We were very excited to find our Welsummers – they come from an autosexing line and we are working to strengthen that feature. A Dutch breed, they are friendly and great foragers. They lay gorgeous speckled dark brown eggs – almost as dark as our Marans! We breed more for SOP than egg color with this line because we want to keep our beloved autosexing trait. It’s so convenient! See more photos and details about our Welsummers at this link.
Because they’re autosexing, we offer sexed Welsummer chicks. Males are generally lighter with less refined chipmunk stripes & eyeliner. Females are darker with stronger eyeliner and a stripe that runs from their foreheads to their backs. Since even autosexing breeds can be guessed wrong 10-20% of the time, we cannot guarantee gender accuracy and are unable to take back the animal if we’re wrong. Welsummers especially can be a little tricky to determine.
$5.00 – $170.00
No returns of any kind will be accepted.
All products are ungraded & uninspected, and we are not liable for damages or held responsible for their safety. We do not assume liability for adverse reactions to foods consumed, or items one may come into contact with while visiting our farm.
Our store offers products that contain honey, fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, milk, eggs, and wheat. While we take steps to minimize the risk of cross-contamination, we cannot guarantee that any of our products are safe to consume for people with honey, fruit, vegetable, tree nut, milk, egg, wheat, or any other allergies or sensitivities.
Our store offers canned goods that have been processed according to USDA food safety guidelines, but we cannot guarantee that contamination has not occurred. Consume at your own risk.
First and foremost, ALL SALES FINAL - no refunds or returns of any kind will be accepted. We stand by our offerings and want buyers to be happy, but as soon as animals or products leave our hands, whatever happens to them is out of our control. There are too many risks involved with accepting returns that might have been mistreated, infected, or tampered with once off our property.
Common question: why do hatching eggs cost more than ones for eating? We test fertility weekly and sometimes even daily, which involves opening and destroying multiple eggs to check for rings. We also take the time to turn them daily to prevent the embryos from sticking to the sides, and always provide the freshest ones available for hatching. For table eggs, we do the opposite - we sell them from oldest to newest and don't pay attention to fertility or which breed laid which egg.
We are cleared to send to almost every US state. Please check this link to see if there are special regulations in your state. We would provide a VS Form 9-3 and are AI Clean.
We ship hatching eggs Monday-Tuesday after payment is received. If we see that the weather is too hot/cold or if we notice issues with hens or their fertility, we might delay shipment in order to help you get the best possible hatch rate.
Please note that we cannot guarantee hatchability - shipped eggs have a 0%-100% hatch rate, based on how they're handled in transit. Even eggs driven a few minutes in our/your car might end up being jostled too much. If transported eggs don't hatch, it does NOT mean they're not fertile or are old - it just means that they were overly stressed during travel. Transporting eggs is a gamble, which is part of why they're so much cheaper than live birds.
Depending on packaging availability and size/amount of eggs, we either use foam shippers or individually wrap each egg in bubble wrap surrounded by wood shavings. If you have a preference of shipping method, please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate.
Shipping charges are dependent on USPS prices and the cost of supplies. Right now, it looks like it will be around $25-35 for packaging & a Priority box, which comfortably fits 1-2 dozen chicken eggs. Priority Express would be about $75-100. We do not bother with fragile stickers or other labels because USPS just ignores them or purposely treats them worse.
First and foremost, ALL SALES FINAL - no refunds or returns of any kind will be accepted. We stand by our offerings and want buyers to be happy, but as soon as animals or products leave our hands, whatever happens to them is out of our control. There are too many risks involved with accepting returns that might have been mistreated, infected, or tampered with once off our property.
Due to the amount of cancellations after people have asked us to hatch or hold birds for them, a non-refundable deposit is required to reserve or hold any bird that has hatched or is about to hatch. Deposits are non-refundable for any reason UNLESS enough of your chosen breed(s) have failed to hatch, or your chosen bird(s) have passed away here in our care, or we notice something wrong with the bird(s). If that is the case, we will provide the option to either refund the missing count, substitute with a different bird of the same value, or hold your deposit for the next hatch. Each hatch takes 21-35 days, depending on species.
