Since my last post, we have attended our first couple shows of the season. Everything will be MUCH easier when Shane is home (this is the last week after 5 months of intermittent once a week visits!!!). We didn’t come home with anything from our first show of the year, but did come home with 2 Reserves, a Grand Champion and a Best Udder from this past weekend’s show. 
It’s very interesting how high stress our life was before we moved out here. Our low stress (for the most part) lifestyle is much better on the body for sure, but now that the stress level has dropped, it is much easier to become spread too thin or overly stressed. Not something I enjoy any longer. I also noticed, after we had several guests at the house this weekend (friends who stayed with us during the show), going from seeing VERY few people in the last few months to having 7 extra bodies in the house was a bit of a culture shock. We currently have two more shows on the books for the year in addition to 305 day milk test and linear appraisal. PHEW! I will be thrilled when it is all over with and we can take a well-deserved break from all of the activities and some vacation time here and there. May cut the show/milk season short for some well-deserved vacation time.
Our girls are doing a decent job on milk test this year. I haven’t been using their milk for anything in the past couple months due to it being SO SOUR because of the horehound and filaree (have finally found information on this plant after MUCH research). I do have to give the goats quite a bit of credit for doing damage on the noxious weeds as well as the blackberry vines and poison oak, though. Maybe it will make for some interesting cheese…
The rooster who was almost licked to death has survived and is doing well. He is by far the most easy-going rooster we’ve had. So far, he’s shown no signs of aggression or any interest in humans. We’ll have to see if this behavior continues as he matures or if his brain is poisoned by testosterone down the road. Below is a picture of him after his “incident”.
So far, we have 2 does bred for fall. I may be breeding one more. The does being bred are all first fresheners. Not sure if they’ll be staying in the herd and if they do, they most likely wont make it onto the show string next year just because they are pretty small for their age. At this point we’re just going to play it by ear. Our herd numbers are coming back up after selling quite a few mature does and only retaining 6 of this year’s doe kids (and 1 buck). We’ll be adding another mature buck to the herd here shortly as well. I can’t express how nice it is to have pasture for the goats vs. dry lot. Even if it is soon-to-be dryland pasture, the difference and changes in the animals’ health and behavior is still incredible.
Jenny, our newly added boer goat was recently bred to our neighbor’s fainting buck. Hopefully she’ll throw some nice butcher kids this fall. Sausage, our boer butcher wether is also growing at an incredible rate. At only a couple months old, he is just as big as our Sr. does.
Lastly, our garden has been put in and is doing pretty well. A friend of ours brought us a citrus tree and another brought us some gourd plants. Now just need to get them into the ground with everything else. The potatoes are doing incredibly well and we found out that we have a plum tree and two mature apricot trees out front in addition to all of the other fruit trees. What a nice surprise! Heading off to town! Happy farming.
