This year, we had an extra long kidding season. I really prefer to kid in December, January and February. This year, we bought a trailer load of goats in September and quarantined them for a month before we let Ozymandias introduce himself. Ergo, late mid-March to mid-April kids.

April kids at Asno Blanco

Today, MJI Dakota finally gave us a buckling, ending the season. No more guessing what size, sex or color the kids will be, no more worrying about birthing problems. Well, until December!

Looking back on the season, we have a lot of things to be grateful for.

• My good friend Pamela Christopher sent AFK Sir Tommy to our place and he bred several of our top does before moving on to his new home. I’m keeping three of the doelings!
• We did our first embryo flush, again thanks to Pamela. DDF Matariki’s Jazzi Blue was superovulated and then inseminated with straws from SPK Sunboy Rotan 150 (Magnum). Wowzers! We recovered 24 embryos! Six were implanted and five were born. Jazzi also had a little surprise and kidded a single doeling as well!
• Sir Tommy TuTone was born, a GNY buckling for the Genemaster program. He will be bred to fullblood Boer does later this fall and this will produce full Texas Genemasters. He’s a handsome palomino paint growing like a weed!
• Jim, our only Boer buck, was gravely ill and close to death this winter. He’s now back to knocking heads with Ozy, whom he grew up with.
• We exposed 30 does to the bucks. Our kidding rate was 87%. An older doe did not maintain a pregnancy and three first-fresheners lost theirs. We lost zero does. We had 22 bucklings and 27 doelings. Of these, one doeling was lost to a predator. That’s 1.63 per doe exposed. Fingers crossed, we will wean 98% of the kids born.