Our birds are cleared to transport to almost every US state. Please check this link to see if there are special regulations in your state. We would provide a VS Form 9-3 and are AI Clean.
We tried shipping live birds through USPS again in 2024, but it did not go well - they couldn't even deliver one state over via Priority within 4 days. We had to pay Express to get 3 Day delivery from WI to MI, and our local USPS hub was pretty aggressive in trying to convince us not to ship live birds. So from now on, we're going back to local meetups, livestock transport arranged by the customer, OR SpeeDee Delivery for deliveries in the Midwest.
Buyer is responsible for arranging transportation of all live animals. A $1 per day boarding fee will apply if a purchased animal is not picked up at the arranged-upon time. We are willing to meet within a half hour of Mishicot, Wisconsin, for free. We'd be happy to make further deliveries with a delivery charge of $1 per mile for the round trip. That is about the price of gas for our truck. We've also worked with a few livestock transporters. Click here for our favorites. They are not cheap, but take excellent care of the critters in their care.
We personally do not vaccinate our birds, but we do offer the optional Marek's vaccine to buyers of chicks. We do not administer it by default and our parent stock are not vaccinated. It costs an additional $75 per hatch (the vial is around $35, shipping to us is around $35, and injection supplies are around $5). If we receive multiple orders for vaccinated chicks, we try to group those hatches together and spread the cost between buyers, meaning that we would be able to partially refund the vaccine cost.
Our sponsors and advisors with decades of experience VERY strongly encourage the Marek's vaccine because the disease is absolutely devastating and basically unavoidable, especially if birds regularly travel to shows or if owners attend sale barns or swap meets.
There are a couple downsides to the Marek's vaccine which have caused us to decline using it in our flocks. One is that the specific vaccine we have access to has been around since the 70s and is only about 60% effective against some strains of the disease. The second issue is the way ALL current Marek's vaccines work - they are all "leaky," which means that they do not prevent a chicken from being infected with the disease; they only keep tumor formation and other symptoms from popping up. So if Marek's does invade a person's vaccinated flock, they might never know about it and become super spreaders, because the vaccine only prevents symptoms, not the actual disease itself. That's the main reason we don't use it - we want to make sure our birds don't have any hidden illnesses that could be passed on to our customers.
We do have access to a few other vaccines and are willing to administer them upon request. Buyer would need to pay the full nonrefundable balance up front. These include Mycoplasma Gallisepticum, Fowl Pox, Coccidiosis, Newcastle, Salmonella, and Coryza. Some of these are not safe to use around turkeys, though, so please research them before purchase.
Since even day-old chicks of autosexing breeds can be guessed wrong 10-20% of the time and we definitely aren't brave enough to vent sex because it kills about 10% of babies even when performed by trained experts, we cannot guarantee gender accuracy and are unable to refund, replace, or take back the animal if we're wrong. Some (we’re looking at you, Ameraucanas) might take a few months to confirm, and one (Tufted Romans) we still can't figure out without DNA sexing or watching an egg actually leave their body.
If you end up with an unwanted male and don't want to process him yourselves, we recommend contacting any Amish, Hispanic, or Asian communities that might be near you, or even possibly large reptile or raptor owners or rescues. There are a lot of rooster rescues out there who will let them live out their days, as well.
Due to the nature of our offerings, we cannot guarantee health or viability of any animals once they leave our property, and all sales are final. We are part of the National Poultry Improvement Plan and annually test for Pullorum-Typhoid and Avian Influenza. In order to maintain our NPIP status and for the biosecurity of our flocks, we do not allow visits to our poultry areas or allow purchasers to select birds from our brooders, but we will gladly take photos/videos upon request. We maintain mostly closed flocks, with the exception of occasional new birds brought in from other NPIP farms to minimize inbreeding. These are strictly quarantined for 1-2 months after purchase.
We do not have access to an avian vet who can draw blood for us, so we do not regularly test for other diseases unless a bird has died of unexplained causes. If we suspect an illness, we send samples to the University of Wisconsin's accredited lab for testing. We last submitted a bird October 2022. She came back clear of AI and the necropsy showed egg yolk peritonitis from e-coli and a small amount of coccidia. In March 2022, another bird was submitted and cleared of AI and Mycoplasma. She had bronchitis due to staph. We would be happy to provide copies of the reports.
