I hope that each of you didn’t miss a wicked good meal on Thanksgiving.  Ours was spent with family and friends, smoked turkey & brisket with all of the fixins.  No, I did not eat an entire raisin cream pie like I used to.  I just can’t eat as much as I used to on any one setting. 

        One of the most over-looked feeding strategies of show livestock is missing a feeding.  We all preach the importance of a regular feeding schedule.  However, there comes a time that one needs to skip a feeding.  Especially, with a picky eater.  Sometimes, a missed feeding helps them get hungry and therefore, get “right in the head” about knocking the bottom out of a feed pan.  When I first get goats on feed, I like to skip a feeding, here and there.  One–it helps build an appetite.  Two–one quickly learns which one’s are going to be good eaters and which ones are going to be picky turds.  I also do this with hogs.  I like to do this early in the feeding period that way they are ready to eat when it comes time to push.  

      Last Wednesday, I had to take my pickup to Perry and have a bale bed installed on it.  Since it was in Perry, I had the internet guru come pick me up and haul me around.  We ran over to REI in Stillwater in order to get my semen tank filled with nitrogen.  Guess what?  REI is no longer.  It sold and is now Bullnanza Stud Service.  Yes, they will still be doing small ruminant services.  

       While in Perry, we took a look at the Milligan keeper bucks and those that he will sell at some point.  There is a couple of wicked young bucks there.  Bob May showed up as well.  Bob, Hayden, the Milligans and myself ate a dang good Mexican lunch.  The steak ranchero was so filling that I had to miss a meal on Wednesday night.  By noon on Thursday, my head was right about eating again.  I haven’t missed a meal since.  Several meals of turkey tacos.  I love those things.  

       Have a good one today and a better tomorrow.  Give thanks that we have the opportunities that we have.