LHF kidding 2012 PHOTOS AFTER THE STORM

[20kidsonhill]

i just have to share my excitement, I have gotten a lot of calls for goats this week, and sales are going really well. The kids are doing really well, and now i just need to keep them alive for a couple weeks after weaning until their owners pick them up.

I have someone looking at Cher, our bottle baby. I am a little sad about that. I was really hoping I would just get to keep her.

 

[jodief100]

We are starting to get a lot of calls too. It is that time of year. I think I need to breed earlier next year, lots of people looking for Easter goats and all I coudl sell them were two culls.

Very nice kids, your 2 legged kids will do well at the fair or the judges are blind.

 

[20kidsonhill]

We are starting to get a lot of calls too. It is that time of year. I think I need to breed earlier next year, lots of people looking for Easter goats and all I coudl sell them were two culls.

Very nice kids, your 2 legged kids will do well at the fair or the judges are blind.

We are going to breed to kid out in december this year. We also feel that we would do better if we kidded out a little earlier.

I had someone that contacted me yesterday, wanting to make arrangements for us to bring a kid to a butcher in town and have it ready for pick up by theis weekend. First I am not even sure a butcher would have an opening with that late a notice. 2nd, my heavier kids have been sold and the biggest kid I could offer was 37 lbs, beleive it or not, they were still interested. Then I remember we vaccinated with CD & T on Sunday, and it has a 21 day with drawal. That gives me something to think about, since I am advertising for butchering animals and I guess I should specify that they need to give me at least a 3 week notice. In fact had I known he wanted one for butchering, I wouldn't have vaccinated him at all.


I have to have the kids vaccinated to sell show wethers, since the children have to put their goats on a ton of grain and they need to be banded.

As far as my children showing, I only have one showing this year. I have two other daughter's, but one of them doesn't like working with the animals and has only shown a couple years, and the other one graduated last year. I might try to get her to help me get some goats ready for the open class at our fair.

We have consistantly placed 2nd to 4th in the classes, with an occasional one near the bottom, and an occasional one in 2nd place. Never higher than that, except for the first couple of years when our fair first started the goat show, then we had some first places and champions. Sense then the competition has gotten tough.
We have 100 goats at our fair, 200 lambs, 200 pigs and 100 head of steer in the 4H/FFA meat show. There is some tough competition. I am keeping my fingers crossed that my son's first pick from Annie gives us a chance of getting near the top this year.

 

[20kidsonhill]

We are starting to get a lot of calls too. It is that time of year. I think I need to breed earlier next year, lots of people looking for Easter goats and all I coudl sell them were two culls.

Very nice kids, your 2 legged kids will do well at the fair or the judges are blind.

Glad to hear you are getting a lot of calls as well, That was rude of me not to mention that sooner.

 

[poorboys]

you have some beautiful girls, and kids, wished I lived closer to virgina!! good luck on sells.

 

[SuburbanFarmChic]

If you are getting mostly 4h sales you may want to kid out in Jan instead. Not sure if you are more 4h or meat.

I have sold out of does, almost out of lambs and only have some lamancha males left available. We're going to hit Chickenstock in April and unload a couple more of the lamancha boys. Anything left will be grown out on a friend's farm. They are from a nice dairy and show farm over in MD but I will not be able to paper them. A couple look GREAT, I hate to clip and freezer them.

 

[20kidsonhill]

If you are getting mostly 4h sales you may want to kid out in Jan instead. Not sure if you are more 4h or meat.

I have sold out of does, almost out of lambs and only have some lamancha males left available. We're going to hit Chickenstock in April and unload a couple more of the lamancha boys. Anything left will be grown out on a friend's farm. They are from a nice dairy and show farm over in MD but I will not be able to paper them. A couple look GREAT, I hate to clip and freezer them.

One of my concerns about kidding out 6 weeks earlier is having to feed the kids for 6 more weeks. through the winter and not having people wanting to come get their kids sooner. But I would really like to have an average of 10 to 15 more lbs on my kids for the fairs and not have to push them so hard with grain to get them to 90 and 100lbs.
Most our kids that were born the first week of February averaged in the 80lb range for the fairs in August. With a couple above 100lbs, but they were pushed hard with grain, and probably need to have less grain and more exericise.

