Choices and wating.....

I feel that one of the hardest parts when breeding animals is making choices. 

 Here I have a wonderful easy to deal with buck. He is proven to throw good kids with LOTS of amazing color.  I didn't originally intend to breed for color as Challenger was an unproven buck and although he is a pretty boy we didn't know what he might throw.  Now we have three new bucks on the way (Yeah THREE).  We have purchased a nice FB traditional colored buckling, a gorgeous blue Myotonic buckling and now a full black commercial percentage Kiko buck (he is 81% Kiko and 19% Boer). 

I love the Kiko and really want to keep breeding some Kiko into our line. I think this new buckling (Demon) will throw nice kids and we will use him often on our first freshening does.  From there we will keep what we like of his doeling offspring.

We also have plenty of requests for registered doelings and Titan will allow us to offer more of these.  Both FB and percentages.....maybe even some with color once we breed some of Challengers doelings. 

Then we have Spyder coming into the mix (He's the Myontonic buckling).  We plan to also use him on some of our first freshening does (especially those offspring of Demon).   This will be more of an experiment than anything else.  We are going to try and improve the "meatiness" in our kids.  We will see how this goes.

So my choices are to keep Challenger for at least one more year and wait on the Kiko/Boer buckling (or keep Challenger and GET the buckling just wait to breed him the following year).  If I keep Challenger one more year that gives me one more crop of nice babies to choose from to add to my breeding line up.

Of course if I want to add more colored does I could just go BUY some colored does using the money earned from kids sired from other bucks.

Of course with all these bucks I certainly need more does, but unfortunately space will become limited!! I will be up to 11 does once our Pygora does arrive (ooooh that is a whole other bunch of choices I made there!!)  I had really set my limit at 8.  Perhaps it’s time to admit there might be an addiction going on here?  Nah, I got this under control.    I may do some rearranging of our pastures and see about adding some  Quonset type huts made from cattle panels to the goat pasture just to make room. If anybody has suggestions for making this type of housing winter proof for northern climates I would love to hear them.   That might even give me room for ½ dozen MORE does.  Oh, the choices that opens up!!

Currently I do have Challenger listed for sale.  Perhaps somebody else will make this choice for me?

I would have to say that the second hardest thing when breeding animals is the waiting.  First you must wait for a bred doe to give birth.  Then waiting for that kid to be old enough to fully evaluate and see how the pairing you chose turned out.  Once deciding that you finally have a great match then you have to wait to breed the next generation. Oh, and don’t forget waiting for doe to be ready to breed back again because her first kids were so gorgeous that you just busting at the seams with anticipation to see the NEXT batch.   Try finding a really nice buck or doe to bring into your herd then having to wait to get him or her home.    This never ending cycle can be quite a challenge for a person without one iota of the right kind of patience.

Well, folks these musings today were more for me than for you this time.  I was hoping that putting these thoughts “on paper” so to speak would help me put this all into perspective.   I’m not sure yet if it has.

Until next time….