September concludes our farm’s 6th anniversary and keeping with tradition, we capture the highs and lows experienced in this yearly anniversary posting. 2021/22 was much better than the previous year dealing with the setbacks caused by COVID and loss of some senior does in our herd.
Our herd continues to mature from the bottle babies that jump-started us back in 2016 to a herd size of ~37 today. In addition to the goats, the farm includes 5 llamas for predator control, Scarlett and Bella, the farm’s standard poodles, Estelle, the barn cat and the newest arrival, APPI an 8 yo Appaloosa gelding. Lots of mouths to feed !!
Breeding season provided challenges in large part due to the lack of farm help. This year we bred 22 does delivering 48 kids in March and April. And to say it was a “buck dominant” year would be an understatement. Of the 48 kids born, 38 were bucks making it impossible to fill doe kid reservations. Fortunately most customers opted to roll their reservation(s) forward; fingers crossed that 2023 will produce an ample supply of doe kids. We were only able to retain 5 doe kids from this year’s program of which 4 were sired by Rockin-CB KMM Naga, our herdsire addition from last year out of the 2021 National Champion, SGCH Rockin-CB RZ Haiku. We’re excited got see how these kids develop.
2022 was another great year in the show ring. We participated in 6 sanctioned shows including the CDA Fuzzy Show (Coeur d’Alene, ID), Syringa (Boise), NEWDGA (Spokane, UT), the Montana State Fair (Great Falls), the Union County Fair (LaGrande, OR) and the Twin Falls Fair (Filer, ID). Our results included 27 class wins, 9 Grand Champions, 9 Reserve Grand Champions, 4 Best in Breed and 1 Best in Show.
Next month kicks off our annual breeding program with 15 does slated for breeding, 7 fewer than our previous year. We plan for the first time to milk through 13 does providing milk throughout the winter months for our customers and continued cheese production. This was a very good year for our dairy business with continual demand for our milk and cheese products. We also established 2 retail presences to sell our dairy products, McIntyre Pastures and Cliff’s Country Market, both located on Caldwell, ID.
We are fortunate and thankful in so many ways for all the friends and mentors we’ve made along the way. Without their support, we’d never have made it this far.