death, basically. They kept them in a very confined area. They didn't want to let them out too much because they were afraid that they would be exposed to things. So they kept them in these enclosed buildings where they had very little access to movement and light, and the feed was lower protein percentage than what they required, and they were not getting access to water on a more routine basis, what they would do is they would open the shed up and have troughs of water, and they would let the animals go drink the water for about five minutes, and then they'd put them back in the shed.

Daniel Laney  9:17 
And they'd be there for 12 hours, and then let them back out, you know, for a few minutes every 12 hours. Well, an animal can't take all the water that they need in one, you know, five to 10 minute intervals for 12 hours, and especially a dairy goat that is expected to produce milk. Now, these animals, when I first met them, were still mostly dry yearlings. They were, unfortunately, about the size of a senior kid, and for a Saanen, that's just not the structure stature that they should have.

Daniel Laney  9:43 
So they were lacking in the protein amount in the feed, and they were not getting exercise. So their hooves were extremely long, their coats were curled up and pretty dry because they were getting insufficient water. So we started with that, and went through the whole thing. Where they said, Well, we put water out, but they'll poop in the water, or they'll tip the water over. I go, you got to be smarter than the goat. That is the key. They teach us how we have to manage them. And so you put the bucket up higher than so they can't put their droppings in it. You put it in a location that's secure so they can't tip it over, but you cannot not not provide them water. And so that was not an option.

Daniel Laney  10:24 
And what I would do is I bought the buckets I brought I had friends that provided double hook snaps, and I put the buckets in the corners of buildings pens so the animals could have access. And when the workers saw me doing it on a daily basis when I was there and saw the animals drinking the water, they then took it upon themselves to make sure that they would have the water filled when I would come down every morning to check. But I started by doing it, and not saying you have to, because that's a whole different kind of a thing, especially this was a government operation, so they had government technicians, and then they have workers.

Daniel Laney  11:01 
And the workers, it's just a matter of getting a rapport with those people and let them know that you're part of their team as well, and you're going to help them do what they need to do, but not just tell them to do it. And that's a real key, I think, anytime you want to have cooperation with anything. So anyway, there was the water situation.

Daniel Laney  11:19 
What I did is I got a feed, a goat chow mixture that was Purina Goat Chow, and I got the ingredient slip, and I took it to Nepal with me, and we went, well, actually, we went online and pulled it up, and then we created as much as we could that particular feed manually. And we had molasses, and we had it was quite a big deal, and we mixed it on a big a tarp, then slowly fed it to the animals. And then, over the years, they now have been able to acquire a feed that is very similar to the Goat Chow from India, with a higher protein content. So that problem has been totally eliminated.

Daniel Laney  11:57 
And then we got the water so that they were having water on a routine basis 24/7 and that was taken care of. And then they got to the point of adding minerals and salt, and that was another challenging time. But I had salt boxes built, and then been using the Himalaya pink salt and rock salt, and that has been ideal. And so that really was a game changer. So now we have the food, and I have to give total credit and support to the staff and the workers who, once they were shown and once they got the idea of what they should be doing, they did it with a zealous consistency. That is what is created this herd like it is today. And because of what they have done at this project site, it has now become known as the Nepalese National Agricultural Goat Center. And so that elevated its status, rightfully so, to a higher level.

Daniel Laney  12:57 
I've taught them how to make cheese. So they're making cheese that is a very good, helpful commodity for the tourists and most of Europeans that come to the area; now restaurants buy the cheese. I now have got three different satellite farms that are out in the mountain villages with Saanen goats. That has become a great deal. The last thing that just happened recently, after all these years, and it's been 10 years since I've been trying to get this done, we had, like I said earlier, 40 does, 10 bucks in original grouping. Well over the years, we have lost that core group. We lost the last buck last year, and they did a quite an amazing job. But we had other purebred offspring.

