# JK Herd It All Exhibition-Potential Rare Heritage Breed Dairy Goats & Poultry - Site: https://herditall.net/ ## Endless, Endless Driving - Link: https://herditall.net/blog/endless-endless-driving/ - Published: 2026-10-20T16:48:37-05:00 - Author: Jess Hart # A Million Miles, One Healthy Goat, and a Little IVF 101 Over the past week, we’ve driven from Mishicot, WI, to Naperville, IL (~4 hours), back to Mishicot, over to Madison, WI (~3 hours), back to Mishicot, back to Madison, and back and forth between Mishicot and Naperville pretty much every single day. We’re still exhausted and completely over being in the car, BUT during one of those trips, we finally got some good news! Vani, our abscess → hernia → surgery → suture rejection → infection doeling, has officially been cleared by the vets at UW–Madison! Very unexpectedly, they even gave us the green light for future breeding. We’ll see how she grows and develops over the next year before we decide whether we actually want to put her through that, but after everything she’s been through, it’s really nice to finally have a little good news! So, Why All the Trips to Naperville? After the miracle worker who is Dr. Charles Miller attempted a repair of Jess’ uterus, we decided to try another 1–2 egg retrievals before we officially age out of the process. We already have three euploid (chromosomally normal) embryos and one high-level mosaic embryo frozen from previous retrievals, but at 41 years old, we know our chances of making more are only getting slimmer. We’re hoping to give ourselves the best possible chance of eventually bringing home a baby! For some reason, Facebook’s algorithm has also decided that what we really need to see right now is a steady stream of anti-IVF posts. A lot of the arguments we’ve come across don’t seem to reflect much understanding of how IVF actually works, so we thought we’d share what the process looks like and why we don’t believe it conflicts with our faith. Is IVF “Playing God”? One of the arguments we keep seeing is that IVF is “playing God.” We don’t agree. To us, using IVF to help overcome infertility is no more an attempt to replace God than treating cancer, performing heart surgery, or giving a premature baby medical assistance. We believe God gave us the ability to learn, discover, and develop medicine. IVF works with the same eggs, sperm, chromosomes, and biological processes involved in natural conception. Doctors can use medication to encourage follicles to grow, retrieve eggs, help fertilization occur, and provide an environment for embryos to develop. What they can’t do is guarantee that any of it will actually work. They can’t force an egg to fertilize, an embryo to continue developing, or a pregnancy to survive. Believe us, if doctors had that kind of control, our journey would have looked very different! We believe God is still very much involved in all of those steps, and that using the medical knowledge available to us doesn’t somehow remove Him from the process. Medicine can help overcome some of the obstacles to conception, but there’s still an enormous amount that neither doctors nor patients can control. How IVF Actually Works IVF starts with ovarian stimulation and egg retrieval. For about 1–2 weeks, the woman injects herself with medications every day. In Jess’ case, that meant somewhere around 5–7 shots per day, all in the abdomen. Super fun! Normally, the body recruits a group of follicles but ultimately selects one dominant follicle to mature and ovulate. IVF medications attempt to keep more of those follicles growing at the same time, with the goal of retrieving several mature eggs instead of the single egg that would typically ovulate during a natural cycle. The number that actually responds depends heavily on age, ovarian reserve, general health, and the medication protocol. This time around, Jess started with roughly 11 follicles. There are a ton of different IVF protocols, and this particular one may not have been the best match for her. One follicle became dominant very quickly while the others lagged behind, and that lead follicle either ovulated or popped before retrieval. But eventually, five eggs were retrieved from the remaining follicles. Despite all the medications, monitoring appointments, and adjustments, that’s what her body gave us. It’s a pretty good example of just how much of this process still happens on its own terms! Of those five eggs, only two were mature enough to be fertilized immediately. Dr. Miller’s state-of-the-art lab was able to mature two additional eggs in vitro, and one of those was successfully fertilized as well. So we went from roughly 11 follicles to five retrieved eggs to three fertilized eggs. That’s another thing we think people misunderstand about IVF. Having five eggs retrieved doesn’t mean you have five future babies, or even five embryos that can eventually be transferred. Fertilization is only one step in a fairly long