Running a ranch takes more than just slinging feed and selling kids. You need to make decisions and every decision has consequences, potentially good, bad or neutral.  Some decisions are fairly easy, while other are a big puzzle. Good thing I like puzzles!

Right now, we are making breeding decisions and I am sorting out my “Keeper Pen.” Our breeding plans took a detour this year when our embryo transfer vet needed shoulder surgery !!!! No ET or AI for us this year!  So, we decided to breed Big Momma, Hilda, and Z2 to Jim. His Boer kids are easy to sell at a reasonable price. Since the Genemaster program requires fullblood Boers, Jim and Hilda will provide that. Tommy TuTone is a GNY buckling, and later in the fall he will be breeding two of our fullblood Boer does and this will produce Texas Genemasters, TXG, the final cross.!

So, those decisions meant the rest of the does would be split up between Ozy and Patches. Or will they?

Suddenly, it looks like Sir Tommy is coming back to the ranch!  We sure did love Sir Tommy’s kids.After giving the final pre-breeding vaccines this morning, Haylee and I started re-working the breeding chart for the Kikos. We like using Ozy on first-time mothers as his kids don’t tend to be over-large, but they grow fast and are worm resistant. Sir Tommy is a New Zealand, so we will put the NZ does with him. We have six Ozy daughters, so they need to go with Patches or Sir Tommy.  Patches, well, we don’t know what his kids will be like as this is his first breeding season! I think they will have a little color, though.

And we decided!  So much easier than deciding what’s for dinner…. We ended up with 15 for Ozy, 8 for Sir Tommy, 7 for Patches, 2 for Tommy TuTone and 3 for Jimbo. That’s 35 does between the two herds.

Which takes me to my next decision, Who to Sell? I sell goats for money and to promote my brand! The MidAmerica Kiko Goat Association will have its Second Conference and Sale on October 20-21, 2017.  This will be my first time to take goats to a breeders sale, so I want to take some of my best!  I only have three Kiko yearlings that I have bred, and 10 remaining doelings. Of the yearlings, only one is purebred and she is not leaving! Shelley was the best of her cohort, has never been wormed (remember, I’m not that far from Houston, so that is saying something!). The other two yearlings are sisters and half Kiko, daughters of Ozy.  They are going in the breeding pen with Patches, so I plan on taking one of them. Of the doelings, I would like to take four, leaving six doelings in the Keeper Pen for next year. That leaves two NZ, two purebred, and two three-quarter Kiko at the ranch. Next spring I’ll decide who stays  to join the herd and who goes to the June AKGA sale.

Now, about dinner…