Daniel Laney  13:40 
However, the genetic pool was getting very tight because this particular site in Bandipur I was able to have them work with me and do the things that were needed to keep the herd going. The other site where there were animals placed had a rougher go at that happening, and so they've had some Saanens there, but most of the genetic background came from the animals that were originally on Bandipur's farm site. We needed to expand that. And there was semen that had been shipped over there and collected in Nepal by the National Breeding Center. And I watched it being collected, and it was done in the same manner as what we do here, and they actually built a nitrogen processing plant on the site so they could have liquid nitrogen available all the time.

Daniel Laney  14:28 
Over the years, the Saanen semen became lost as the transitions of management took place at this National Breeding Center. And I was told that all the Sannen semen was gone because nobody used it. Tanks went dry. It was no good. So that was a big downfall. But I kept hearing other stories that there seemed to be some somewhere. Last year, I finally located the semen that had been sent from the US with that first shipment of animals, and we tested it, and it had over 75% still viability to it. So that was the biggest and I found the records, the pedigree papers, which originally they had. "They" meaning the Nepalis government had no idea what the value of those pedigrees were. There were papers, and they put them in a file somewhere and said, Oh, because it was not known to them, they had no idea what a registry system was with goats, particularly, I found the papers to another technician last year that identified every buck that's in that semen tank.

Daniel Laney  15:28 
So now, over the years, we still had trained the technicians of Bandipur to do AI, even though they hadn't done it. My friend Dr Ralph Zimmermann from New Mexico went with me twice, and we conducted AI trainings. Last year, it all came together. They had the semen, they had the training, they had the does, and they inseminated 42 of the Saanens, both purebred and some crosses with this original Saanen semen from the US. And now I'm going back in March to see those kids being born.

Deborah Niemann  15:59 
It's so exciting.

Daniel Laney  16:01 
I know, but it's just such a huge, huge accomplishment, and I'm just really excited about that.

Deborah Niemann  16:07 
Yeah, So how big is that herd now?

Daniel Laney  16:10 
What they've done is they keep distributing, like the purebred bucks primarily out and then some of the does as they go through. Because over the years, I've been trying to help them with their culling and making sure that we continue to look at type. And, you know, keep the best ones. So on the Nepalese farm, the one that is National Goat Research Program Site, I believe I looked at the count the last time I was there, they have like, 56 purebred Saanens, and then quite a number of like 50/50, 75%, 87, 93 whatever. All the way up. So there's about 100 and some Saanen and Saanen crosses.

Daniel Laney  16:47 
But they've also been able to distribute animals out into a variety of village sites across the country over the years. And what's happened is they always were in competition with Boers, because Boers meat goat because that came the same time. Nepalis eat goat meat. They don't eat cow so the Boers were big important push for them. But over the years, what they found is they actually prefer the crosses between the Saanen and the khari goat as much, if not more, because they're more active as breeders. For one thing, the males, and the other thing is they get that more consistent milk and meat balance.

Daniel Laney  17:22 
The male offspring, they can castrate and use, as you know, as meat, and they get more bone, and they love to have bone in their soup stock, and so the long, thin Saanen bone is like ideal for them. And then they're now becoming knowledgeable about the cheese market. And it's just taking time, but it's happening. I think even though it's taken some time, it's got some good growth. And I get videos from my friends in Nepal at the station now, when they're disbudding, I've taught them how to disbud the females, the variety of things, and they send me videos that are going on, well, I'm not there, and that is the key, that they're picking it up, and they're going forward, because they see the value. It couldn't be better than that.

Deborah Niemann  18:02 
Yeah. How many times have you been there now?

Daniel Laney  18:04 
Well, this is coming up to be my 27th trip.

Deborah Niemann  18:06 
Wow.

Daniel Laney  18:07 
It's like a 50/50, and that's 12 hours ahead. I always say I'm going to the future when I go to Nepal, because 12 hours ahead. And so I tell my friends here I know what's going to be happening tomorrow, gang. But it's also because of that I live in two worlds, in the sense that I'll get phone calls or texts at one o'clock in the morning because it's one o'clock in the afternoon over there, and then I'll say, "Oh, we're so sorry, Daniel, did we wake you up?" "Oh, no, no, no problem". But I feel so fortunate to have been able to kind of follow my lifelong dream, even from that little fourth grade guy who is thinking of going to see the Himalaya Mountains, it's transformed itself into so much more.