process, and most fertilized eggs stop developing before they reach the blastocyst stage, which takes 4–7 days. Our three are currently growing in the lab, and in about five more days we’ll find out whether any of them made it that far. We could end up with three blastocysts, one, or none. There’s simply no way to know yet, no matter how good the lab is or how much we want them to keep growing. Genetic Testing and the Ethical Questions If we’re lucky enough to get a blastocyst, the next step for us will be PGT-A testing. This is where we think some of the more legitimate ethical questions surrounding IVF come into play, and different countries have different rules about how it’s used. PGT-A stands for preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy. A few cells are biopsied from the part of the embryo that will develop into the placenta, and those cells are tested to estimate whether the embryo has the expected number of chromosomes. Testing can also reveal chromosomal sex, although that’s not why we’re doing it. Chromosomal abnormalities are a major reason pregnancies fail, especially early in development, and they become increasingly common as women age. Many fertilized eggs never implant at all, and others result in miscarriages. PGT-A The post Endless, Endless Driving appeared first on JK Herd It All. ## Our Second Ever Goat Show – and our first Pending Permanent Champion! - Link: https://herditall.net/blog/our-second-ever-goat-show-and-our-first-pending-permanent-champion/ - Published: 2026-09-20T11:49:00-05:00 - Author: Jess Hart In the middle of a storm that turned our 4 hour drive into 7 hours, we made it to our second ever goat show, Bluff Country Dairy Goat Show in Caledonia, MN. None of our girls were really feeling it, but they did their best! On Saturday, Kirlia especially was unhappy and didn’t fill very much. But Windscape JB Last Call was Grand and BOB under Jay Rudolph! On Sunday …drumroll please… the newly CH (pending) Ober-Boerd Kirlia was both Grand and BOB under Betty Henning and Grand under Todd Biddle! Our friend Taylor beat us out 2/3 times this weekend with the gorgeous Champion Challenge doe who has been winning all over the Midwest this year. Go check out her herd! And once again, we massively appreciated everyone’s willingness to help and give us advice, especially most of the judges. We’re slowly learning how this whole showing thing works! The post Our Second Ever Goat Show – and our first Pending Permanent Champion! appeared first on JK Herd It All. ## The All Clear - Link: https://herditall.net/blog/the-all-clear/ - Published: 2026-09-14T11:44:00-05:00 - Author: Jess Hart The good news: We made it through rabies quarantine, and both feral kittens are officially neutered and ear-tipped for TNR! The bad news: During quarantine, Jess the Kitty Whisperer struck again – the bitey kitten we thought was hopeless is now the sweetest. But we can’t keep them! Right? …we’ll probably keep them! The post The All Clear appeared first on JK Herd It All. ## Rabies Watch - Link: https://herditall.net/blog/rabies-watch/ - Published: 2026-09-03T11:39:00-05:00 - Author: Jess Hart In today’s update to our endless adventures, because we aren’t already stressed to the max, we acquired two feral kittens today. Jess ran outside in the middle of a downpour to grab a package when she saw an orange flash bolt away from the porch. It was a tiny soaked kitten! She tried to coax him to her, but a giant crack of thunder sent him running again. While she was looking for him, she heard a tiny mew from under our car. A second kitten! Jess couldn’t find the runner, but was able to lure the car kitten somewhat close with a can of cat food. Not close enough to catch, unfortunately. So we set a couple traps and left them alone for a bit. The car kitten was caught within a few minutes. Since we already had a vet appointment today for Rue, they let us bring him along. They estimated he’s about 6 weeks old, dewormed him, and said he’s terrified but young enough that we should try to socialize him. We got him settled at home and went back to check the other trap. His brother was inside chowing down, but he was too light to trigger the door. Jess raced over and snapped the trap shut – but the little guy is so tiny that he was able to squeeze through the gap! Jess grabbed him before he could bolt, which in retrospect, might not have been the best idea – he chomped down and clawed her trying to get away. Ken the valiant hero grabbed him and ended up bitten straight through his fingernail, but somehow managed to hang on long enough to get him inside into the crate with his brother. Soooo then we got to spend our evening at urgent care getting antibiotics. Because he’s an unvaccinated feral kitten, we also had to file a police report and now Little Psycho gets a 10-day, 3-vet-visit rabies quarantine. The good news is both boys are safe, warm, fed, and together. The bad news is