Out behind the feed store, off Highway 281 on the south side of Burnet, sits a nondescript blue metal building with the the letters "HCR" painted on a cutout map of Texas. Inside the building, without fanfare, a uniquely Texan success story involving goats, coyotes and international commerce is still unfolding.

HCR in Burnet, Texas

Glenn Morris is a West Texas native who worked for Southern Pacific Railroad for eighteen years before buying a ranch just south of Burnet in 1994. His "success story" started when he was faced with the problem of keeping his goats safe from proliferating coyotes.

The plan was to feed the goats near the house in the evening, and then again early in the morning, figuring they would stay in relative safety through the night. To keep feeding times consistent, Morris tried mechanical feeders and timers, but found them undependable. Though he had no electronics background, he decided to build his own, modifying a 110-volt timer he picked up at Radio Shack.. ("When you have to know," he says, "You get a book and learn.")

"That first feeder was pretty crude," Morris says. "The main parts were that timer, a spinner plate and a box."

But it worked, and the enthusiastic reaction he got from his friends made him wonder if he could sell them. He put together 27 feeders, building the timers on a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood in the spare bedroom. He sold all 27 right away.

The next step was to build a twenty-foot-square shop on the ranch, where he started building feeders in earnest. His customers were mostly hunters seeking to attract deer, but soon ranchers who made money leasing to hunters started feeding deer year-round. The ranchers spread the word, and feeder sales soared.

In 1996, the company moved into an old bank building in town, and sales continued to grow, with orders coming from all around the country.

Morris, an enthusiastic hunter himself (though he says that now, with hunting season his company's busiest time, he hardly ever gets to g ...

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