Daniel Laney  18:47 
And I cannot begin to tell you how this has rippled out into many different facets, but all enriching for my life as well as the lives of those that I'm working with, I think, and that's such a powerful inspiration to just want to keep going. That's all I can say. And I could not do this if it hadn't been for the support of my wonderful goat community here in the US. I have to tell you, when I first started this, and I did a GoFundMe page, the old GoFundMe thing, and I had the little picture of the goats. I had friends that now have been friends, of course, for like, 50 years, but those people right away said, well, we'll send you $10 Dan, see what you can do, or send you $20 see what you can do. But I mean, they believed in what I was trying to do, and it has become so much more than I ever thought possible. And to this day, that is what this whole thing going.

Deborah Niemann  19:40 
Yeah, and it's gotten way beyond goats now, I know.

Daniel Laney  19:43 
Oh yes.

Deborah Niemann  19:44 
Doing volunteer work with school children and stuff, and working on getting clean water in there. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Daniel Laney  19:52 
Yeah, let's just give you a quick overscore, because what's happened with this? And you hit upon some really key points. As I've went there, everything has been very fluid. I mean, you know, I started, like I said, early on, with the idea of bringing semen over there. Well, then that got into helping the Saanen herd. So then when I saw the Saanen herd, I thought, "Okay, well, we have to have people." I visited. We needed education. That was the whole thing. And I needed people to start realizing the importance of the value, not the importance, but the value of goat milk.

Daniel Laney  20:21 
And so how do I go about doing that but the children? So I started going to the schools. And then, of course, being a teacher, I realized the schools need some real help, and they have such wonderful, dedicated people working there that I need to look at these schools now, because we want these kids to grow up and be healthy farmers of the goats, so it's branched out into a number of different areas. And so definitely keeps me going and it keeps expanding. But what I do now is I have several schools, and what I've found is Nepal is not that big of a country.

Daniel Laney  20:53 
Travel is difficult, and really what I've tried to do is focus on certain places that I can continue to go back and work with and expand the sphere in a way that I work in a site, the people who come to that site from villages in the area, they'll see what's going on, and the people that I've worked with will help extend that knowledge to them. So I go to these certain places on a routine basis, and I have traveled throughout all of Nepal, just about and but I can't do everything everywhere, so I tried to focus on just being consistent with certain areas.

Daniel Laney  21:27 
And one of them is like I taught in a one room school, so there's a three teacher school right up out of Kathmandu, and we've been visiting there. I make sure, through the help of again my project, that they have a lunch every day that's provided for them the biggest meal of the day, where they can't, maybe not, have other meals quite like that throughout the day. So they get at least one good, hearty meal at the school. They also have all kinds of equipment that we've supplied them with. I have school uniforms, backpacks. Have been able to give them fresh water. Have also have aids that are teacher aids, young people who do things, physical activities with them, different games.

Daniel Laney  22:04 
Another school site that was a really big one, in Jamrun. We started with the community and their goats, but then I went to the school. We had a health clinic. I happened to dovetail with another NGO, Non Government Organization, and we had a health clinic where we screened 254, students and teachers, and we found out the major problem they had was internal parasites from the spring water, and many of the kids were losing their teeth and had infections. So that brought up the clean water very fast for me.

Daniel Laney  22:34 
And so I researched and found out that in Germany, they have a company called WeWater, and they make these little structures. Let's see what I'm gonna call they look like the size of an apartment refrigerator, and they are cubes. They call them AquaCubes. And they're very heavy duty plastic that's very thick. And then there's a screen, and that screen is able to provide fresh water to these students on an immediate basis because of the way that this inventor had designed it. But what we had to do was we had to go to the source of the spring water, which sometimes was a half mile or more away from this site, up in the top of a mountain, take a sample from that spring site, have it analyzed in Kathmandu, and then sent to Germany to see if the AquaCube would do the trick eliminate the parasites, and then they would send us these AquaCubes.