All of our animals are from the very best lines we could find, with many exhibition winners in their gene pool, and we do our best to adhere to the Standard of Perfection laid out by the American Poultry Association and/or specific breed clubs. This does NOT guarantee that our animals or any of their offspring will be show quality or win awards. About 1 in 100 birds that hatch for even elite Master Breeders would be considered exhibition quality. That's just how the lottery of genetics works. In order to be fully transparent, we have listed flaws that we've noticed and are working towards correcting in the pages for each breed we raise.
We cannot guarantee that your birds will lay a certain color. There is a spectrum of approved colors for each breed, and each bird lays a slightly different egg. Color, shape, and size vary through each season and even from day to day.
First and foremost, ALL SALES FINAL - no refunds or returns of any kind will be accepted. We stand by our offerings and want buyers to be happy, but as soon as animals or products leave our hands, whatever happens to them is out of our control. There are too many risks involved with accepting returns that might have been mistreated, infected, or tampered with once off our property. However, we do make one exception also noted in our Health & Viability Disclaimer below: if a goat is found to have a congenital defect that prevents use in breeding; such as being intersex or having extra orifices, we will offer to refund the difference between pet & breeding price OR provide a replacement.
We reserve the right of first refusal - if you have bought one of our goats and plan to sell them, we request dibs on the right to buy them back. We can only do this if the goat has remained in quarantine and/or the buyer's herd is tested free of CAE, CL, and Johne's. We won't always be able to do it depending where we are in life and how full our herd is, but we ask for the opportunity.
We reserve the right to cancel a sale at any time, for any reason, at our discretion. Any deposits will be refunded in full if we choose to cancel a sale.
We reserve the right to collect up to 30 straws from any intact buck that we sell, at any time during his life, for the cost of collection.
Priority for sales is given to Performance Herds. This means that if a Performance Herd expresses interest in a goat that other people have also asked us about, they will get dibs UNLESS that goat has already been reserved with a deposit. Order of priority is: us > paid reservations > performance herds > waitlist > general public.
In addition, for each registered JKHerdItAll or JKShrunkTheKids goat born 2024-2026, we are offering to pay the original buyer $50 for the first awarded milk star, linear appraisal, and/or sanctioned show award that the goat receives in the original buyer’s care; for a possible total of $150 per Oberhasli or Guernsey, or $100 per Mini Nubian (Mini Nubians unfortunately aren’t eligible for Linear Appraisal).
At pick-up, we request cash, PayPal Friends & Family, Venmo Friends & Family, or Zelle for the balance due. Balances due must be paid in full before the animal leaves our property. No checks will be accepted. We ask for Friends & Family after hearing horror stories of customers using the Purchase Protection option and then getting PayPal & Venmo to refund them after they have already taken the animal. We can't afford that.
If you want to be notified when/if a goat is available, ask us about our free waitlist. We will contact people on that list one by one as animals become available. If you're a Performance Herd, let us know and we'll bump you to the top of the list.
If you want to purchase a goat that isn't ready to leave yet or that you're not ready to pick up, ask us about placing a $100 deposit to reserve the goat. This holds the animal until they or you are ready, and we will stop advertising that animal. Must be 18 years or older to place a deposit.
A deposit is NOT required to purchase an animal from us. If you want to wait and pay in full, that is completely acceptable in this day & age of scammers - please just note that we will keep advertising the animal and it is first come, first serve without a deposit.
Deposits are non-refundable for any reason UNLESS we are unable to meet the specifications listed when that deposit was made. If we are unable to meet the specs, at your request, we can either refund your deposit, apply it to a different animal, or hold it for the next year.
If an animal meeting your specs is available and you decide that you do not want that one for any reason, your deposit is forfeited. If you have paid a deposit on a kid and have not picked them up by 10 weeks of age or arranged a pick-up date with us, your deposit is forfeited and we will resume advertising of that kid.
