Our first Damien Kids!

Last spring we were very very lucky to buy (at auction) a fantastic bloodline boer buck kid. Damien is now just over a year old and we're very pleased with him. 

Damien comes from great stock so we have high hopes for him and his kids. His grandfather is Terraweena Burger, truely a legend in the Boer Goat world. Burger is said to have "changed the shape of Australian Boer goats" and is highly rated for his contribution to the Terraweena & Macgregor studs and thus the austrialian boer goat industry as a whole. Damien was born in the UK from sperm tubes imported from Australia and implanted into a doe. We feel very honered to have him :)

Damien

Late last year he was put in with 2 yearling Nubian females for his first servicing job. As you can imagine we were incredibly excited about the kids he would produce and we havent been disappointed!!! He has fathered 3 girls and 1 boy. For the year we've had this is a fairly high boy - girl ratio so we're hoping this will continue :)  (we've heard Burger discribed as slightly afemine so maybe its these genes coming into play and producing lots of girls, lets hope so, our man Aaron definatly seems to have alot of boys haha )

This is April, born April 1st. Such gorgeous facial markings!!! A lovely healthy baby weighing 3.4kg so a pretty good size baby as well :)

April

Next came Slyvia, Swift and Snowy on 3rd April. Triplets are a big ask for a young first time mum but she coped with the birth really well.  Slyvia & Swift were lovely healthy babies, good weights of 3.7 and 3.2kg! 

Swift

Slyvia

 Snowy was abit on the small side though at only 2.5kg. He got brought into the house to keep warm over night and to dry off. Being so small he also found it very difficult to feed from his mum so being in the kitchen made it much easier for those 3am feeds :)

Snowy

Snowy saying hi to April

Luckily he wasnt on his own in the house, one of our tradtional boers had also had triplets 2 days before and Bert was already in the house. Snowy really helped our sick little Bert come out of his shell.










After being born blind and deaf Berts now out with the 3 triplets and with his little friend Snowy is doing really well :)

Bert chasing Slyvia 

 Damien really didnt disapoint this year :) Very excited about using him on some of our traditional boers later in the summer!

 

Slyvia & mum Swallow

Swift

Swift and mum Swallow

Slyvia chilling out

Kids...Kids....& more.. Kids...

Its been a wowonderful year for kids so far this year. We've had 32 kids from 17 mums so far and we've another 8 to kid so hopefully a few more to come along. Kiddings' an exciting and nerve racking time here on the farm though this year has been even more so as we put all our Anglo Nubian females to our Boer buck this season, meaning that all except 3 kids born here this year are at least 50% boer. We thought we would try the cross this year to see what the kids they produced were like in the hope of improving the meat quality of the males, which as they are no good to the diary industry is there only purpose. Always the hardest part of the job, i personally always have slightly conflicting emotions about it, but console my self in the fact they lived a very happy life, longer than your average lamb or pig and we make every effort to use as much of the animal as possible, including the hide. We actually met someone today running a larger diary herd who humanly killed all the male kids at birth this year!!! I knew this happened but it was rather shocking to know someone who practised this! Made me feel better about how we do things here as unless people start eating the meat practises like this will continue as people think they will lose not make money on the males. So far it seems a success, all the kids are healthy and growing well. 

Another exciting part of kidding this year is that we've got double the amount of 100% boer does to kid this year than last year!!! Our doe Glory started us of on march 21st with twin buck kids Gaius & Gwaine. Weighed 3.9 & 3.1kg at birth, 1 week later they weighed in at 5.7 & 4.7kg so growing really well. Very interested to see what Gaius weighs at their next weigh in this weekend! Next was Neave with her beautiful pigeon pair Evie & Ned. 

These 2 were 4 & 5.4kg at birth. He was a very large boy and despite the fact she is the smallest boer doe we have she had a very quick easy birth. She did the same last year and had the largest kids so we're hoping she'll remain that easy for the years to come! Really excited about their weigh in this weekend as if they're anything like last years kids they will do incredibly well. These 2 were born on march 30th and i think her easy labour inspired the others to give it a go as Ginger had twin buck kids the next day. We've called these 2 Corry & Charlie and they were a very nice 4.6 & 4.1kg.

