STERLING, Ill. — Take a trip up to Happy Little Hooves Farm, just outside of Sterling, and you'll see some of the rarest goats in the world. It's there where owners Abby and Shawn Sweeney breed and raise the critically endangered Arapawa Goats.
There's an estimated 700 Arapawas left in the world. The Arapawa Goat Breeders Association calculates there's just over 200 of these goats here in the U.S. Twelve of them currently live on the Sweeneys' farm.
The Sweeneys are the only Arapawa breeders in Illinois. As long-time goat breeders, Abby says their Arapawa journey all started when her husband decided to look up the rarest goat in the world.
"And he asked me, 'Hey, have you heard of an Arapawa?' And I said no. And our adventure began," Abby laughed. From there, the Sweeneys got their first Arapawa by spring of 2023.
Happy Little Hooves has a jungle gym of playground equipment, wooden planks forming catwalks and stacked tires dotted around the goats' enclosure. Inside the fence 56 goats - from several different breeds - jump, run and tussle with each other.
When the Sweeneys walk through the pen, they know each of their goats by name.
"We just do everything we do for the love of the goats," Abby said. "We love goats. They're just a passion of ours."
The Sweeneys procured eight Arapawas from other farms across the country. Since then, they welcomed four baby goats this spring. Two of them, brothers from the Sweeneys' oldest goat, Maggie, were born just two days before News 8 took a trip up to their farm.
"It is like a celebration here," Shawn said. "I mean, it's really hard to explain the feeling of breeding this critically endangered breed and having this little baby here that is going to add to the population. I don't think there's any other feeling in the world. It's just happiness."
The Sweeneys hope to raise the Arapawas for four to five more years before sending goats out to be bred at other farms. They say they already have a waiting list of farmers ready to take their rare little goats.
"My goal would be to see them at least not critically endangered. Hopefully off the list with the livestock conservatory while I'm alive," Abby said. "I just want to go get on mountaintops and scream to the world, 'Hey! Do you see this?! This is an Arapawa! They're critically endangered! Come on people, let's help them!'"
Happy Little Hooves is excited to start once again offering farm tours and kids camps to learn more about all of their goat breeds. To learn more about a visit, you can check out their website, here.
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