Monday 1st May 2017
Goats and goat plans!!!
It continued to rain all last night and into this morning and then the sun came out and we actually saw the grass start to grow!!!! The field shelters this morning were fun to clean out (NOT!!) but then when all the livestock spent the day grazing, sunbathing and chilling and looking altogether wonderful, we forgave them for their ‘night in’!!
Pepper is such a proud dad - he still looks so young himself, he is in fact only just a year! The kids are all doing really well, all very bouncy and playful and in great condition. We feel very lucky!!
We have other goat news!!! Our search for an Anglo Nubian female is over, we have found one in Wiltshire, or rather we have found two in Wiltshire, a mum and her daughter AND a young billy as well! Our plan is to have the billy as a companion for Pepper and also because we will then have the choice of breeding pure Boers, AN/Boer crosses AND pure ANs. All three will have marketable value as well as being fabulous kids in their own right. We know we will need to plan the introductions and integration carefully: after months of trying to get Curds, Pickle and the Boers to mix, we are acutely aware how difficult it can be.
We have been discussing our overall goat plans and have decided that we will probably be happier selling most of our kids (male and female) at 12 weeks, rather than taking on all the males to meat weight. Financially, there is a bit more money to be made in producing meat boxes as opposed to selling the live animal for someone else to raise, but we have realized that meat box production is not necessarily something we are interested in at the moment. We want to be able to eat out own goat meat still so will keep one for ourselves but even then, we have wondered about seeing if we could get someone else to do the ‘raising on’ bit for us. It would have to be someone who would give the goat the same environment as we would, i.e. free range. We have a friend who could do just that so aim to have a conversation with her and see what she thinks!
Taking our goat numbers from three to six (although that is what we originally planned back when we had our four AN crosses…) must of course be done alongside our other livestock plans. After being somewhat overstocked on our acre in Cornwall, having too many animals is a situation we never want to reach here. Quite a few weeks back we decided that we would rather only have two cows and two calves to take through each winter and as such made the decision to sell Sage and both her calves (this year’s and lasts). We are also wondering about the sheep!! As with the goats, some of our thinking centres around the fact we don’t want any meat box selling to become a big enterprise!! A lot will depend on how easily we sell the lambs this year and how good the grass is.
There is also the small matter of pigs!!! We have mentioned a pig arc for our geese, well we also have a second arc in which we hope to house a couple of weaners!!! More on that another day!!
Pepper is such a proud dad - he still looks so young himself, he is in fact only just a year! The kids are all doing really well, all very bouncy and playful and in great condition. We feel very lucky!!
We have been discussing our overall goat plans and have decided that we will probably be happier selling most of our kids (male and female) at 12 weeks, rather than taking on all the males to meat weight. Financially, there is a bit more money to be made in producing meat boxes as opposed to selling the live animal for someone else to raise, but we have realized that meat box production is not necessarily something we are interested in at the moment. We want to be able to eat out own goat meat still so will keep one for ourselves but even then, we have wondered about seeing if we could get someone else to do the ‘raising on’ bit for us. It would have to be someone who would give the goat the same environment as we would, i.e. free range. We have a friend who could do just that so aim to have a conversation with her and see what she thinks!
Taking our goat numbers from three to six (although that is what we originally planned back when we had our four AN crosses…) must of course be done alongside our other livestock plans. After being somewhat overstocked on our acre in Cornwall, having too many animals is a situation we never want to reach here. Quite a few weeks back we decided that we would rather only have two cows and two calves to take through each winter and as such made the decision to sell Sage and both her calves (this year’s and lasts). We are also wondering about the sheep!! As with the goats, some of our thinking centres around the fact we don’t want any meat box selling to become a big enterprise!! A lot will depend on how easily we sell the lambs this year and how good the grass is.
There is also the small matter of pigs!!! We have mentioned a pig arc for our geese, well we also have a second arc in which we hope to house a couple of weaners!!! More on that another day!!