Assessing our Goat Herd

We have decided to sort our goat herd into three main groups to try to increase our profit this year.

Good milkers

Melody and Fiona

We recently added two Nigerians to our heard from Black Hoof Farm, Melody and Fiona.

Fiona is a 75% Nigerian dwarf 25% Oberhasli doeling, She is supposed to be an excellent milker.

Melody is hopefully pregnant (the kids' father would be the buck pictured below, Southern Grace LeRoy), she has already been milked so they know she is a good milker, she has had kids once before.

Melody

Mamie gives almost a gallon a day. We bought her from Black Hoof Farm last year.

This last year (before we got Shotgun) Mamie was giving almost as much as all our other goats combined

Shotgun gives about the same amount of milk as Mamie (a little over 3 quarts).

Nutmeg gives a pretty good amount of milk but is right on the edge in terms of being a good milker since she does slow down considerably after a while.

Early Spring Milkers

These does all milk ok at first but then slow down, so we plan on only milking them when they are at their peak production and then drying them off.

Cocoa, Chocolate chip, Eva, and Hazel

Eva

Chocolate chip and Cocoa came from registered parents and do stay in milk for a very long time but don't give a lot of milk. If we ever crossed them with a buck that came from high production lines, then their kids would probably be excellent milkers.

Only Mothers

We currently have four does Shadow, Philly, Flora and Fauna that we will likely not milk at all or only right after their babies sell, they are likely going to give so little (or in the case of Philly are so hard to milk that it is not worth it).

Most of our customers have really liked the colorful stark colored babies as pets. All our current does usually have at least one pretty colorful baby.

We will hopefully be able to increase our kid sales and milk sales this year by being more particular about who which does we milk and who just has colorful kids.