Daniel Laney  23:23 
So far, we've gotten seven of them, and they've been installed in the schools. And the difference is incredible to be able to have this water come into this AquaCube, turn on the faucet and have fresh water right then. It's just, it's life changing, really. So that's going on and continuing to go on. And then I also have expanded where, of course, the goats, the women's skills project, because I thought, oh, I need something to give to people that support what I do. So I had them craft these little goats.

Daniel Laney  23:53 
And so now I'm supporting the women's skills because I paid them a fair trade price for their goats have created now, I just have some new ones coming. They'll be making nine different breeds, because I've got fiber goats coming. I got some other ones that we just brought into the ADGA. So anyway, there's going to be some new types. But that has provided this women's skills development organization in Pokhara that has 750 women, some really good jobs. I've been able to give them sewing machines, weaving looms, and, of course, support them through the purchase of these crafted goats.

Daniel Laney  24:26 
And I wrote a book, and that book is about a boy who has goats, and it's written in both Nepali and English, and it's for little, young children, so that I donate those to the schools to help educate them about the value of goats' milk. And the writer and the illustrator, there are young people that I've worked with, and I provide them with scholarships so they can do their education in both nursing and arts and the university there in Nepal. So that's an ongoing kind of a thing, and that list goes on and on and on, and it's just great.

Deborah Niemann  24:58 
You have got a lot of different things that you sell as fundraisers now, and like, I have one of your pictures here.

Daniel Laney  25:05 
Again, it's like a little Montessori thing. It's based upon my own son, who is lactose intolerant, and he's now a school psychologist, and I put in there to have him check with the doctor not to do something without checking with their local doctor first. It just has been something to help.

Daniel Laney  25:20 
Again, the whole process of value of goats, as well as the one thing I did also to get this whole thing connected together, is forage. They need forage, and so they need a proper forage. I found a botanist in Nepal who's one of the excellent, most incredible botanists. He knows every plant that's in Nepal where it grows, what value it has both medicinal, for food, for a variety of things, and he has Kiran Kharel Kabhre has been instrumental in going to the schools that I work in and giving plants to the students to put in their areas, to help with erosion, to help with growing for the livestock or grasses, to help, again, the cultivation in the area, and so it's like, you know, so we're doing education in the schools. We have the clean water thing. We got the communities that are raising the goats, teaching them how to make cheese, and the women are making this, these goats.

Deborah Niemann  26:17 
If someone is listening and thinking, this sounds amazing, I would love to be a part of this. Do you take people with you on your trips?

Daniel Laney  26:24 
I have taken people with me on my trips. Have enjoyed been a number of young people. Actually, one of the early on people who came was a couple of young ladies that were in high school, and their parents sent them over for the Christmas holiday. They had a break, and I was able to take them around to a number of the villages and schools that I worked in, and they could participate by help, doing, hoof trimming and just learn about it - was a symbiotic thing. They told us young kids in the schools about their education they had goats and what they were doing, and then they were able to see what was going on in Nepal.

Daniel Laney  26:58 
So there were two young people that did a great job. I've had several young people come over. I've had the veterinarian, my friend, he's been over. Some people in association have been over as well for visit. It's something that I certainly encourage people to look at doing. The biggest, biggest expense is getting there. That's the flight. Once you're there, it's very minimal, and I would be more than happy to meet any of our friends who would like to go there.

Daniel Laney  27:25 
But I also would recommend that they could come and take a trip with somebody around and I meet them rather than my time is kind of limited. It's kind of like I also value my time when I'm there. So what I found is if I can have them come over and then have one of my friends, who is the Nepalese guide, or whatever, take them to some of the places. I meet them at the sites in between. So it's kind of like a combination. They get a little bit of Nepal. And also I can share some of my project with them, but not me with them 24/7.

Deborah Niemann  27:48 
If people want to just support you, but not go there. Do you have a website? Or where can people find you online to make a donation or get more information?

