Today we said goodbye to three of our four wethers: Shale, Kanard and Umber. We are now left with Neilrith (Onion’s youngest wether) and Ryka and Terrell (Garlic’s girls). The three boys have gone to a friend who has a smallholding just 15 minutes from us, where they are to be reared for meat. Unlike other goat meat producers through, Jacqui (said friend) takes her goats to 18 months at least before she sends them to the abattoir, somewhat longer than the usual six/seven months of most other producers we know. We are going to miss them terribly and we felt awful at splitting the families. We have got very used to our mini herd of eight Boers and they were, without doubt, an amazingly bonded group of goats. Part of the reason we have kept Neilrith is so that Onion still has one of her kids. We are not entirely sure what his long term future is: at the moment we are fairly sure we would like to keep him as a pet and/or as a companion for Tarragon (also a wether). If we decide that we don’t want to keep wethers as pets at all then by having two, we will have a bonded pair to sell together – selling goats individually, even if they are going to live with a herd, is not something we usually like to do (except of course if they are an entire male, like Pepper!).
For the moment though we are happy to still have our family of five Boers and three Anglo Nubians. We do still plan to sell either Ryka and Terrell OR Garlic and one of the girls, as ultimately we don’t want more than four breeding nannies in total BUT we aren’t in a rush to part with them!!!
We never are in a rush to sell our animals....