Cash, PayPal Friends & Family, Venmo Friends & Family, and Zelle are our preferred method of payment for deposits, but we also accept orders on our site. Sorry, no checks. We ask for Friends & Family after hearing horror stories of customers using the Purchase Protection option and then getting PayPal & Venmo to refund them after they have already taken the animal. We can't afford that.
The buyer is responsible for pick-up/transportation. If any vet exams or certificates are required to cross state lines, the buyer will pay for those before they take place.
If a reserved goat kid is not picked up by 10 weeks of age, a $3/day boarding fee will apply. If not picked up by an agreed-upon date, the buyer will forfeit any deposit and the animal will be the sole property of JK Herd It All to retain or sell, unless other arrangements are made.
We are happy to work with transporters coordinated by the buyer. Please be careful who you trust - there are a lot of fake or shady ones out there. View recommended transport options here.
Please remember that as soon as an animal or product leave our hands, whatever happens to them is out of our control and we cannot be held liable for them. There are too many risks involved with accepting returns that might have been mistreated, infected, or tampered with once off our property.
All of our goats have originated from clean-tested herds and have themselves tested free while on our farm of the Big 3 Diseases (CAE, CL, and Johne's), but because we brought in a few new herd members recently, all kids intended for sale will be bottle fed and kept on a separate pasture for the next few years. This helps to prevent the spread of undiagnosed disease.
If you would prefer a dam-raised kid, we would be happy to recommend some of our friends!
If kept on a bottle, most kids are ready to head to their new home by 4-5 weeks. If not picked up by 10 weeks, a $3/day boarding fee will apply.
All kids will be disbudded unless buyer pays full price within 5 days of birth - there is a very short window to safely disbud, and horned dairy goats are unfortunately difficult to find homes for.
Please note that disbudding can result in scurs, especially in bucks. We have it done by a vet with decades of goat experience, but it still happens sometimes. Many of our goats brought in from top herds around the country have ended up with scurs, too. It's just a thing to live with.
All kids will receive ear tattoos, and we also offer $15 tail web microchips upon request.
We will send in DNA orders to ADGA for buck kids intended for registration for free. For other registries, we can do it if buyer pays cost. It's something like $35 in 2024.
For kids intended for registration, we offer to submit online ADGA, MDGA, and/or BGS registration applications & transfers for free if the system isn't broken and lets us. We would need the buyer's full name, registry ID, phone number, email, and address to complete the transfer. If a buyer prefers to submit paper applications themselves, we can provide those instead. MDGA kids can be registered with TMGR by their new owners, by submitting an application along with a copy of the MDGA certificate.
Wethers and Pet Only goats will be sold without registry papers or applications.
We are dedicated to maintaining our herds and land as naturally as possible, but have come to terms with the fact that Wisconsin is not a natural environment for goats, and they sometimes need help thriving here.
After struggling with both clostridium and pneumonia in 2023 and then pneumonia and suspected clostridium again in 2024, we have decided to vaccinate our goats for both. We feel that an annual shot and squirt up the nose are a lot less detrimental than both of these very common infections and weeks of painful, often ineffective treatments.
We vaccinate our keepers with Cavalry 9 for clostridium/tetanus and Nasalgen 3 PMH IN for pneumonia.
We realize that this is a very personal choice, so we only vaccinate our keepers and not goats that we've listed for sale, unless requested. Kids will inherit some immunity from their dams and will be able to be vaccinated upon arrival at your farm. If you would like us to vaccinate a kid, we would be more than happy to do it for you, but only upon request.
Buyer has the option at the time of pick up to refuse the animal if they feel that the animal is not healthy. We cannot warrant the health status of an animal after it leaves our property. All sales are final. Taking an animal off our property implies that you have read and agreed to the sales agreement and are satisfied with the condition of the animal.
