a stud for the ladies

We have been hoping to move our small farm operation forward, in order to do that we need to get our does pregnant.  It is funny how that works, if you plan to actually make any money at raising meat goats, you need to have kids to raise.

We have eight does, but two of them are a little young still and one has been sick for a few weeks; that leaves us with five does that are able to breed.  Ideally they would each have twins and we would end up with our eight does, plus 10 kids running around in March.  We are not sure if we are going to sell the kids at 3 months old (sort of like veal) or raise them and sell them as much larger yearlings.  Before we get to any of that we need to get our ladies pregnant and there are two basic ways to go about that: artificial insemination and the old fashioned way.

I have learned a lot about animals and I am doing a lot of things that I never thought I would, but I just cannot bring myself to artificially inseminate a goat.  Besides, it only has a 60% success rate which is simply unacceptable for me.  We decided that we needed to either rent a buck or buy one.  Both options have benefits, but we were open to either one; the real problem we had was trying to find what we wanted.

Boer goats are not exactly rare, but they are not real common either.  We needed to find a buck that was 1.5 - 3 years old, of large stature, a proven breeder, with a good demeanor, and under $400.  Oh yeah, we also needed the seller to deliver him as we do not have a truck or trailer and I didn't want to borrow from our friend again.  After searching all over southern and central Indiana we ended up finding one that was only 10 miles from our home.  He is a year & a half old and weighs 150-175lbs.  His registered name is Painted Wizard, but that simply will not work for us.  My daughter has taken to calling him Mr. Red, while my wife and son are calling him Jimmy.  Hopefully, we will come to an agreement soon.

He is in rut, but the does are not in estrus at this point.  Hopefully, they will all sync up soon and we can begin to make some real progress on the farm.  :-)