Next Year's Kids are Already Started.....

       We put the does with the bucks on the 4th of November.  That means by the time you are reading this blog, the breeding season will be pretty much complete.  In fact, as I sit to write this blog most of the does have been checked off the list as having been bred.  There always seem to be a few that we never see particularly interested in the buck, but still have kids come spring.  It has been our plan the past couple of years to have the does begin to kid as they were going out to the pasture in the spring.  This year, we pushed the season a bit earlier, and will go back to kidding at the barn, so that the kids will be a little bigger when they go out to pasture with their mothers.  We read an article in GOAT RANCHER by Dr. Dave Sparks that showed the results of a 5 year study indicating that kids born earlier in the spring simply grow better and have heavier weaning weights.  We read the article too late to move the kidding back by more than a few weeks this year, but it is a trend in a new direction.  This will be a new experiment for us, and you know that "Experiments Never Fail".

      You also know from reading my previous blog that we will be using the 2 Kiko bucks on the entire herd.  Donkey Odie will have the larger of the 2 groups with almost all of the older mature does.  This group includes most of the older Boer does as well as all the older crossbred dairy does.  We put them in this group to get them bred to a fairly large framed animal who can also provide a lot of parasite resistance for the kids.  Donkey also throws a lot of color which the Farmwife says is an added benefit.  Donkey produced some very nice growthy kids this past year and his doelings will form the core of a new generation when they are bred next year.

      Survivor got a herd of younger does that are Donkey's daughters as well as a few purebred Boers.  Survivor has the potential to add a lot of length to the kids he produces, as well as some very impressive parasite resistance.  Being solid white himself, I don't see a lot of color potential, but for meat animals the color comes off and doesn't add value on the rail.  Size and vigor do.  Survivor has the potential to add that to his kids.  Some of his doelings will be 75% Kiko and as we look down the road for a replacement for Donkey in the future these young does will play a part in that selection process.

        As we move forward with our totally pasture based meat goat operation here at Sunny Acres Farm, we will be seeking out and selecting for those animals who can thrive under conditions of a forage only diet and produce a nicely muscled carcass that will be in demand in the market.  Incredibly, in our first year of our totally pasture based management style we had better success than I had hoped for.  Even with animals not specifically selected for this management style we had some very nice kids produced.  Some, unfortunately, were not as thrifty, but that breeding is no longer an option here.  Hybrid vigor combined with a higher level of parasite resistance for the animals that are raised in a "Management-intensive Grazing", forage based farm operation will be our way forward.  We are choosing to produce a better product by purposeful design.  Our customers deserve nothing but our very best!  

   

Going, Going, Gone.....

      Last Saturday, we put the does with the bucks.  For those of you that are in tune with this simple statement, it means the breeding season has begun here at Sunny Acres Farm.  A whole lot of thought goes into this process because next year's kid crop starts now.  We have been thinking about this day for many months and now is when the plan goes into action.  One buck that won't be getting a harem this year is Jasper.  We are sadly phasing out of the Boers in favor of the Kikos.  While it is true that the Boers often produce a nicer carcass for the butcher, they don't do as well as the Kikos under pasture management conditions.  We are now a totally pasture based commercial meat goat operation.  We need animals that will thrive under these conditions.

      In 2002, we brought the first Boers to this farm.  They had the first kids in the spring of '03.  At that time I could buy bagged goat feed from Blue Seal for about $8 a bag.  (These were 50 lb. bags)  We were more than generous with the grain and the kids thrived and grew very well.  As time went on and our herd increased, the price of grain was creeping up but we just kept feeding it and watched the kids grow very well.  We even set up a creep feeder so they could have all they wanted without the mothers getting too fat.  But, we only had about a dozen does and 25 kids a year and we could afford to buy all the feed we wanted on my salary.  We never even calculated what it cost to produce a kid.  That is not good business practice!

      That was then, but this is now.  I don't have a well paying off-farm job anymore.  I was retired in January of '09 when my company needed to drastically reduce costs.  I have a pension, but it does not cover grain for goats.  We have expanded the doe herd a bit.  Today we will put 32 does with the bucks and we have another 17 doelings that are being raised for the future.  We cannot afford to feed these animals grain.  It just is not in the equation.  They have to manage on the grass that they can eat in the pasture.  We have made an investment in improving that grass and that seems to be a better deal than buying grain.  Today the bag of grain that cost $8 in 2003 costs over $14, and the price goes up at a steady rate.  Economics dictates that we find a different path to produce goat meat that will allow us to earn a profit.  Without a profit, there is really no point to going through the hard work of being a goat farmer.

      This brings us back to the Boer-Kiko discussion.  Without getting into all of the statistics, I can sum up our current year's kid crop, which we had on performance test.  The kids at birth were very uniform with no real significant difference in weights or livability.  At weaning we saw a slight advantage of the Kikos over the Boers and we attributed that to hybrid vigor, but it was most likely better resistance to the parasites that were an epidemic this year.  It was after weaning that the spread really grew.  The Kikos, for the most part gained at a better rate than the Boers.  We were weighing all the kids and doing a Famacha check at least every other week.  The Kikos had better Famacha scores and rates of gain than the Boers every time.  The Boers were wormed much more frequently and were on intensive therapy to keep some of them alive when they were so wormy that they had a Famacha score of 5.  The only kid that died this year was also a Boer that we were not able to save.  Some of the Kikos have not been wormed except at weaning and have scores of 1-2.  The kid herd was managed as a group, so they all got the same feed and opportunity to grow.   The two photos below show the marked contrast between the Boer doeling in the front and the kiko/crossbred doelings behind.  All were born within a couple of weeks of each other.

      The group of doelings that is being kept for breeding next year is all Kikos.  Their rate of gain, Famacha scores, and overall appearance is way better than any of the Boer doelings.  The simple fact is that under our management system the Kikos are doing better.  They will be our way forward.  We are here to produce meat animals for a market that will not pay for inefficiencies in production.  The prices are good for the animals we sell, but they would not support the feeding of grain to the herd to allow the Boers to stay and be a part of the make-up of the herd here at Sunny Acres.  Reality is sometimes a very harsh fact of life.