Itty Bitty Hooves

Off To The Show

We went to a goat show again yesterday. Once again we were merely bystanders. Regular audience members. It’s kind of weird. Until just recently with the goat shows it had been years upon years since I went to a show just to watch. Be it dog show, horse show, livestock shows of one kind or another, or even rabbit shows, for the past 30 years when I went to a show, I was IN the show with one animal or another.

I don’t really suppose it was necessary to go to these shows to learn the specifics. Basically goats are shown just like most other animals. The methods of showing most commonly resemble that of dog showing, or sheep showing. Showmanship methods are the same for every animal on the planet–the basic premises is don’t get between the animal and the judge. The judge needs to see the animal, not you as best as possible.

Other than the breeder sale I want to go to in September, I think I”m done with observing now. The next show we go to we’ll be entered in with the goats. Probably next spring.

I do want to go to the auction however, to see how the production sales prices compare to average livestock auctioning. I know usually they’re higher, but I want to see what we’re looking at as far as future visability for selling at the bigger production auctions next year vs selling from the farm or at livestock auctions. I can’t honestly say I will be going to the production sale JUST to look and observe however. haha… I do hope to have some cash in my pocket and perhaps make it home with a nice purebred doe. (shhhuuuussshhhh, don’t tell anyone. haha)

Smart Kids

Well, they did it again. Three of the weanling dairy goats got out of the back fence into the woods. I don’t want them back there even though the perimeter is fenced in, because there are too many wild animals that trapse through there and they’d be fair game even though they have horns. One, however didn’t get out. Maybe she wasn’t smart enough, but Amelia never gets out when the other three do. She just will not shove herself through a hole not even big enough for a goat half her size. The others will–no problem. Getting back, however is a problem for some reason. Maybe Amelia is the smart one. One things’s for sure, she’s a great tattle-tale. I was sitting in my office typing the previous post when I heard her screaming outside my window. There’s only one reason… well two reasons a goat will scream like that. She’s caught in the fence (she wasn’t) or she’s all alone. Goats hate to be seperated from their herd. Sure enough, I went out there and she was all alone, and the other three were no where to be seen. A quick investigation of the back fence found them just outside it, eating the great weeds and trees in the woods. Now, before you think I starve them, there are plenty of weeds, trees, and grass in the 1/2 acre yard they are SUPPOSED to be in. But they’re goats. The grass (weeds, trees, etc) is always greener on the other side of the fence. And if the fence is weak… well, they’ll be over there.

Thank heaven’s for little tattle-tales.

Fences and Barns, neverending work

I’m keeping all the goats in their pens again today. Just one more day of relaxing without having to worry about checking them every hour or so, and retrieving them from escape. I think I have all the holes fixed except one and I know what I have to do to fix that. It won’t really be hard but it is slow going in the heat we’ve been having. It did rain a bit yesterday. Not long though and once it was over the humidity was deadly. I also put the fence by the milking barn back the way it was last week. I’d tried pulling it out and letting them have access to the inside of the barn but that just wasn’t working out. The feed and hay, and the actual milking stanchion was blocked off in a stall by itself so they couldn’t get in there, but the problem was, neither could I with fifteen goats all crowded around it. Not without a hassle anyway. So I pulled the fence line back again and it’s much easier to feed and milk that way. I think the cat’s happy about it too. One of our barn cats had her kittens in that barn and she wasn’t all that happy about all the goats milling about in there.

The Great Escapes

Three in one day! I didn’t even get online yesterday because I was so busy retrieving goats, and getting them back in the yard, and fixing the weak spots they found in our new fencing. It seemed like I was just finished with one spot and a couple of the goats found a new spot. It didn’t help that it was in the 80s yesterday either. A cool breeze would have been nice. By the end of the day I was ready to swear off goats for good and considered very heavily the thought of taking them all to the sale on Sunday. That passed after I’d relaxed for a bit in the house and had taken a half hour long cold shower to cool off. They’re all staying in their pens today though. Not so much as ‘punishment’ for them, but as a ‘day off’ for me.

Finally Some Decent Pasture Shots

I’m still trying to get that perfect shot and it eludes me. This time, however, I managed to catch a few of the girls wandering out in the pasture and not hanging in by me crowding around my bench. Here’s one:

And another:

And I never did post a picture of the two girls we got at the swap in May. I can never quite seem to get a good picture of them. Today’s no real exception, but since I really want to get SOMETHING up to show I’ll just post the one I managed to get of their backsides, lol:

And of course Oreo, our newest little addition at 3 weeks old, born here at the end of May is growing like a weed, but is always right by me when I’m outside:

All in all, just another lovely day here at the ranch playing with the goats.

New Digs

Well I did quite a bit of work last night. The weather was just cool enough (it was setting up for rain overnight yay!) so I moved some of the pannels of the new small barn pen so that they had access to the inside of the small barn and then moved the dairy goats over from the big barn into that pen so they could go out with the rest of the girls and browse during the day. Then I moved the milking stand from the big barn to the small barn (whew what a pain in the butt. They better like it over here because I’m not moving it back) and the feed bucket.

I still have a few more small things to move over but it’s so much fun to see the entire herd together. All that’s missing is Mickey and Savvy who are in their seperate run/paddock for breeding and because I don’t want Mickey in with the rest since there are a couple close to kidding.

