Take the day my KIKO buck, Duke caught his horns in the fence. His horns come up and then curve down almost in a curl. I don't know how long Duke had been caught in the fence when I went out, but from the looks of the ground where he was standing, it had been a little while. I tried to get him to move where I could unhook one horn to get him loose, but he was having no part of that. He tried pinning me to the fence by turning his body sideways-like it was my fault he was caught. I pushed him back around, but he just snorted and stomped at me. Unable to free him from the fence on either side, I left him still hung up in the fence while I traipsed back to the barn to get my pair of bolt cutters to cut the fence. As I walked off, Duke commenced to squall his head off. "Don't leave me," he seemed to be saying. I turned to him and said, "Don't yell at me, you stupid goat. It's not my fault you got your horns caught in the fence". I went back to the barn, got the bolt cutters, and came back and cut the horizontal stay on the cattle panel and bent it out where his horn would come out. His other horn came loose as well. Duke shook his head at me and I shook the pair of bolt cutters at him. "Don't even think about it," I told him.
Duke shook his head again and took off around his paddock. He stopped at the water tank to get a drink of water and took off again. I stood and watched him, laughing all the while as he danced and crow hopped, trying to intimidate me. I just looked at him and walked slowly toward the gate. As I opened the gate, Duke came sauntering over as if nothing had happened and scraped against the cattle panel. I reached in and touched his shoulder and pulled out a handful of wool undercoating he is shedding. Off he went again. I just shook my head and walked back to the barn to put the bolt cutters away. Still need to go fix that hole in the fence one of these days.
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RUTHY is my senior FB Boer Nanny. I bought her in April 2003 at the Clay Center Kansas Livestock Auction. She was a little thing and really not much to look at. I had taken a couple of other goats up to sell and had no intention of buying any goats. I walked through the pens and saw her there. She was also registered. Checking the tag on the gate, I recognized the name of the person who was selling her. I sat through the sale of my goats and waited for Ruthy to come through to be sold. Bidding started off at $50.00. I upped the bid in $5.00 increments until they reached $80.00. No one wanted to pay more than that for this little goat. She would be going home with me along with her papers. My husband thought I was crazy to buy this scrawny little goat for $80.00-even if she did have papers. Ruthy turned out to be the best $80.00 investment I have ever made.
We brought her home and I put her over in one of the pens in the old hog barn that I had converted into a goat barn. I rubbed her head and said, "Let's go see what your papers say your genetics are". Back up at the house, I looked at her papers and saw she was just over a year old. She had already weaned off a set of twin does. No wonder she was small. She had to have been bred at around 7 months. To my way of thinking, that was too young and she was too small as well. She would stay for now and I would get a FB Boer Buck to breed her too--which I did that July. I purchased the father of my FB Boer herd sire from Debbie Whittle.
The end of October/early November 2003, Ruthy was bred to Ace-In-The-Hole. Her due date was the end of March 2004. Several other of my nannies were bred to Ace as well-all due early to mid-February 2004. Little did I know that Ruthy would be a beacon of hope in the aftermath of the barn fire that took the lives of my herd nanny, Rusty, 4 other nannies and does, and 9 of my 11 early kids. Ruthy was one of 3 nannies that managed to get out of the blazing inferno on that frigid February night. I have often thought that if she had not survived, I would have gotten out of goats altogether.
One month and 13 days later after the barn fire, Ruthy gave birth to the first set of FB Boer kids born on this farm-a little doe whom I named Kayla in honor of my "miracle Granddaughter" who was born on February 10, 2004. Ruthy also had a little buck kid who was sold when he was only a few weeks old to a producer near Topeka, but I kept him until he was weaned before taking him up to Tony's. The little buck disappeared a few weeks after going to Tony's during an attack by a pack of feral dogs that destroyed most of Tony's goats. No trace of him was ever found. That saddened me to know that his potential was destroyed long before it ever begun. In January 2005, Ruthy had a set of twin buck kids. One was sold to a young gal down at Marion, Kansas south of me, and the other one, "LEGACY", is still on the farm here.
Ruthy was bred to my KIKO buck, DUKE, in the fall of 2005, and gave me a beautiful set of KIKO cross kids-a little doe and a buck. The buck/wether will go for meat, and the little doe named "DUCHESS" will remain here on the farm to become part of my KIKO breeding herd. As long as Ruthy keeps producing quality kids, she will always have a home here-whether those kids are FB Boer or KIKO cross. I am very thankful every day for the miracle of her survival on Feb.16th, 2004.
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PAIGE is a two year old Boer/Nubian cross nanny that I had originally seen when I went to Tonganoxie, Kansas in June 2005 to talk to a group of 4-H kids about showing goats at the County Fair. The lady who had her mentioned she might be selling some of her girls in the fall and I told Gloria to contact me if she did decide to sell off some of her goats. In early September, 2005 Gloria called to say that she was selling all but two of her goats as well as her Boer buck. I was not interested in the buck as I had Legacy here. I was however interested in getting a couple of her nannies. The middle of September I went to Toganoxie to take my pick of the nannies I wanted. I chose Paige and a 5 year-old nanny that was already bred and due to kid the middle of October. Once again, my van became the "goat mobile". Off we went back to the farm with a stop at the Farmer's Market place just east of Lawrence on highway 24. I had seen that they had sweet corn advertised on my way to Gloria's and decided to get some on my way home. When I opened the hatch back to open the side window vents for the cool air for the two goats, Savannah, the pregnant goat jumped out. It was a good thing I had collars and a rope run through the seat belt holders or she might well have gotten away and out onto the highway. I put her back in, slammed the hatch back, and headed home. A few days later Paige came into heat and she was bred to Legacy, my FB Boer buck. Savannah kidded the middle of October, but developed mastitis. I wond up feeding both little buck kids, and lost one to pneumonia.
Paige kidded the middle of February, 2006 and had 3 little bucklings-2 red and one white. What is going on here? I finally attributed the little white one to when DUKE got out of his pen the same day Paige was bred to LEGACY and got her a second time. All three kids were healthy and weighed just over 5 pounds. Paige was overwhelmed by these kids as a first time mother, so I pulled the little white kid off and bottle fed him. He doesn't look anything like the Boer Breeding but sure resembles the KIKO cross kids I have here. Am I going to DNA any or all of them? Nope, I am not. They are all going for meat so why go to that expense when it is not necessary. Now if that little white one had been a doe kid, then I would have DNA run. Paige will be going to Missouri late this summer to be a recip doe for Embryo Transplants of Full Blood New Zealand doe eggs. Those kids will be born in March 2007.
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