Happy 2025!
Happy New Year!
As we come into the new year, we reflect on everything that we accomplished. 2024 was a monumental year for us. We brought in many Nubians with the desired genetics. We have friends to thank for helping us acquire those deals, and I have my husband to thank for believing in my vision and the direction I want to take in our breeding program. I took the plunge and had our herd Linear Appraised. As nervous and scared as I was, we did very well and I came away with so much more knowledge! My confidence in our breeding program soared, and it solidified that I was headed in the right direction. Here I will mention some of the great things that pushed us into 2025 with excitement!
Our meat operation progressed
Our farm grew not only in the dairy side, but in the meat side. I have to give a big shout out to our friends from Estancia for considering us when they dispersed their herd of Genemaster/Spanish does. These six does put us ahead two years in our meat production program! I was certainly not planning on bringing anymore meat does into our herd, for fear of disease. My plans were to just breed what I wanted until I got to a comfortable and productive number of brood does. Our friends were getting out of the goat business, and they were adamant that they didnt want these beautiful girls to go through the sale barn and be exposed to illnesses or go to a diseased herd. These does were their foundation and deserved better. It didn't take much thinking, as we were familiar with their herd and their breeding program. After all, we had leased a Boer buck to them a couple of years ago, and knew how well they took care of thier herd. We are extremely grateful that they considered us! Our buck Merlin is pretty big, but these girls make him look like a mini! 2025 will be the first year that we take a large group of kids to the market! We can't thank them enough for giving us that push forward, and we wish them all the best in their new adventure.
These girls have added a plethora of great traits to our herd. They have fantastic feet, width, stature and bone mass. They have big bags that produce an abundant amount of milk for their kids. They are hardy, and have adapted well to this valley. Whoever bred these girls knew what they were doing! Apparently, they came from a ranch in Northern New Mexico. It doesn't matter, we are more than happy to have them in our herd!
As mentioned before, we are keeping both operations separate from each other. Our Nubians have an extremely passive temperament, and with some of our Boers having horns we do not want to risk injury to our Nubians.
Our kidding barn is almost finished
One of the plans we had in mind to have accomplished before 2025 was our barn addition with kidding stalls. Things have set us back but we are almost finished. We are working out all of the details that matter to us and making sure we think of every possible scenario. We want this built strong and functional! Im so excited for it to be done. Not sure it will be completed before kidding season though.
We added an LGD puppy
Back in August we brought an adult LGD to our farm, but she was so bonded to her original home and family that it didn't work out. Im sure she would have eventually settled in, but seeing her in that state of fear and panic, even after 90 days was heart breaking. She went back home and is back to her happy self! We decided it would probably be best to just get a puppy that would bond to us, and we are so happy we did. Meet our new LGD in training, Maia! She is going to be a great addition to our team of LGD's and will be paired with Pepper for her mentorship. She is getting to know all the things and occasionally sleeps in the house. We want to take her on car rides and trips, and want to leash and tether train her. It will take a family effort, but we are commited!
Participating in DHIR
I am so excited for this new endeavor. This is something that we planned on doing once we decided to go with a registered herd. When we chose our foundation lines, they had the milk records that solidified our decision making. My thoughts were that we wanted to continue those records and prove our own line. Afterall, we want to make sure we are headed in the right direction. Our goals are to get to a production capability where we can house a conservative number of extremely productive does. This will help us lower overall costs on the farm. We are commited to proving out our foundation, and one of the ways is by participating in milk testing!
I would love to document our test days and post them on our blog. It would be nice to share that process with our followers!
We hope everyone has a wonderful new year! Stay tuned for more updates.