Friendly kids

One thing I really didn’t take too much into consideration when thinking about getting back into goats this spring was whether they were friendly or not. I’ve never owned an unfriendly goat, or one that didn’t want to be around people, or be touched, or was hard to catch. Goats just seem to really like humans as a rule. At least that’s how I’d always known them to be. Certainly it’s more the rule than the exception with dairy goats. Those are all I’d ever owned before so maybe that’s why the perception I had of goats liking people. Dairy goats have to be handled daily. Usually twice daily. So they’re quite accustomed to being handled. Add to that that the majority of dairy kids are bottle fed making them EXTREMELY human bonded and you have the recipe for love.

Just recently getting involved with meat goats where the animals are generally not handled as often, or bottle raised I’ve found that many of them are hard to catch, or touch. I still don’t have any ‘mean’ ones, or none that don’t like me. They come running, BUT, they stay just out of arms reach whenever possible. LOL Recently I started looking for a purebred Boer doe and one of the breeders wrote me that the one I was looking at was very personable and liked being handled. She went on to say that most breeders don’t care. I DO. Short of building expensive shoots and catch pens I am doing my darndest to make the few I have here at least catchable. They don’t have to be lovey, in your face, like my dairy girls are, and my bottle raised kids are, but I need to be able to catch them for health care.

Now I know from new experience that it’s not necessarily a ‘bottle raised’ thing. My newest little Alpine doeling that was born here in May is being raised by her mother and she’s still the friendliest little in your face climb all over you thing on the planet. I’m really hoping that the Boer kids born here will be too just because I’m out there so often.

Pied Piper Of Goats

I just love my goats. I’ve owned just about every type of livestock there is through the years from chickens to horses. The only thing I haven’t personally owned is cattle, but family members have so I even have experience with them. Goats are, by far, in my opinion the most personable and friendly livestock type animal. Perhaps it could be argued second to horses, but horses in this day and age are most commonly pets not livestock. We own quite a few horses as well, but I’ll tell you, for the most part, I’d count the goats one up on them for personality and fun to be around. I just now between posts went outside into the pastures as I do several times a day to do head counts. (One little caveat to the great livestock to be around with goats thing is that they are master escape artists no matter how good your fencing is.) I have yet to have a true escape yet because by and large, our place is set up that if someone goat, horse, or chicken gets out of a pasture area, they are simply in another pasture area. Mostly I just want to be sure they’re in the one I want them in, not mixed in with a different grouping, or in a pasture I’m letting ‘rest’, so I go out periodically every hour or two to ‘count heads’. That’s what I was doing. I went out to check on one of the groups I had out today to make sure they were where I wanted them to be. Some of the area isn’t easily visible unless you walk down into the thick of the trees and brush. There were no goats to be seen. I called.

They came running. The whole little herd I had in that particular area came running to me as happy as could be that I came out to see them. Like they’d never seen me before out in their area. Like I’m not out there every hour or two. Like there was no one else on earth that could please them more to see. They came for their scratches and hugs. I made sure all was well with each, especially since a couple of them are pregnant. I petted them some more then turned to go back into the house. As I walked back through the field to the entrance I looked back.

There was a long line of goats following me like the Pied Piper. All I was missing was a flute.

I love my goats.

What Do You Think? Would You, or not?

A question came up while I was talking with another newer breeder who just started with Fullbloods a little over a year ago at the show I went to last weekend. (For the record for any who don’t know, I’m just starting in Fullbloods now, so the two of us conversing was like a couple of freshmen talking about all the cool stuff in High School). We were just talking breeding and some of the things done now that are pretty commonplace amongst especially the larger breeders. Things like AI and Flushing etc.

Now I don’t think flushing is all that common in dairy goats. It’s more a Boer/meat goat type commonality.

The point I kind of thought about when it came to flushing was that I was under the impression that although males continue to create sperm throughout most of their lives, although it may dwindle to a small amount at older ages, females are born with a set number of eggs.

The other person I was speaking to had never given that any thought so he didn’t know.

I’d like to know, if you were looking at buying a doe (there wasn’t any in question and this isn’t about any specific animal) would you buy one that had been previously flushed?

For those newer reading this that might not know–flushing is when you have a vet come out, and using certain techniques that I won’t all go into here, retrieving a large number of eggs from a doe, then the eggs are inseminated with a particular buck’s sperm and deposited into a large number of what are called ‘donor does’. That way you can have a purebred doe bred to a purebred buck but instead of having just two to four babies from that one mating, you can have ten, twenty, whatever just grade does delivering two to four purebred babies from that single mating.

So if a doe has been flushed–if I’m correct and a female is born with a set number of eggs–she could have a much more limited ability to conceive, maybe not right off, but over a normal period of breeding life.

What do you think?

It’s A Small World

I can’t keep that song out of my head this morning. I was emailing someone yesterday about a Boer doe I am interested in. She must have gone to my website to check me out too. The url is in all my emails so it wouldn’t have been difficult for her, because she wrote back that my buck, Mick (CJM Mighty Mick), was a really nice buck. What made it most exicting, besides having a big time show breeder say I had a nice buck, was that she also let me know in a later email that she’d owned Mick’s grandfather, RENAISSANCE LUCKY SPIKE, a few years ago, and he was a wonderful producer who put big, meaty kids on the ground. I was thrilled.

When I’d first bought Mick I tried to do some research on his pedigree. I didn’t turn up much except that his great-great grandfather was a son of a big name buck called Eggsorcist. That was nice to know, but it wasn’t all that much info. Having someone say they’d personally owned one of his recent ancestors and what a good buck he was was quite a thrill. I didn’t really need that to know that Mickey is wonderful and will produce fantastic kids for us, but it sure is nice to know.