First, the expression uses the word "even", not "ever" as you wrote in your message title.
This is a difficult question to answer, because this point of language moves beyond strict rules of grammar and becomes a question of personal style. If I were the editor for that news story, I would tell the writer to change the phrase to one of the following: "Stranger still, the goats' droppings contain..." or "Even stranger, the goats' droppings contain..."
To begin a thought where you are introducing a new idea which is stranger than the previous (also strange) thought, you can use the word "even" or "still". It's not very good writing style to use both of them at once.
Here are other examples, using similar sentence structure: "Summertime on the coast is hot, but hotter still are the wide expanses of inland desert." Or, with the exact same meaning: "Summertime on the coast is hot, but even hotter are the wide expanses of inland desert."
"She was always a shy child, but she became shyer still as she grew up." Or "... she became even shyer..."
"Still" and "even" are used in this type of sentence to emphasize the description-word.