 

[jodief100]

We sell mostly meat and a few for 4-H. I am really considering pushing the "4-H" Dec/Jan kidding back to November/December. It will help spread things out since I need Feb kids for the buck test. I then kid in the spring for the fall meat market. I have a guy who comes every year in the first week of October and buys everything I have. I love those kiddings, I don't creep feed them because pasture is plentiful and this guy wants his goats lean. I am considering doing an May breeding this year to have some kids for the Easter market but I am not sure what my feed costs are going to be. If winter is anything like this last one, it could be very profitable.

Are you selling 4-H to just your county or the surrounding ones as well? We had 6 goats at our county fair last year, but lots more at the surrounding counties. The problem when working with multiple counties is the fairs all start from June- September. This year I had calls from people in OH wanting 4-H kids and they have to be disbudded for OH which I don't do. Trying to plan for 4-H sales is becoming a pain!

How do you plan your kddings?

If you are worried about having to feed the kids longer, do what I do. I take a deposit and will hold your kids until 2 weeks after weaning. After that, I will sell the kid to someone else.

 

[20kidsonhill]

We sell mostly meat and a few for 4-H. I am really considering pushing the "4-H" Dec/Jan kidding back to November/December. It will help spread things out since I need Feb kids for the buck test. I then kid in the spring for the fall meat market. I have a guy who comes every year in the first week of October and buys everything I have. I love those kiddings, I don't creep feed them because pasture is plentiful and this guy wants his goats lean. I am considering doing an May breeding this year to have some kids for the Easter market but I am not sure what my feed costs are going to be. If winter is anything like this last one, it could be very profitable.

Are you selling 4-H to just your county or the surrounding ones as well? We had 6 goats at our county fair last year, but lots more at the surrounding counties. The problem when working with multiple counties is the fairs all start from June- September. This year I had calls from people in OH wanting 4-H kids and they have to be disbudded for OH which I don't do. Trying to plan for 4-H sales is becoming a pain!

How do you plan your kddings?

If you are worried about having to feed the kids longer, do what I do. I take a deposit and will hold your kids until 2 weeks after weaning. After that, I will sell the kid to someone else.

We have been planning our breeding completely around our fair, which is always the week of August 15th, most the neighboring county fairs that we have sold to are right before or right after that, so it hasn't been a big issue. I did get someone this year having a hard time finding show kids big enough for a fair the end of June/beginning of July. Plus they were wanting does. So they were looking for December/January kids and they couldn't find any left.

We have had kids at 4 or 5 different county fairs, including the tri-county fair in West Virginia and the state fair in West Virginia. We sold a kid this year for the state fair here in Virginia, but right now there isn't going to be a state fair, they filed bankruptcy. Our local county fair, which is the biggest int he state, next to the state fair, offered to hold the livestock portion this year. If that happens it will be 5 miles from my house. I am going to need more show wethers. I am sure there will be lots of area kids wanting to buy extra goats for the state fair if it is held right here.

However, our biggest sales and money maker are always replacement does, can never have enough does. I can always get more for the does than I can for most the bucks with the exception of a couple extremes on both ends. We can show does at our fair as well as meat goats, so I would be happy with having 90% does. But with meat goats it isn't a deal breaker if we have a bunch of males.

Our sales are:
#1 replacement animals for breeding stock
#2 show wethers(can be a doe with poor teat structure)
#3 meat
#4 stuff that is left over that isn't doing very well, we don't put a bunch of money or feed into these waiting for them to get bigger, we just sell them off by around 12 weeks of age. Essentially and cut our losses on them. Last year I had 4 kids out of the 35 that I sold, at around 35 to 40 lbs that weren't looking great or growing well. They still brought about $100 a head at the stock yards.
#5 cull does, If I keep 4 doelings, then I cull 4 does. They normally bring 80 to 140 a head.

 

[SuburbanFarmChic]

You may get more money putting your cull does on Craigslist. But then you have to deal with craigslist.