Breeding and Babies!!

Its that time of year again, when we have a re-arrange of our herds, to be put into new fields with their billy's and prepare for the next lot of babies to arrive in 2014.

We've only been in the goat business for 22 months and the one thing its seems important to stress is the breeding of top quality stock, mainly in our Boer goats which is why i feel its an important thing to mention on our blog. Boers are relatively new to the country, first imported in 1987, and as such have normally been breed up, known as up-grading from crosses to a full Boer male. Each kid gains a blood percentage, for example if you were to breed a Nubian female to a full blood Boer male, the resulting kids would be 50%. If you then bred that kid to another full Boer, the resulting kids would be 75%. If you then bred this kid with another full Boer the kids would be 87.5% Boer. (A easier way to work out the blood percentage is to add the percent Boer of  the female to the percent Boer of the male and divide by 2, e.g 75 (% Boer female) + 100 (% Boer male) / 2 = 87.5% ) For this reason its incredibly difficult to find full blood Boer stock. We've been to Devon and Yorkshire to buy full blood stock, which is abit of a trek from our home in Norfolk and for distances like this you need to do a course and have a certificate which legally allows you to transport animals this far, understandably not very practical for the average smallholder. This is when the grading up of Boers can be handy to some, its relatively easy to pick up a Boer buck from not quite so good bloodlines (though be prepared to pay more for a Boer/Boer cross than an ordinary milking goat), which are perfect if you've a small milking herd and raise the male kids for meat. The Boer goat was bred in south Africa to be eaten, as such they are very hardy and incredibly stocky animals which will instantly bulk up the meat quantity and quality of the milkers male kids. This is what we are going to do this year. All of Jackie's Anglo-Nubian girls have been mated to our Boer Buck Aaron so that we get some meatier male kids from them next year. All the female kids from these will be for sale early next year.

Finding Boers from pure bloodlines can be challenging however if, like us, you want to build up a very good breeding herd pure blood lines should be considered an essential. Since they were first imported in 1987 numbers have increased but it hasn't become easier to find full blood Boers. We were incredibly lucky with our first starter herd. We managed to find a young herd of 7 females and an unrelated male all from pure bloodlines and although it was a long journey to Devon and home again it was well worth it. Our little herd now look lovely, all a lovely size and in good health and our male, well, hes surprised us all. A little wee thing when we brought him we never expected him to amount to much but wow how he's grown. He was just over a year when we got him and he's now at just over 2 and a half hes huge and still growing by the seems of things!! He's produced some fantastic kids this year with these girls and we're now very excited to see what he produces next spring.

Whilst looking around for another male to eventually go with these kids, we were met with alot of disappointment, though its important to mention that you should never go ahead a buy something that your not completly happy with for whatever reason. We ended up being incredibly lucky again with our second purchase of goats. We herd of a sale happening at Terraparks Boer goat stud in gloucestershire They have some amazing full blood stock having imported goats and embryos from Australia. We brought a very impressive young buck and 2 females to increase the diversity of the gene pool here and to improve the quality of genetics in our herd. Breeding is a waiting game though, the 2 girls wont be put into kid until next Autumn ( a year and a half after we brought them) and our young male has been put in with 3 of the first time kidding Nubian's, being still too short to service our Boer females. Unfortunately it means we wont see any profit from them for a couple of years and we had to pay alot for them, but if you want to better genetics its just something that must be done. We've also diversed and brought 5 red Boers and another traditional from stour valley Boer goats in Suffolk. This is a lovely herd and there gentics are from the Ram H line of Boers which originates in south Africa. We've got some more of these on order for next year :) Our most recent purchase was from Yorkshire, a herd of 10 females all from pure blood lines. These range in age from 8 years to 6 months and will be split into herds accordingly. The older 5 are in with our older buck and our younger 3 our with one of his sons from last year. Hopefully these will produce some lovely stock :)

For more information on out breeding herd please check us out on face book as i'll be uploding a herd page shortly.