Flat Lake Goats: August 2011

Yesterday DH and I drove three hours to pick up some new does; two boer and one boerX. Now, these girls may not be show worthy, but we're hoping that they produce some strong/healthy kids for us next spring. It appears that the "blonde" has never been bred, hopefully that means she has never been introduced to a buck. One of the "red heads" has large/funny teats so her future kids might have difficulties sucking; this is something we will be watching carefully when she does kid. All of the girls are in decent condition, so they will most likely be put with our buck this fall so we can get some spring kids out of them.

All three of the girls appear to be a bit copper deficient so we'll be treating them for that soon. It seems that many people do not realize that goats NEED copper in their diet; almost every goat we have purchased was showing signs of being copper deficient upon arrival, or shortly there after. To be fair, we did not know how badly goats need copper until recently, it's just one of those things you learn as you spend more time researching and talking with other breeders. Our entire herd was deficient for a while, but we have since remedied that and will be making sure that their copper levels stay within a healthy range. We have yet to build a system for feeding our goats loose minerals, so unfortunately we've been having to give them a mineral block. Goats do not get nearly enough of what they need from a block so we have had to supplement our girls; hopefully we'll have a loose mineral feeder built soon so we won't have to give our girls extra copper boluses (which is not a fun task).

Two of the three does we bought yesterday, were in desperate need of a hoof trimming (DH and I tackled that job this afternoon). It is really important that a goats hooves be well maintained, but sadly some people either don't realize how important it is, or just don't bother doing it. Even though these does are a little wild we still caught them and struggled with them until their hooves were as nice as we could make them. I am terribly slow when it comes to trimming hooves, but I'm learning and I'm sure with time and more practice I'll be able to keep up with the men no problem.

The new does are currently in "isolation" so hopefully they will get a bit friendlier as we need to bring them water, grain, and hay everyday. Whenever we buy a new animal for our herd, we keep them in a separate pen, where they cannot access our current herd. As soon as they arrive we deworm them (just in-case) and decide if they need any extra attention (ie. copper or hoof trimming). We monitor them for three weeks, and if all appears well they are then released into the herd :).

So the time has come for us to say goodbye to our bucklings and wethers. We weaned our boys a couple of weeks ago, and will be selling them starting August 26, 2011. Although weaning the boys and keeping them separated from the females for this long did mean that we had to feed them longer, we believe that it is important that our boys be in great condition before they leave our farm. If we did not wean a kid before selling it the buyer would certainly notice some loss in condition, and this is something we try to avoid. We are not in control of the health of an animal once it leaves our farm, but we still like our goats to be as healthy as possible before they leave.

For your viewing pleasure, here are the bucklings we are selling. These boys are Boer/Kiko/Nubian/Spanish X's, and are nice and meaty. For more information on each buckling, as well as prices, please visit the "For Sale" section of our website at www.flatlakegoats.webs.com .