This was our biggest kidding season ever, and we have now learned our limits! We’ve had trouble keeping up with the birds again this year, so we’re downsizing a bunch in both areas.
The Goats
2025 Total Kids Born: 16 Bucks, 20 Does!
Here’s a recap, mostly for us to reference later:
2/18 Diana: 6.95lb T1 boy big stripe, 7.5lb T2 boy thin stripe, 6.45lb T3 girl. These kids all came out vigorous and demanding food! Poor Diana has had a rough time putting weight back on – we had no idea there were triplets in her tiny frame, or we would have kept her on a more nutritious feed during pregnancy! We sold the bigger guy to a nice family and retained the other buck and the doeling for eval. They’re both available now, just due to the sheer number of kids we ended up with! Diana might be for sale after we finish her milk test in December-ish. We adore her, but she’s very … intense with kidding. All season, she kept neurotically going after the other girls’ placentas, trying to clean them up before they had even finished passing.
2/19 Vera: 5.5lb T4 boy, 5.8lb T5 girl. We KNEW that Vera was going to kid tonight, while temps were -19F. We woke up every half hour to check on her, but still missed it – we woke up after one alarm to see a doeling next to Vera. When we ran outside, we found a literally frozen solid buckling far away from them and the heat lamp. After rushing to warm him up, he did survive! He lost the tip of his tail and both kids lost their eartips, but both ended up healthy and vigorous! Unfortunately, Vera freshened with a super soft udder, but also a partial extra orifice on one teat, so we had to send her and her kids to pet homes. Vera went to a really nice family who promised to eat her future kids. Her son went off to a gal who owns a petting zoo. The doeling’s first home turned out to be a flipper, as mentioned in our last blog post, but things worked out in the end – she joined a super nice family as a pet.
2/22 Honey: blonde boy 5.1lb T6, chocolate boy 3.45lb T7, chocolate girl 3.9lb T8. We had no idea that Honey was so close to kidding! I came out of the parlor after milking and heard crying in the doe barn, and ran out to find 2 kids on the ground and the last 1 coming out. The chocolate boy went to live with Vera and the blonde boy went to a super nice pet home. Honey’s doeling is probably going to a nice family in Iowa. Honey is also available! We love her, but she’s getting up there in age and her production is closer to ND in quantity. She has very, very nice conformation, though, and would be great for someone trying to improve their herd!
2/22 Candy: polled brown moonspotted boy 6.8lb T9, polled black boy 5.8lb T10, moonspotted black girl 6.75lb T11. Candy had a little bit of trouble getting the brown boy’s big head out, but we got there! Her others slid right out afterwards. The black boy went to a great pet home with Honey’s blonde son. We were going to sell her brown son, but we ended up selling Candy. We didn’t want to – she’s definitely one we regret already – but we desperately needed hay money, and someone asked about her specifically. She had a slow start with milk production over the years, but she blossomed this year as a 4F – she’s now producing over a gallon of milk, and her previously smooth, flat but kinda short foreudder finally extended beautifully! After seeing how gorgeous she was this year, we retained her son and daughter. With extra milkiness and hopefully better teat placement from Hot Shot, these kids have the potential to be amazing!
2/24 Raindrop: blaze blue-eyed moonspotted boy 6.8lb T12, super cute blue eyed belted boy 6.05lb T13, tiny moonspotted girl 4.2lb T14 who had to be pushed aside to get boy out. These kids were all born with the thickest umbilical cords we had ever seen! They took forever to try, with weeks of multiple-times-per-day spraying, and we were terrified of potential infection the whole time. The blaze boy went to a nice pet home, the belted guy went to another, and we were torn between keeping or retaining the doeling when fate took that decision from us – she’s the one we wrote about losing in a previous blog post.
2/27 Gazelle: buck small white spot on head 8.2lb T15, doe 6.25lb T16. We’ve had really good luck getting kids to accept a bottle, but that boy was a freaking struggle at first! We did finally get there, though. He went to a pet home with Diana’s son. We mentioned the doeling in a previous post – she was sick with Raindrop’s daughter, but has recovered well. We were going to sell her as a pet until we determined whether she inherited Gazelle’s flaky skin, but have decided to retain her now that she cost us $2500. We found a great home for Gazelle, though!
2/27 Vivi: buck head first 7.25lb T17. A couple minutes after helping Gazelle kid, Ken went to check on the other girls and found Vivi with her son’s head hanging out, with no legs in sight. That is a very dangerous presentation – a kid can very easily end up with oxygen depravation as they’re being squeezed at the throat. We have no idea how long they were like that, but we rushed to help! I had to reach in and fish out a leg & pull the boy out. Unfortunately, he was very weak and needed to be tubed at every feeding. During one feeding, we realized that there was still undigested milk in his stomach, which was a very bad sign. The poor guy ended up passing sometime early in the morning on 3/1. Vivi is officially retired now and will be available with Rowena after we try to help her earn her milk star.
3/18 Riesling: giant girl 10.2lb T18. This massive girl definitely needed help coming out, but we got there! She’s a million percent retained – our first Guernsey-Ober, Goober!
3/18 Lady: girl T19 5.8lb and boy T20 6.8lb. These kids are exactly what we were hoping out of the pairing – level and more wide and just gorgeous! The doeling is retained and the buckling we want to retain, but he’s tentatively available.
3/24 Pickles: buckskin girl 5.6lbs T21, moonspotted buckskin girl 5.9lbs T22, dark moonspotted girl 6.5lbs T23. Ken is officially not allowed to state genders – he said that the first girl was a buckling haha! She did have a huge head, and that does usually indicate it’s a boy, but not this time! She went to a nice home with Rowena’s spotty daughter and the moonspotted buckskin went to live with Gazelle. The dark girl is tentatively retained! We might sell Pickles – we keep going back and forth. We love her, but also have way too many & she’s really only close friends with ones we’re definitely selling.
