Big Things on the Horizon

Well, something terribly thrilling has just transpired. I have arranged to buy my very first Nigerian Dwarf goat! Her name is Laurel Haven's Harmony, and she will be coming to me as a registered bred doe. Here is both her baby picture and her current picture, courtesy of Laurel Haven's website.

She was born September 7, 2006, just a day before Dustin's birthday. She will be pretty tiny, Nigerian Dwarfs are usually between 19-21" at the shoulder. She may possibly be even smaller than Lucy! It makes me very thankful that all my goats are super sweet and I won't have to worry about anybody being nasty to her. She is bred to a handsome fella by the name of Laurel Haven's Yes Charleston, or Charles for short. Here's his picture.

With a little imagination you can just see how adorable their babies will be. Harmony's breeder said she envisions that they will be white with spots. Yea! I have been eye-balling the Nigerian Dwarf goats from Laurel's Haven for over a year now, and not only are they beautiful and well bred, but you can really tell that the breeder knows what she's doing and is faithful about updating her website (laurelhaven.net). I have been lucky enough to find quite a few ND breeders here in South Carolina, but honestly, I prefer to find one I like to work with and trust and then stick with them. So, with that in mind, I have also reserved a Nigerian Dwarf buckling from their 2008 Spring kids! This will be my first and only buck -unless Lucy's breeder continues to not send me her registration papers, in which case I am going to keep Louie as collateral! Actually, at this point that would work out just fine because then I would have a pen-mate for my little buckling in the spring. My new buckling will come from one of my top three choices of their breeding schedule. Obviously, there is no way to determine how many babies or what sex a doe will have, so you put in your top 3 or so choices and hope for the best. In any case, I feel confident that he will have the superior milking genetics that I want to establish in my herd. He'll be a little fella just like Harmony, and no relation to her, so their future generations will be purebred Nigerian Dwarf. I will also use him to breed the other full-sized goats I plan to get, to make miniature milkers that eat less and have creamier milk. Good cheese making milk.

We will be going to pick Harmony up December 15th, and she lives about 2.5 hours away. We will be able to transport her in a medium sized dog carrier, which just makes my life so much easier. It is the bane of my existence as a goat farmer that I do not own a pick-up.

Some other pretty exciting news is that I am on the brink of beginning construction on the goat barn. It is no longer to be a ratty lean-to. It will be a bonafide building with a milking area, grain storage, and two kidding stalls. It will look something like this diagram, although I may rethink the location of the milking stanchion. The black squares are the posts that are already set into the 15x15 concrete pad. I am going to use shipping pallets to separate the stalls, so that I can move them as desired to create bigger or smaller stalls. Honestly, I could probably get away will dividing the left half into 4 smaller stalls if I needed to, with each stall being about 7.5'x4'. If any of you building whizzes or goat aficionados see something that I am missing or a better idea of how to do it, I am all ears! I am very excited to have a sheltered place with electricity and a spigot to do my milking and chores in! No more milking by flashlight while my back is getting rained on! Not to mention a safe and cozy place for all these babies on their way!