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Champion goat butts out while on top
Norco ranch to send Magic to retirement
October 11, 1993
By Laurie Williams The Press-Enterprise
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NORCO
Like many successful competitors, he has done a little head-butting in his time. But Permanent Grand Champion Forget-Me-Not Black Magic has nothing left to prove.
Recently named National Champion Pygmy Buck for 1993, the 5-year-old goat - known among friends as Magic - has retired from the show ring. His owners, Debbie and Jim Hosley of Norco, say he probably will spend the rest of his days as the grand old man of Amber Waves, their goat ranch.
The Hosleys have 15 other pygmy goats: "We breed 'em, raise 'em, show 'em and sell 'em," said Debbie Hosley, who has been an aficionado of the diminutive West African breed for about a dozen years. Currently, she said, three Amber Waves goats are permanent grand champions and four more have reached champion status with the National Pygmy Goat Association. Magic, active, with a sturdy build and shaggy jet-black coat and beard, does not look as if he is ready to retire. In fact, Debbie Hosley said, he clearly enjoys competing. Her husband, who goes into the show ring with all the goats, says Magic is a ham. "But when you reach a certain level, there are just not that many places where you're eligible to compete," Jim Hosley said. Shows with classes open to national champions are rare, he said, and usually far away. At a National Pygmy Goat Association show, Debbie Hosley said, judges look for a collection of traits known to pygmy goat fanciers as good conformation: depth of body, balance, lots of bone, width across the back. Size is not that important, Debbie Hosley said. Five or six judges look at each animal and award points. "It's similar to a dog show," Jim Hosley said. "You set them up, and you can pick them up by the front end and adjust their stance." The judge checks the goat over, he said, watching as it walks and moves. "She'll feel them, too, so she can make sure there's no swayback hidden under the way you comb their hair." What makes Magic championship material, Debbie Hosley said, is his overall conformation, along with a big shot of star presence and personality. Outside the ring, she said, he is still special: "He's the sweetest buck I've ever seen." He has a special affection for the baby goats that frisk through the pens, she said, adding that it is an unusual trait among bucks. "He plays with them, lies around with them, and loves them," she said. "Most bucks think of anything in their pen as something to breed. Not Magic." At the 1993 NPGA national show, held in Los Angeles, one of the bucks Magic beat was his own father, Permanent Grand Champion Whirlwind Farms Merlin, the 1991 national champion. Debbie Hosley said she attended the 1991 national show hoping to buy a Merlin daughter for the Amber Waves breeding stock. There were none available, she said, so she bought Magic instead. Now, she said, Magic's own offspring are making a splash in the ring. The breeder's marque is part of a show goat's name no matter who the owner is, so the Hosleys' reputation gets a boost whenever an up-and-coming youngster like Amber Waves Blaklee, Magic's daughter, wins a show. "That's a great feeling," she said. Debbie Hosley does accounting and computer work for Bob's Builders World in Chino. Jim Hosley is a field service technician for Soabar Systems in Ontario. The Hosleys also publish Animals Exotic and Small, a magazine and merchandise catalog for owners and breeders of unusual animals.
Art: PHOTO
Caption: David Bauman
The Press-EnterpriseDebbie and Jim Hosley of Norco hold their national champion pigmy buck goat, Forget-Me-Not Black Magic.
Zone: CORONA-NORCO; DESERT & PASS; HEMET-SAN JACINTO; MORENO VALLEY; RIVERSIDE
Edition:
Section: LOCAL
Page#: B01
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