I Brought Home a Buck

I have been a ball of stress over getting my goats bred. January is the last possible time to get them bred for the year and it's coming upon us fast! As you remember, Onyx didn't get pregnant on her date and Kat miscarried. The left me with only one out of three bred.

That may not seem like a huge deal, but I assure you it is! Goats who are not freshened will not produce the volume of milk that they should into next year and I won't have the kids to sell. I have well over $1000 in the animals themselves (not counting feed, housing, vet, stud fees etc) and I really need to recoup some of that money. Not getting them bred would have an 18 month consequence!

I was hoping to bring Onyx to be bred again this month, but Thanksgiving got in the way. Then she ended up cycling later than expected so Thanksgiving wouldn't have gotten in the way after all, but Christmas would! Instead of adding the stress of two 4-hour round trips over the holidays, I decided to bite the bullet and breed her with my friend Dave's Nigerian Dwarf Buck for MiniManchas this year.

This is Buddy and he is a ball of stink, but a really sweet boy! He's enough to make me think I can handle a buck around here. I sure hope all the MiniManchas sell well, I'm going to have a bunch of them! We are keeping Buddy here at Hammock Haven until Kat gets bred again too. She should go in heat next week. In the meantime, he loves, love, loves Onyx!

Amanda, the breeder of my little Alpines, thinks one of the girls is bred. She's still waiting on the other. If all goes as plans, I'm looking at 6+ MiniManchas and 4 Alpine kids this spring!