Sunday, July 10, 2016

We have goats!! Again. ;)


We finally bought some does!!!  I've been hinting about it on my other blog, showing the fence building in progress.  One reader actually guessed correctly.  :D

We missed having our small herd of goats like we had before hubby got hurt.  Since his back has improved and he's able to do things again, we decided to go back to the breeder where we got our four original does Alyssum, Zinnia, Jasmine and Primrose to start our new herd.  We now have Coral, a four or five year old proven pureblood Boer doe and her daughter Pearl, a half Boer/half Savanna doe.  Jade and Garnet are both half Savanna.  Their other half is a Boer/dairy mix.  Topaz is one we got on a whim when we went to pick them up and I can't remember what the orange tag means, so I'll update when I get an email back from the breeder.  I decided to go with gemstones for themed names this time instead of flowers.  I'm still very sad about having to sell Jasmine and the others, so I didn't feel like doing flowers again.  I love the gemstone names so far!

We also got a buckling that we will probably use as our first year sire while we save up some money for the sire we really want (you'll have to wait for details on that one later).  His name is Jasper.  He is fullblood Boer I think.  Awaiting confirmation in the email from the breeder.  I forgot to write down some of the details in all the excitement hehe.

Jasper.

Their tags also tell what month they were born in.  If they have a 3 at the beginning they were born in March, a 4 they were born in April and so on.  It's a really great system.  Jasper doesn't have a colored tag (none of the bucklings do, that makes it easy to tell gender when wading through her herd), but we know he was born in April.  Here are the does' tag numbers and colors.

Coral - 150 - Purple - So she was born in January, but I'm not sure what year since she's the only full grown one we got.  The breeder said she's approximately 3 to 4 years old.  Purple means pureblood Boer.

Pearl - 425 - Yellow - Born 4-19-16 and half Savanna/half Boer.

Jade - 429 - Yellow -  Born 4-14-16 and half Savanna.

Topaz - 421 - Orange - Born in April, orange means 88% Boer.

Garnet - 301 - Yellow - Born 3-13-16.  Half Savanna and half Boer/Alpine.

Jasper - I forgot to write down his number, but he was born in April.  75% Boer.

Here is what a Savanna buck looks like for anyone not familiar with goat breeds.

A Savanna buck, but not their sire.

So let's start back at the beginning.  On June 5th we went to the breeder to sort through about fifty goats to decide which ones we wanted.  It was hard!!  It took a long time too, but it was so fun.  It doesn't help that they are not pets and are totally skittish of humans.  It was hard to catch them, but luckily she has a nice facility with a chute which made sorting them easier.

Coral in the chute on the first day we saw her.

Here are the rest of the pictures from June 5th that I've been dying to share with all of you.  There aren't any of Topaz because we picked her on a whim yesterday when we brought them home.

Garnet. The March baby so she was bigger than the others then.

Garnet, Pearl and Jade.

Jade.

Jade.  Doesn't she have the cutest face??

Jade and Pearl.

Garnet.

Garnet and Pearl.  I LOVE Pearl's face!

We were in love with Pearl the moment we set eyes on her.

She is so cute!!!  Coral is her mother.

Garnet.  I love her face markings.  :)

Jade.

Jasper.

Jasper.

Compare those pictures to this one from yesterday...

He grew a LOT in a month!


Now below are the pictures from yesterday.

On the way home in the goat hauler in the back of dad's truck.  Goat pile!!

Dad drove us to the breeder's farm because he'd never been there and wanted to see the place and meet her.  It was fun having him along for the three hour and twenty minute round trip.

When we got home Pearl was the first to stand up and peek out to see what we were doing.  :)

The pen we built is an acre of goat heaven.  It has lots of trees and brush so it's very difficult to get pictures of them, because they are terrified of humans and hide from me.  I will spend lots of time with them and get them tamed down though.  Jasmine was the same way when I got her and I eventually had her walking on a leash and taught her to shake hands.

Coral is very wary and dictates where all the babies go.  
She's going to make it difficult to tame them...

Running away because they saw me.  I thought this was cool even though it's blurry.

Garnet and Coral.

Garnet has opinions hehe.

Garnet and Pearl.  This one shows how much Pearl grew in a month!

Pearl and Garnet a month ago.

Last one is one of my favorites.  Coral and Jade.

I can't wait to turn them into pets hehe.  I am worried that Coral may never tame down since she's grown, but I'll definitely try.  Goats are greedy and the power of food wins over the most stubborn usually.  :)  Well that's our new goat herd!  Don't worry we still have Rebel and Yankee, but they are staying in the horse pasture because I don't want them breeding these girls.  We also caught Jasper and put him in the small pen by the barn so he can get used to the pygmy boys and horses.  He will go out there with them until it's time to breed the does.  Anyway I'll stop rambling. 

2 comments:

  1. Aww cute goats! Hopefully the taming goes quickly, food is always a great motivator haha

    ReplyDelete

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