Stress can be rough on them and they can go downhill quickly. Something like shipping fever can infect and kill a kid within a few hours. Therefore, unfortunately, we can offer no warranties or guarantees on the health & viability of an animal. However, we do make one exception: if an animal sold as registered breeding stock is found by a licensed veterinarian to have a genetic condition preventing use in breeding, we will refund or replace that animal. Cosmetic conditions that might negatively affect the quality of the animals or their offspring do not apply; only conditions that prevent successful mating and raising of kids; such as hermaphroditism, freemartinism, or extra teats or orifices that we might have missed. We always check, but it can be hard to tell when they're kids!
Our goat herd is tested annually for CAE, CL, and Johne's. If any other tests are requested, we are happy to administer them if the purchaser pays.
As a parasite preventative, we treat our goats holistically with herbal products from Fir Meadows, Land of Havillah, BiteMe Treats, and VermOust whenever possible. We also use Bioworma, which helps to kill worms on the pasture. We run fecals on our whole herd three times per year, and more for individuals as needed. If herbal preventatives don't seem to be working on an individual goat, we will call our vet and use Western medicine.
Most healthy goats on pasture are able to handle small parasite loads, and some studies actually show that having parasites in low numbers keeps the immune system functioning well. But when a goat is stressed, those parasites can grow out of control. We highly, highly recommend running a fecal a week or two after picking up a new goat & treating if there is a heavy parasite load.
If we have sold a bred doe, we cannot guarantee that she will settle or will carry live, healthy kids to term. Goats don't handle stress well, and moving is stressful.
If we have sold a doe in milk, we cannot guarantee that she will stay in milk after she moves or that her quantity will remain the same. Again, goats + stress = unpredictable outcomes. Different management styles result in different production, too.
All of our animals are from the very best lines we could find, with many milk award and exhibition winners in their gene pool. This does NOT guarantee that our animals or any of their offspring will be show quality or win awards, or have amazing milk production or udders. That's just how the lottery of genetics works. In order to be fully transparent, we have listed flaws that we've noticed and are working towards correcting in each of our animals.Also, each farm is different and will be able to get different production levels out of an individual goat. What our goats produce here at our farm might not be what they produce at another. We cannot guarantee certain production amounts, even though we have data showing our girls' milk here.
We had our first Linear Appraisal yesterday, and it was super informative! We haven`t taken decent pics of the girls after we clipped them because it`s been raining pretty much 24/7 for the past two weeks, but we`ll hopefully get a few soon - in the meantime, here`s Kirlia with some yearlings trying to take down our last semi-healthy ash tree😅
It`s the first time we`ve brought our girls anywhere and showed us that we’re on the right track - most of our preferences were spot-on with our does’ scores. They`re all still young and developing, and we can`t wait to see how they grow over the next couple years! We’re so honored to be working with these ladies as our starting point & hope to make their aaamazing breeders proud as we integrate them into our own lines 💜
Oberhasli:
Ober-Boerd Diana of the Amazon (3 yr old 2F) GVVG 85
Autumn Acres RT Riesling *M (3 yr old 2F) GVVG 84
Windscape JB Last Call (2 yr old FF at 1 month fresh) VVVG 85
Ober-Boerd Kirlia (2 yr old FF at 2 months fresh) VVGG 84
Heaven’s Hollow Sharp (2 yr old FF at 2 months fresh) GAAA 80
Guernsey-Type Experimental:
Hillaire Farm Tipperary Tulla (2 yr old FF at 3 months fresh) GGVG 82
#goats #dairygoats #linearappraisal #performanceherd #adga #oberhasligoats #guernseygoats
Jun 26
Sheila says that she’s over this hot, muggy summer business and is ready for winter to come back 🥵
#hot #toohot #goats #hairgoat #guernseygoats #rarebreeds
Jun 22
As promised, here’s the bane of nearly every goat breeder’s existence: a coccidia oocyst!
Contrary to popular belief, coccidia ≠ cocci - coccidia are protozoan parasites and cocci are spherical-shaped bacteria, like strep or staph.
Coccidia are scary because they can easily overwhelm and destroy the intestinal linings of their hosts, causing coccidiosis. Most adults eventually develop immunity, but kids can be hit super hard, and many are permanently stunted - if they survive.
The guy this sample came from is an adult, but his count is borderline & we’re keeping a close eye on him because we’re afraid he might have cancer, so we’ll be treating him!