3/24 Dolly: lookalike black & tan boy 7.40lbs T24 & chonky mostly-white boy 7.65lbs T25. Dolly’s first son came out perfectly, but the second was coming out fist pumping, with one leg back. We had to help pull him out, but we made it! The black & tan buckling went to a pet home with Raindrop’s spot-free son and the mostly-white boy is available.
3/31 Sharp: bigger lighter girl T26 7.6lbs, smaller darker girl T27 7.55lbs. These girls are gorgeous and we had a hard time deciding which to keep! We’re leaning towards the bigger girl because she has a little bit more of the width we’re looking for, but the smaller girl is a little bit more friendly. Or we can just keep both haha!
4/1 Avalon: adorable polled moonspotted doeling T28 5.4lbs. Avalon kidded out in gen pop while we were at the store! We had a feeling she was close, but not THAT close! When we got home, Vivi had stolen the baby and cleaned her off and was keeping everyone away from her. Avalon freshened with a teeny udder, but it’s slowly expanding and she has the nicest orifices in our whole herd! She’s available to a new home with Nia – she’s so small that we’re afraid to use any bucks except Smoothie on her.
4/2 Rowena: roaned moonspotted blue-eyed boy T29 9.5lbs, 2 hours later heavily moonspotted girl born in sac T30 8.05lbs, then roaned blue eyed girl T31 8.0lb. Rowena is a weird kidder – she stands, just barely flexing, and not making a sound! We caught her as the buckling was being born. After he came out, she was still acting a bit off, so we bumped her and kinda felt something – she’s so huge and deep that it’s hard to tell for sure, though! There was a small placenta-looking bubble, too. An hour later, she was still not quite right, so I reached in and still felt nothing. An hour after that, while I was milking, I checked the camera to see a doeling being born, still in the sac! Ken ran out to assist while I finished with the milkers I had on the stand, and while he was drying off the first doeling, another slid out. The boy went to a great pet home. We were going to retain the spotted doeling, but ended up letting a pet buyer claim her. Unfortunately, a few days later, she came down with pneumonia and coccidiosis. We thought she had recovered, but yesterday, received the news that she had bloated up and passed away. The roaned doeling is listed as a pet, and Rowena and Vivi will be available together after we try to get Vivi her milk star.
4/17 Kirlia: boy T32, girl T33. Kirlia kidded right before we had to make the 5-ish hour trip to/from UW Madison, so we let her keep her kids for a couple days and didn’t get a weight on them. But they’re level and strong and gorgeous and retained! The boy will be a backup to his sire, Sonny.
4/26 Petunia: black blue-eyed polled girl T34, black blue-eyed polled moonspotted girl T35. Petunia is another case where she kidded when we didn’t think she was ready – we were out at the store! I think our scale is going crazy because it keeps jumping the displayed weights around too much, so I’m not even going to write them in. But they’re both gorgeous and both available.
5/18 Lasty: giant wattled girl T36. There’s no possible way that this chonker could have come out without help and massive amounts of lube! She’s super level and wide, and is retained for now. Our scale is still acting up, but I think she’s close to 11lbs.
And that’s it for the goats!
The Birds
In bird news, we said goodbye to the last of our Wheaten Ameraucanas this weekend. We loved this variety, but we haven’t had time to build their breeding coops, so we let them go to an awesome breeder/friend in Milwaukee.
Our Welsh Harlequin ducks will be leaving for new homes this week, too. We LOVE them and how happy and sweet they are, plus their enormous amount of eggs, but they’re SO dirty and they just lose us money. They eat a ton, people here prefer chicken eggs to eat, we can’t even give away male ducklings, we can’t ship live birds with how unreliable USPS has become, and very few people in this area are willing to pay what our exhibition-potential females are worth. It’s an issue we’ve come across a lot in our area – people here want quantity over quality and prefer mill-bred pet-quality animals over proven, health-tested ones. Which is totally fine and completely understandable, but not our market and doesn’t match our goals for our animals. So we’re letting them go until either USPS gets their act together or we can move!
Our last pair of Welsummers ARE fertile, but not very. Out of 4 dozen eggs, one chick has hatched so far. At least it’s a pullet! We would sell them, but our rooster has been through a lot and has vigorously fought for life through it all. New buyers might not respect that, so we’re keeping them until he passes away.
Our Partridge Chanteclers are better this year than last, but their fertility still isn’t great. One of our best-laying hens has some kind of cancer or infection that we’re trying to help her through, so we’ve got limited eggs. We’re hopefully bringing in some new blood later this summer or fall to try to reduce inbreeding a bit.
Our Svart Honas escaped their first breeding pen, which caused a delay, but we caught them all and cleared them out. Our half-Ameraucana/half-Svart is not laying blue eggs like we thought she was, so that was a fun thing we figured out at hatching haha!
Our Self-Blue/Black Split Ameraucana pens aren’t laying super well, but fertility looks good. We’re thinking about selling them off, but keep going back and forth.
Our Buff Chanteclers keep going broody, as always. We’re probably going to list them again – even though we think they’re prettier than the Partridge, not many people want them!
Our Buckeyes are doing amazingly, as always!
And lastly, we took Pilgrim eggs to incubate this year after the hens failed to hatch any last year. We’re getting about a 1/3 hatch rate, which isn’t the greatest, but is pretty in line with the breed! We do now suspect that we have the notorious spotting gene in some flock members, but our numbers are so low that we’re just going to have to slowly phase it out.