we absolutely cannot keep them. We already have 6 cats, 3 of which are super seniors, and we are way beyond maxed out. So… anyone local want a pair of tiny orange boys? They’ll need to finish quarantine first, and we’ll work on socializing them in the meantime. One is terrified but we can tell he’ll be sweet. Ken says that the other is very attached to people, basically Velcro! The post Rabies Watch appeared first on JK Herd It All. ## Can We Please Have One Boring Week? - Link: https://herditall.net/blog/can-we-please-have-one-boring-week/ - Published: 2026-07-09T22:00:00-05:00 - Author: Jess Hart People often ask what it’s like to run a small homestead. The answer? It’s a little bit like playing veterinary whack-a-mole. Just when you think you’ve solved one problem, three more appear. This week has definitely been one of those weeks. Buckling #1: Corneal Injury One of our bucklings managed to scratch his cornea. We started treating it with Terramycin right away, but after a couple of days it just wasn’t improving the way we’d hoped. We sent photos to our veterinarian, who had us pick up a stronger ophthalmic ointment. Thankfully, it seems to be helping, and his eye has already started looking much less angry. It’s still a little early to know exactly how much vision he’ll have long-term. We think there’s a decent chance he’ll lose some vision in that eye, but we’re optimistic that he’ll at least get to keep the eye itself. Of course… he’s already spoken for and isn’t scheduled to leave until October. So now our mission is simply to keep him from finding yet another creative way to injure himself for the next few months. Buckling #2: A Lesson Learned Another buckling may turn out to be our first cryptorchid. We always check anatomy before kids leave, but somehow we missed that only one testicle had descended before he went to his new home as a registered breeding buck. There’s still a non-zero chance the second one will drop over the next few weeks, but it’s looking increasingly likely that he’s cryptorchid. We asked his new owner to send us an update when he’s around eight weeks old. If he still only has one descended testicle at that point, we’ll either provide a replacement buckling or refund his purchase. It’s disappointing for everyone involved, but we stand behind the animals we sell – and we’ll definitely be checking male anatomy more thoroughly from now on! A Very Lopsided Precocious Udder One of our yearlings suddenly developed a dramatically uneven precocious udder. While uneven development can happen, the sudden change has us watching closely for mastitis. Hopefully it’s nothing more than hormones doing strange hormone things. Foxtail Strikes Again One of our does developed a small abscess outside her mouth. Any time we hear the word “abscess,” our minds immediately jump to the worst-case scenarios, so it definitely got our attention. After finding foxtail mixed into one of our hay batches, we’re pretty confident that’s the culprit. Those little seed heads may look harmless, but they can work their way into soft tissue and cause surprisingly painful problems. Broody Chickens Making Terrible Decisions As if the goats weren’t keeping us busy enough, we also had two completely unrelated groups of broody hens decide that eating their own chicks as they hatched was somehow the right parenting strategy. Sometimes chickens really make you question their life choices. Our Hernia Girl Isn’t Done Yet The biggest ongoing headache has been our little doeling recovering from her umbilical hernia surgery. She’s bright, happy, bouncing around, eating normally, and acting like nothing is wrong. Unfortunately, her body has decided it doesn’t particularly like some of the internal sutures. At least two of the internal stitches have started working their way to the surface, creating small drainage tracts with… let’s just say a lot of pus. Thankfully, the drainage is actually a good sign that the material is finding its way out instead of staying trapped under the skin. It’s definitely not pleasant to deal with, but the hernia repair itself still appears to be holding, and we’re continuing to work closely with our veterinarian while everything heals. Just Another Week on the Homestead So, to recap, this week has included: A scratched cornea. A possible cryptorchid buckling. A suspicious precocious udder. A foxtail-related mouth abscess. Cannibalistic broody hens. Rejected internal sutures after hernia surgery. People see the cute baby goat photos and the gorgeous sunsets. They don’t always see the constant problem-solving, late-night health checks, vet visits, medications, and moments where you’re researching things you never expected to know. We wouldn’t trade this life for anything… but if the universe wants to give us just one boring week – and maybe even a vacation – we certainly wouldn’t complain! The post Can We Please Have One Boring Week? appeared first on JK Herd It All.