Friday, May 24, 2013

A Quick Update:


First I apologize for not updating the blog as much as I intended. Bottle feeding and staggered kiddings seems to take most of my time up these days.

 

A Quick Note:

 Our Breeding Plans: We have decided to intensify our breeding focus for the herd and will be making some changes to the breeding line up as things progress. Since I have limited space I need to be very selective in who I keep. We have decided to start line breeding our goats to emphasis milking ability as well as sound structure.  In order to narrow the focus, I am only keeping the adults that have similar ancestors.  Each goat also has at least one close ancestor that was/is capable of producing 1000+ a year.

 

Hazel

Hazel will be going to a new retirement home at the end of this lactation. This years kidding was pretty bad and the one prior to (2012) had babies that presented the same way. The only saving grace with the 2012 babies was that they were much smaller and I was able to pull them out without too much trouble. Given these kiddings and her moderate milk production I believe it’s fair to retire her. She will be joining her two kids this year in Mayville.

 

Sunny

 

Sunny tested Negative a month before her potential due date. She kidded 03/25/13 with no problems. She had 2 bucklings and a doe. We plan on retaining the doe for breeding this year in order to get a better idea of what sort of udders Hoodie is giving his girls. We have Sunny up for sale right now as a milking doe. I am not in a huge hurry to sell her, but I also realize that with keeping her daughter we need to make some room.

 

Hoodie

Hoodie became a year old in late March. He was fecal tested for his Birthday. (wow what a gift).

His results have come back negative. He continues to grow into a very correct, very flashy herd sire with some stellar milk genes.

 

 Maddie

 

Maddie is the last but not least to kid. As I am writing this, I am expecting / hoping for kids Memorial Day weekend. Maddie tested negative in late April. She is already displaying a very symmetrical very correct udder and I can’t wait to see how it fills in.  Her mother continues to improve and is actually on her 2nd year in milk w/o having to be bred again. My hope is that Maddie also has this ability and will pass it on to her future kids.

 

New Additions

 

On May 20th I made my latest and hopefully final trip to the airport to retrieve the last additions of the herd. At 2AM (after a flight delay) I picked up Desert Nanny BF Alligator Pie and Desert Nanny BE Dubliner Style. I am hoping that Dublin will be the second herd sire that will infuse great milking genetics into our herd. With these two additions I hope that I will be able to close the herd, thus greatly decreasing any chances of possible disease transmittion ( be it Johnes, CAE, or CL)

 

Future Plans

In the next year I hope to get a farm website up and running where I can have a list of my herd members, milk records, pedigrees, and breeding plans. I will continue to post test results on the site and hope to have everyone tested at the same time ever year going forward. (It’s a lot easier to upload that way). I plan on testing for CAE, CL, and Johnes on an annual basis. For the goats under a year old I will continue to do a fecal right before they kid to ensure that nothing is transmitted in utero. As much as I hate bottle feeding, I think it does help with weaning and it creates an easier managed goat in the long run, sooo.. I will continue with that as well.

If all, (or most at least) goes according to plan I intend on showing more does next year and possibly starting milk test. (While eating loads and loads of cheese. Lol)