#goats #parasites #parasiteprevention #parasitemanagement #coccidia #coccidiosis #fecalfloat #farmlife #herdhealth #goathealth
Jun 21
RIP our best bud, the chillest rooster ever!
He never caused any trouble and loved to just sit in his chair overlooking our orchard, while the growouts scratched around him.
This will hurt our already slow Partridge Chantecler order fulfillment a bit, but we’ve got a few younger guys who can eventually step in!
#chickens #rarebreedchickens #heritagebreeds #rarebreedpoultry #chanteclerchickens #partridgechantecler #partridgechanteclerchickens
Jun 20
Sorry these are a little blurry, my phone camera didn’t want to cooperate!
This right here is a sign of the enemy - a strongyle worm egg in a goat fecal sample. We wouldn’t know which species it is without hatching it, but they can all be dangerous. Strongyles are one of the top causes of death in goats, so it’s super important to stay on top of them.
We run fecals every few months and treat as needed. We do NOT treat the whole herd on a schedule, only those with high loads or obvious signs that they’re struggling - automatically treating everyone all the time is a massive contributor to dewormer resistance.
This doe’s sample only had one egg, so she’s good for now!
For the most up-to-date guidelines, visit wormx.info
We’ll try to post more pics the next time we see coccidia oocysts or other types of worm eggs! Last year was the Year of the Tapeworm, but we haven’t seen more of those this year yet, *knock on wood*
#goats #dairygoats #goathealth #pastureraised #deworming #farmlife #homesteading
Jun 20
You guys! You know how we thought that our heart doe Dolly might make the MDGA TopTen list in Butterfat %? Well, she sure did - in the top spot!
We’re excited that Swiss and Candy both made the cut, too! They ended up moving to new farms because we desperately needed hay money 🙃 - but we have multiple daughters and a son, and they have lots of nearby relatives at Green Gables, Homeward Bound Farm, Mosaic Menagerie, and more!
Massive props to everyone who participated & thanks to Green Gables MiniNubians for breeding our girls 💜
#goats #dairygoats #performanceherd #mininubian #mininubiangoats #milktesting #goatmilk
Jun 18
We weren’t going to keep another gosling this year, but CLEARLY we have to now 😍
#geese #babygoose #domesticgeese #waterfowl #pilgrimgeese #heritagebreeds #rarebreeds #livestockconservancy
Jun 17
We’re in the home stretch of Pilgrim Goose hatching season! The first of around 15 eggs we left under the mamas has hatched, and it looks like it might be one of verrry few females this year! All females are claimed, but we have a zillion males hatched between April and now, if anyone local is interested 🐣
#geese #domesticgeese #pilgrimgeese #pilgrimgoose #gosling #babygoose #babygeese #hatchingeggs #rarebreeds #heritagebreeds
Jun 15
This right here is an example of why we`re not shipping live poultry via USPS this year. We ordered stamps directly from USPS early last week, and we`re pretty sure at this point that we`re never going to get them - if they can`t even get their own product to us, there`s NO WAY we can trust them with live animals!
#USPS #USPSsucks #shipping #smallbusiness
Jun 13
The good news is: some new Buckeye and Partridge Chantecler outcross chicks have arrived to help us reduce the genetic bottleneck that is starting to form here!
The bad news is: the farm we ordered from is also apparently having PC trouble - we only received 4 out of 15, and they wrote on the shipment form that they’re way behind 😬
They substituted with a bunch of Black Langshan chicks that we unfortunately have no use for. Reach out if you’re local and interested in them!
#chicks #chickens #heritagebreeds #rarebreedchickens #buckeyechicken #chanteclerchickens #partridgechantecler #langshanchicken
Jun 11
Jess is down for a while after finally going through with the surgery we were avoiding, so she’s making some updates to our poultry waitlists in between bouts of googling Asherman’s Syndrome.
We’re still making our way through our existing lists, but they’re just not working out super well due to a zillion factors beyond our control.
SO we are going back to basics for a while! All birds and hatching eggs will be First Come, First Serve, and we will keep a post on FB pinned with availability. If you’re interested in something on the post, please reach out!
