Today, March 26, was the first due date for our next set of kids. Bred to be after OYE but still in March. This morning–nothing. Got home this evening. Nothing. An hour later–1 kid. Three hours later–two does had dominoed and we had 7 kids. Yep, do the math. That would be 7 divided by 2. 3 on one–4 on the other. <\/p>\n
We all know that I despise a mature doe. But, I acknowledge that you can’t make wethers or bucks without does. Guess how many buck kids these 2 does made? How about the magic # of 7. 7 for 7 on buck kids. That, my friends is a good feeling. <\/p>\n
The best feeling in this deal is the fact that these two does have always done a very good job raising goats and they are backed by several generations of mommas that have always done a really good job of raising kids for us. I have Verlin the dairy doe ready to wean her own kids and start raising others. Schoovy has a couple of dairy does ready to go into service. But, we MAY not need them. That is a good feeling. <\/p>\n
The other part of this good feeling that I have going tonight is having the Dragon Lady on the job. If there is a baby that needs tended to or a momma that needs calmed down and helped, she’s pretty good. “Hey, I got a set of quads and a set of triplets.” I just get out of the way and let her go to work. Good mommas know how to relate to other good mommas. And regardless of species, they just need me out of the way and provide essentials. <\/p>\n
Whatever species that you are dealing with, make sure that you sort your females according to genetic and more importantly, maternal capabilities. I’ve been around too many cattle, hog and goat operations that were just trying to raise the next great one. You CANNOT disregard maternal abilities. I don’t care what species that you are messing with, but if you are having to pull LOTS of kids, do C sections, or you have trouble with them milking, then you need to get better females. I am a firm believer that if you are doing things right, your cull does should be good enough mommas to be recips. <\/p>\n
The show stock industry is not directly tied to the commercial industry. But if you keep core production principals built into your females, then you will always be in business. You can use males to make your changes. Keep the females in the middle of the road in terms of bone, pin set and muscularity. No matter species, make sure that they have good rib shape, good feet and legs, and DO NOT get them TOO level in their hooks to pins. The leveler the hip, the more birthing problems. Every doe, gilt, ewe or heifer judge should know this. Not all keep it in mind. Keep daughters of good mommas that milk good, tend to their kids and have babies on their own. Basically, this is the same lesson that has been taught in every livestock production class for a long time. They were right a hundred years ago and they are still right. <\/p>\n
Before you go to flushing that rip that was a killer show doe, but hasn’t raised a live kid in the past two years. Think about it. Even if you do get a succesful flush out of her, all that you are doing is propagating some more no breeding rips with no maternal instincts. They might sell good once, but somewhere down the line, they will cost somebody a pile of cash. It is worse than Vegas. Why? It is a sure thing that you will lose. No chance of winning. That is a bad feeling.<\/p>\n
I’m sure that we will have a trainwreck or two before we are done, but it is a good feeling when you have some doing their jobs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today, March 26, was the first due date for our next set of kids. Bred to be after OYE but still in March. This morning–nothing. Got home this evening. Nothing. An hour later–1 kid. Three hours later–two does had dominoed and we had 7 kids. Yep, do the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}