2023 in Review: The good, the bad and the goaty
2023 was a big year for Floof Farm as far as our competitive goating journey. Here I’m doing a 2023 in review both the highlights and the lowlights.
We did quite a few shows including Nationals, changed how we raise kids a bit and successfully did milk test. We downsized to a more manageable herd while kidding out way more does than we had done before. In increasing the number of births we lost a few kids and we also said goodbye to one of our older bucks. There were certainly a few hard moments over the year.
2023 ADGA Nationals
The biggest first in 2023 was exhibiting at 2023 ADGA Nationals. It was amazing to meet so many goat people from all over the country and to witness our friends at Hanson’s Hideaway win with their gorgeous doe GCH Hansons Hideaway BV Candy!
Our own girls did respectably with our 9th place heavy ribbon collections:
Moss-Ridge Cal’s Twyla 9th Place 2 Year Old Milker
CH Night Heron Farm JB Katniss 9th Place Aged Doe and 9th Place Produce of Dam
R Serenity BS Katalina 18th Place 5 and 6 Year Old Doe
Floof Farm 14th Place Dairy Herd
Milk test
2023 was the first year we really did milk test correctly. Just meaning that many of our goats were able to get their stars in Protein and Fat as well as a few in volume. The star of the milk test show was Floof Farm BS Katsu easily finishing in Volume, Fat and Protein at only 215 days in milk. We are still milking her now, so we’ll see where she finishes out for the year.
Lambars!
A real game changer for us was using lambars for kid rearing. We’ve tried dam raises, milk sharing, bottle raising and lambars really made it manageable this year. In 2022 we were constantly fiddling and warming bottles, just having one bucket of milk to distribute was much better.
Moving kids to new homes
I was able to find homes for all the kids we wanted to except Floof Farm TL Indigo Kat. I’m pretty pleased we ended up keeping Indy, despite the Goat Math I’ve done to justify it. Many were able to go home at three or four weeks old on a bottle which helped reduce our workload.
The one bad thing that happened is someone bought two goats at a discount and immediately gave one to their friend. I just wish that people would be honest up front about these things, especially when the friend needed help with their new kid. The kid was well weaned and they put them back on a bottle, making them ill. Once a goat leaves the farm there there is nothing more you can do, I’m not sure if I could have screened for this situation.
Linear Appraisals
I don’t know if I should put this in the good, bad and/or goaty category. We did a private stop for Linear Appraisals for the first time. It was great to get numbers on our does, but I was out of town the entire week before LAs which is the bad part. Everyone was not as prepped and ready as I would have liked them to be. I wanted to do appraisals so badly, but I also had a commitment I couldn’t change. It is difficult with LAs because you are supposed to know what days you aren’t available way in advance, unfortunately my work schedule isn’t that way. I’m glad we did it and really proud of Twyla’s first freshener score of VVVV87, as well as some other scores. I won’t have to travel this year and hopefully we get another stop.
We said goodbye
We lost a kid at birth this year as well as two to Floppy Kid Syndrome. Whenever an animal dies it is sad and these were no different. Harder still was Diji Farm MT Prince Eric one of our bucks. At almost 10 years old he was not well and was really done. The plan was to give him one more nice summer in the new 1/2 acre buck pen. I’m glad he was able to be out there browsing for one more summer, but then rut was really hard on him.
Closing out the 2023 in review
As I’m writing this it is just a couple hours before our last milk test of the year. I continue to improve my herd and my management techniques. Looking forward to floofing into 2024.