If you’re on our waitlist but you see the breed you’re waiting for on the pinned post, please also reach out. Odds are high that it’s because we have more openings for local pickup than for shipping. We are having trouble with shipping - all USPS offices in our area close at least a half hour before we get out of work, and it’s rare than we can leave work early.
CURRENT AVAILABILITY:
First on the list are 15 Fibro chicks hatched 4/17 - some of these are pure Svart Hona and some are Easter Eggers. We have no idea which are which, except for the obviously fluffy one in the front, so they’re all our lower Experimental rate. They might lay green or cream eggs. It’s not 100% yet, but we can start guessing gender more or less accurately in this batch.
#chickens #waitlist #makinglifeeasier #fibrochickens #svarthona #easteregger #swedishblackhen #landrace
Jun 10
Surpriiiise! We were done buying goats for the year, but when we saw Jon list Hillaire Farm Tipperary Tulla, we jumped at the chance to snag her!
We`ve had our eyes on Tulla for a while - she’s a gorgeous 50% Guernsey/50% Oberhasli, and her sire is a super nice buck from one of our favorite lines - *B CH Ober-Boerd Vosegus! His dam GCH Ober-Boerd T Wind Valkyrie 2*M was 1st/1st Udder 3yo & Best Udder at the 2022 National Show. We love Vos and his line so much that we also have a grandson, Spitfire! And distant cousins Diana, Kirlia, Maui, and Sonny 😅
Vos added beautiful strength & substance over Tulla’s dam, Stump*hollow J&H Nacarat, and very nice udder improvement, too!
We’re stoked to add Tulla to our little breed-up program and are so grateful to Alice (and Jon & Tierney) for trusting us with her 🧡
And a big thank you to Katherine Sancuk for bringing her here tonight through all this rain!
(trimmed & udder pics courtesy of Hillaire Farm)
#goats #dairygoats #experimentalgoats #oberhasligoats #guernseygoats #performanceherd
Jun 4
One of our favorite sights - a bucket of Buckeyes!
This batch is claimed, but we’ll be setting a new set to incubate this week!
#chickens #heritagebreeds #heritagebreedchickens #rarebreedchickens #buckeyechicken #buckeyechickens #hatchingeggs
Jun 3
In today’s wildlife encounter, we just got home to see this guy eating our chicken feed - thankfully not our chickens! He approves of our @coopworx Feed Silo 😂
This is the first raccoon we’ve seen out in the open on our property in our 5-ish years of living here! A few have passed through the pasture cam here and there, but they never stay long.
#raccoon #wildlifeadventures #rural #farmlife #homesteading #coopworx
Jun 3
‘Tis the season for new milkers and learning how to milk!
We’re not at allllll experts and have made plenty of mistakes over the past few years of raising dairy goats, but we want to help people avoid a common one: buying cheap milking machines from Amazon.
We totally understand their draw - they’re super affordable and portable, while the ones everyone recommends are usually bulky and around $1500.
But those cheap ones are absolutely not worth it! They only last a year or so before breaking and needing to be replaced, they can’t be taken apart and cleaned or serviced, and most of them WILL ruin your goats’ udders.
Do you remember a few years ago when it was all the rage among kids to suction their lips into glasses to make them big?
A milking machine without correct pulsation or vacuum is like that. Using it once or twice probably won’t cause permanent damage, but doing it twice a day, every day, for however long the goat is in milk, year after year, definitely will.
You might not even notice it at first, but slowly, it might become harder and harder to milk out the goat as scarring builds up inside her orifices. Or she might even end up with mastitis.
It’s just not worth it!
The absolute cheapest machine we’d recommend is the MilkerSupply - it’s $690 right now for a package that includes everything you’d need to get started. We’re not at all affiliated and don’t have one ourselves, but they’re super nice people!
If you’re handy, you could probably save even more and build your own with comparable parts for around $500.
We have and love the Capralite Showman! We also highly recommend ones from Parts Dept and Hamby, if you want something beefier that can handle more than two goats at once.
#goats #dairygoats #goathealth #milkinggoats #goatmilk #milkmachine
May 30
Wildlife adventures never end here!
