Leaving the corporate world to reconnect with the real world and make it a better place

It takes courage to throw out the status quo, the daily grind that you have called your life for so long. Not many people have what it takes to look inwards and examine what they truly want for their life, but Jennifer Zeitler does! She was not born into agriculture, and for a long time, she thought she had found her place in life in corporate America, but because of her entrepreneurial spirit and a caring heart, she has discovered her true calling as a goat grazier.

Wishing for a connection to nature and wanting to do her part to make the world a better place, Jennifer pursued a hobby of beekeeping but ran into a problem when the land she kept them on became overgrown with brush. She sought guidance from her fellow beekeepers, asking in a nationwide online forum how she should manage the overgrowth. There were many recommendations, but one in particular, “just run some goats through there,” caught her eye.

It is not uncommon for people to hear about the concept of having goats eat unwanted vegetation and say to themselves, “Well, isn’t that a fun idea?” and then continue about their life as usual, but Jennifer wasn't content with that. Her entrepreneurial spirit demanded she explore the potential she saw in goat grazing, and it wasn’t long before she was contacting local goat owners to see if she could rent goats from them. Despite the fact that she lived within city limits, had no place to store goats, was busy with her corporate job, and had never even spent time with goats, Jennifer was determined.  

Instead of letting obstacles get in her way, Jennifer went to work solving them. She borrowed six retired dairy goats from a local farmer friend and got to work on her first pilot project with the Erie County Parks. It didn’t take long before her courage to pursue the uncommon paid off. The project went so viral that it crashed Jennifer’s Facebook, and by the end of that summer, so many people had heard about her and her goats that she had already pre-booked jobs for the entire next summer with a herd of goats she didn’t even have yet. Then, to solve the problem of having no place to keep the goats, she rented space and boarded her goats on a farm.

Jennifer fully admits that she often has a hard time saying no to more work, so it should come as no surprise that, for the first year of her grazing business, she continued to work her corporate job while building her grazing business. However, as she spent more time with the goats, she began to feel a shift in her spirit. The more time she spent with her goats, getting to know their names, quirks, and personalities, the more she felt like her true self. She said as she stepped away from her old life, she felt her life change from being about “productivity and deliverables and more about participation and

contribution, with the land, with animals, with other people.”

Jennifer’s operation is an intimate one that brings her purpose and joy. During the grazing season, her goats graze all types of plants, including poison ivy and poison oak, during the day. While the goats eat, she sets up their fences, ensures everything runs smoothly, and studies the various plants in the area. She recalled that when she was in nature before she started goat grazing, she saw all the green plants as the same, but now she has such a vast amount of knowledge that she can tell if a fire has burned through the area based solely on the plants that are growing there. At night, the goats sleep inside a trailer that she can lock and monitor with a live-streamed camera.

 On top of having the courage to do the unknown, Jennifer is not afraid to admit when she was wrong, which is a trait that shows just how much of an entrepreneur she is. At one point, she had planned to create a nationwide company around portable goat buses, but after learning about the unexpected costs that can arise when centering a business around large machinery, she realized that she was seeking something that would never be sustainable for herself. She still has love and passion for the idea, and encourages anyone to reach out if they are interested in pursuing it themselves, but she readily admits that the business model was not as sound as she had initially thought.

Jennifer has found a lot of purpose from goat grazing, and while she explains that it is not the most lucrative endeavor, the value it brings to her life makes it more than worth it. Now she runs a herd of around 30 goats, many of whom are retired dairy goats that would have gone to the slaughterhouse if not for her. Giving those goats a place to retire where they can spend the last of their days having fun, and eating with friends, is something that is important to her. Alongside her herd of happy goats at Let’s Goat Buffalo, Jennifer works to manage the vegetation of everyday people, universities, and government-owned land in a nature-first way and looks forward to continuing to do that for the foreseeable future.

You can find her @letsgoatbuffalo on social media and letsgoatbuffalo.com