Friday, October 31, 2014

Borrow-a-Buck

Last weekend while I was sitting at the garage sale, contemplating exactly why I bothered to have a garage sale and counting the three quarters that I made that day, I saw a familiar pick up truck pull into the drive.  Aaron & Adrian had come, not to buy toddler clothing or 80's dishes, but to bring Deuce Bigalow, their Nigerian Dwarf buck, over to our place.  Since I couldn't convince them to take all the garage sale stuff off my hands, I sent them and the goat down the road to our place where Paul would help them unload his stinky ass.

Deuce will be breeding MamaGoat and maybe Annette this year.  Even though Pyewacket (Annette's doeling and her eventual replacement) is big enough to be bred, I'm going to hold off until next year.  The goat population is getting a bit out of hand and I'm going to have to admit that Paul is right; we have too many milk goats for what milk we do drink.  And although we do trade milk for hay, I can't use that as an excuse to keep the extra milkers going.  Feed costs are getting too expensive.

So Deuce and Studly are pen-mates.  As was expected, they butted heads and rammed each other for half the day until both of them were exhausted.  Now the only head butting occurs when one of the ladies come over to take a look-see or when the grain dishes come out.  Typical animals.  Wait a second, my husband is kind'a like that when we go out....except he doesn't get as excited with me as he does a cheeseburger.  Not that I blame him.  I'd shove right past Tom Selleck for a big, juicy cheeseburger with grilled onions and all the fixings.

Wait a second, where was I going with this?

Oh, the buck goats.  Studly will only get one of the Boer gals this year and Herman will breed the rest of the Boers because as soon as I'm sure he's successful, I'm putting his stankyass up for sale.  From next year on, Studly DoRight will be our resident stud.  He'll be able to breed all of our current does as well as their doelings the following year.  At that point, we should have enough does in the herd that we can stop building the herd and start eating the herd.

I didn't want to have any more early births like last year so I've put off breeding until just recently.  Dilly was bred a few days ago and Penny (the Boer/Nubian cross) was bred last week, both by Herman.  But we're not going to be able to count on Penny's kids because I finally sold her!  She went to her new home earlier this morning.  Whoo hoo!  One less mouth to feed.

Oh wait, we added Deuce to the heard; that's one more mouth to feed.

I guess I'll just call it even then.  Sigh.

4 comments:

  1. We are still trying to sell two doelings, and no one is buying here in our area. Although more are raising goats, no one is spending. They need a home and soon. Too many to feed this winter.

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  2. One of the reasons we've hesitated getting back into goats is the cost of feed (which has gone up just like everything else) these days. Plus, although there are a few goats in our area, chances of finding the "right" buck to breed our girls would be limited. Which means, of course, the necessity of keeping our own buck. And he'd have to have a buddy to keep him company and . . . are we up to a herd of 15 yet? I'm partial to the standard Nubians for milk but I'm interested in trying Boers for meat, too. Sigh.

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  3. You lost ME at Tom Selleck....
    I don't know how you can keep all that goat-breeding stuff straight. You need a scorecard! Congrats on selling Penny! I know the goat market has taken a nose-dive around these parts.

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