Daniel Laney  28:09 
I have a website Worldwide Goat Project Nepal, but they could also contact me through my email. They could write me, and donations are certainly appreciated. What I'm hoping to do within the next few months is actually have it so that it is a 501(c)(3), which would be great, which it isn't at this point. But I think once we have applied for it, and it's going through the process right now, we've cleared it with the California is now going through the Fed requirements.

Daniel Laney  28:35 
So hopefully that will be something that within the next six to eight months will be also available. And then what that means for me is I could then write grants, and, you know, become, hopefully, you know, eligible for some of that. But in the meantime, like I said, I welcome all the support. The way it is done is that I provide through my judging, all of my own personal expenses, that my flights, whatever my charge is.

Daniel Laney  29:02 
And then any donations goes directly to either getting supplies such as hoof trimmers, castrators, things like that. And I've been able to do a lot of things like, I say, with the women's skills, get them sewing machines, looms. But everything that is donated goes directly to the project and work.

Daniel Laney  29:19 
My personal expenses are my personal expenses that are covered by me, and so it's just something that I've found. There's no overhead. Then money is directly funneled. What I end up doing is I do like I say, I get supplies for the schools. I buy them lunch. I get animals for the ladies and men in the villages that don't have the goats or don't have need a few extra goats for their herd after they come to a training and I help them with doing better management, perhaps they get free goats.

Daniel Laney  29:49 
I get the goats from farmers who I've worked with in the past that raise healthy goats, so they get fair market price for their goat. It's donated to a village person and their responsibility is to donate to, first a kid, to another person in the village, and we have that going on, and so I can say funnels directly back in the AquaCubes. At this point we've been able to get them donated to the country, but the cost of the customs to get them in and the transportation is still about almost $1,000 per AquaCube by the time we're done. That's our expense. And so that's another thing that these contributions help to support.

Deborah Niemann  30:27 
Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It has been great catching up and hearing what you've been doing for the last 10 years. And then, just on a final note, because none of us are getting any younger. For anyone who's not sure you are not a spring chicken, and I love it, because my husband and I lately have been reading all these books and watching documentaries on stuff, on people who live to be 100 and I think they should just add your story to it, because one of the big things that they talk about is people doing something that they love and they never retire, and they're always doing something they love. And I think that that pretty much sums you up really well.

Daniel Laney  31:09 
I tell you what I think you're you hit the nail on the head. What I like to say is I'm not retired. I'm retreaded. I just have been given a new path, like a retread. And I tell everybody that I can, that I meet that especially as we get older, I try to validate what you've just said. We need to do something beyond ourselves, because, if not, all my shoulder aches every morning. My knees not so strong as it used to be. Different things happen, and we dwell on those.

Daniel Laney  31:35 
But if just you take your neighbor to the doctor, or you just, I don't know even just smile and say hello to your neighbor, but doing it beyond yourself and having a purpose is remarkable. And like, I have no problem saying, next birthday, I'll be 81 and I have no idea what that looks like from the outside, because inside I'm not feeling that. Every once in a while it catches up. I just think you got to keep going like you say. And I wish everybody all the best with that journey.

Deborah Niemann  32:01 
Yeah, absolutely. I don't think anybody would have ever guessed that you were 81 because you're as busy as a lot of people who are 30 years younger. So it's fabulous. I love seeing it. You are an inspiration.

Daniel Laney  32:13 
We can do it. Goats have been a real key in this whole process. I can tell you that.

Deborah Niemann  32:18 
Yeah.

Daniel Laney  32:19 
Thank you, Deborah, though for also allowing me the opportunity to share. I'm sorry if I kind of rambled on here my little story, but I appreciate the opportunity very much. Thank you.

Deborah Niemann  32:29 
It has been my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Deborah Niemann  32:33 
And that's it for today's show. If you haven't already done so, be sure to hit the subscribe button so that you don't miss any episodes. To see show notes, you can always visit fortheloveofgoats.com and you can follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/lovegoatspodcast. See you again next time. Bye for now you.