In 2016, a Texas couple took in 2 goats in their tiny South Austin backyard; 10 years later, Austin Farm Sanctuary covers 95 acres

Image credit: Austin Farm Sanctuary/FB The goat in Chris Fuller-Wigg’s arms doesn’t look like the start of anything big. Cookie is a LaMancha, the breed with tiny, tucked-in ears, and in a 2024 photograph taken at Austin Farm Sanctuary in Paige, Texas, she leans into him the way a family dog might. Chris holds her gently, his face close to hers.Cookie is where it all began.Back in 2016, she was a dairy goat whose working life had come to an abrupt end. She had been injured while giving birth, and her daughter, Bertha, was born undersized. On a dairy farm, both of those things matter. An injured mother and a small kid aren’t profitable, and animals that aren’t profitable rarely stay.“They were no longer of use to the goat dairy,” Chris told Tribeza. On most farms, he explained, that usually means only one thing. This time it didn’t. Chris and his wife, Angela, had just bought their first home in South Austin. It came with a backyard of about half an acre, and when they heard about Cookie and Bertha, they opened the gate. They had no plan to start a sanctuary and no blueprint to follow. They simply said yes to two goats who needed somewhere to go.That yes turned out to be the first o...