She was followed the next day by Kate, who gave birth to triplets for the 2nd year running! 2 buck kids and a little girl. The first born was a lovely healthy boy at 3.7kg. He's been named 'big' Ben. The second boy & her little girl are both very tiny, she's only 2.2kg & he's 2.6. Despite her size her little girl is incredibly feisty and doesn't hesitate to tell her mum whats what! Hence we've named her Annie after one of my favourite childhood movies with the feisty but lovable red-head (just like her) She's a good set of lungs on her too... Bertie her little boy isn't thriving as much. He's in the house with us but is making some progress which i've been updating to facebook for those of you abit concerned about him. Kate bless her actually gave birth to these 2 at the same time!!! Never seen or heard of this happening before! 

Apologies for the poor picture quality but here's Ben with his sister Annie. You can see why he's called 'big' Ben. Below is Annie snuggling up after a feed. 

The next day was Fame. Again a lovely pigeon pair. These 2 we've called Freddie & Hope and they weighed a surprising 3.7 & 3.1kg considering we thought they werent due for a few weeks. Both are doing incredibly well.

Finally yesterday was Erin, the first of our Leeds girls purchased last year to kid. She's a first time mum and is fantastic at it. She caught us out as we weren't planning on bringing her in for another couple of days but yesterday morning at breakfast time she wandered out of the hut with them following her! A lovely boy called Ed weighing 3.7kg and Eearwen 2.9kg. Eearwen is a very sweet little girl, but both are healthy and she loves being a mummy to them. 

We've still 8 boers to kid so fingers crossed we''ll be adding a few more to our kid list over the weekend...... Hopefully it will be a busy one... :)

Beckie

Spring Has Sprung

Hello again everyone. Sorry it has been a long time since anyone has posted on here but I shall try to update. Spring is my favourite time of year but it is made even more special with all the little animals around. The lane is looking lovely with all the wild flowers coming out. We have loads of primroses, daffodils and bluebells.

Waking up to the sound of birds singing. We are very lucky. Our first kid was born at the end of January (looking back, I can't believe it was that long ago already!). This was Mo, our first Boer x Nubian. He was followed by 12 more Boer x Nubian kids. We are selling 3 girls and keeping 2 for Beckie to milk to use in her soap.

 Mo, our first kid of the year:                                  

Toffee, one of Beckie's future milkers:

We welcomed 3 new Anglo Nubian girls to the farm earlier in the year and 2 of these were in kid. These were the next to kid and we have 2 lovely full Anglo Nubian girls as well as 1 boy. All rather lovely, with good bloodlines for our future breeding.

Martha with her kids:

We got our Boers inside just in time as one decided to kid the day after. We have 9 full Boer kids born so far but others look like they are about to blow so shouldn't be long until more arrive.

Remember Storm and Swallow, who we had to bottle feed back in 2012? Well we put them to our australian boer buck for this season. We have been watching Swallow as she has been looking ready for a few days then yesterday, Storm decided to surprise us with a little girl. A hard birth but they got there in the end and Mum and baby are doing well now.

Lady May:

We decided to pick up two Oxford Sandy and Black pigs at the weekend, otherwise we wouldn't of had enough meat over the summer period. We're hoping to be able to take these to the Norfolk Smallholders Show in August. The goat meat has been selling well in the shop and the pork sausages seem a favourite of most. We are thinking of starting meat boxes and would like to know if anyone would be interested in these? For now we were thinking of pork boxes to contain 10kg of a mix of sausages, joints and chops? In the coming summer/autumn we're hoping to expand these to contain goat as well. We're planning on adding seasonal fresh fruit, veg  & other products to the boxes, such as jams, chutneys, cakes & eggs when available. We're also hoping to start going to a few farmers markets later in the year. Our first one is Creake Abby on the 19th of April so hopefully we may see some of you there? :)

Some of our meat on display in our shop:

Our preparation unit arrived a few weeks back and we are currently in the process of getting this set up then going through the necessary checks. We'll  be producing our goat milk products as well as making more with our meat, including developing some new flavours for our rarebreed pork sausages and burgers and starting to try out traditional curing some meats. We are all very excited about this. We've  had people asking about our raw goats milk for quite some time and it will be lovely to be able to provide this for them after so long! You can currently buy our milk for animal consumption. 

We have had several bookings coming in for our holiday cottages. The first person of the year comes in next week so Jackie and Hayley will be busy with these as well. Jackie has been doing some decorating to make sure they are ready and they are looking nice & fresh after the re-vamp.  We look forward to welcoming more guests to enjoy the farm with us.