Monday night, we found four juvenile opossums wandering our doe pen. We left them alone in case their mama was around. Last night, we found them bothering some of our chickens, so we caught them and put them in a carrier in our basement & started asking around for leads on local rehabbers.
This morning, we took them to Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary - they confirmed that these littles are still a few weeks too young to be out on their own.
Buuuut plot twist, when the gal pulled them out of the carrier, there were only three! One must have squeezed his way out of the carrier and hidden somewhere in our basement.
Someone recommended luring him out with tuna, and it worked! We nabbed him and settled in for the night, only to hear the dogs freaking out … at a 5th joey!
Now we’ve got two more to bring to the sanctuary tomorrow. Hopefully that’s all of them! We still haven’t seen any signs of their mama.
#wildlife #opossum #virginiaopossum #marsupial #wildliferescue #farmlife #rural
May 29
The girls are all not-so-patiently waiting while we set up their fancy new collapsible hay feeder from one of our favorite equipment suppliers for all things goat, @sydell.inc
#goats #dairygoats #goatlife #hungrygoats #hayfeeder #sydell #goatequipment #bigbales #haybales #farmlife #farmchores #homesteading
May 25
We’ve been promising pics of Petunia & Smoothie’s two available girls for a while now - this is the best Jess could do by herself - we`ll try again soon, if it ever stops raining 🤣
They’re 5th Gen Mini Nubians & taking bottles like champs. Born 4/26/25 & received Trishield First Defense at birth. Will come with MDGA papers. Whole herd annually tests negative for CAE, CL, and Johne’s.
Their sire Mosaic`s Smooth Criminal *B comes from multiple generations of TopTen milk and their dam Green Gables Amazing Black Petunia’s sire is one of our faves from Green Gables (Comet). Petunia is on milk test and doing well so far!
For the flash fans out there: both girls are nearly solid black, both have blue eyes, both are polled, and one has a white partial belt & a few moonspots 🖤
May 21
Very few kids are definite keepers for us right off the bat. Lasty’s girl is one 😍
We still have to do DNA, but we’d put money on the sire being Spitfire - she has his long legs, long face, and light coat!
May 20
Okay! Now that the sleep deprivation of kidding season is over, we can focus on the birds a bit!
* Poultry Updates *
This weekend, we said goodbye to the last of our Wheaten Ameraucanas. We loved them, but haven’t had time to build new pens, so we let them go to an awesome breeder/friend in Milwaukee. Feel free to shamelessly advertise in a comment! All of our other seller friends, too 💜
Our Self-Blue (aka Lavender)/Black Split Ameraucana pens aren’t laying super well - we think there might be an egg eater. We might sell them off, too, but we`ll see!
Our Buckeyes are amazing and the greatest birds ever!
Our Buff Chanteclers keep going broody. We’re probably going to list the group again, if anyone is interested!
Our Partridge Chanteclers are laying better this year and we`re slooowly making our way through our waitlist. We’re hopefully bringing in new blood later this year as an outcross, too.
Our main group of Svart Honas escaped their first pen, which caused a delay. Then after our last hatch, we learned that our half-Ameraucana/half-Svart in there is not laying blue eggs & we have mixed chicks. Now the Svarts in both pens are broody, so we put together a new group to pull eggs from as soon as they`re clean.
Our last pair of Welsummers ARE fertile, but not very. Out of 4 dozen eggs now, one chick has hatched. At least it’s a pullet! We would sell them, but our rooster has been through a lot and has fought for life through it all. New buyers might off him, so we’re keeping them until he passes.
Our Guineas are laying and we might have keets soon - they`re our only hatchery birds!
Our Welsh Harlequin ducks are leaving this week. We adore how happy and sweet they are, plus the enormous amount of eggs, but they`re unpopular in this area`s market and became a financial burden.
Lastly, our Pilgrim goslings are hatching! We`re getting a pretty decent ratio and will reach out to waitlist peeps soon.
#backyardpoultry #poultrybreeds #hatchingeggs #pasturedpoultry #heritagebreeds #rarebreedchickens
May 19
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