Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[B&B Happy goats]

Morning Mike , don't tell Mel this...but Winston has many of Mels great qualities...he will never be a LGD by any means,..... but you were right, that mischievous look is pure intelligence ! He makes us both as happy as when Mel was here, he has that calm nonthing phases him feel, and is such a confident secure loving young boy....I "feel " a mini Mel with me every day....give the big guy my love and a hug

 

[Baymule]

I can’t imagine me without dogs. I’d rather fall and can’t get up and die there with my dogs around me for comfort than be rescued and stored in a warehouse for old people.

Mike your lambing is going great this year. Since Teresa taught me how to run fecals, I sure have a different outlook on my flock. I’m sending one ewe to slaughter, 2 are going to be sold, bred, as starter ewes and I’m only keeping 2 ewe lambs.

 

[Mike CHS]

@B&B Happy goats I bet Winston will keep the smiles coming.

@Baymule we feel the same way about running fecals. It takes a lot of the guess work out of deciding who goes and who stays. Of course we can't tell yet who the replacement ewes will be but we have a tentative list based on the senior ewes history.

Mel was due for his shots so we took him in to the vet and stopped by TSC and then the CO-OP on the way home. He is getting a decent sized fan club with folks wanting to get their picture taken with him. We got him a big chew bone so as soon as we got him back in the kennel, I wasn't a priority for him.

 

[Mike CHS]

One of our ewes that came here from Alabama is working on cleaning off her lamb that was born about 20 minutes ago. There may be another in there but she is showing no sign but then again we thought she had a single last time only to find her feeding twins about an hour later.

 

[Ridgetop]

Your heavy culling and testing is why you are getting such great results. The hardest thing to teach in livestock is the NECESSITY of a heavy culling program. Sometimes you have to cull a large proportion of your flock/herd to get the results you want. It is worth it in the long run to adhere to that program.

We learned it with our first heavy breeding program - 100 cage rabbit breeding and showing operation. Luckily all the culls go into the pot! It is easy with rabbits since you can breed 3-4 litters a year. We have culled entire litters where the breedings did not result in what we hoped for - some lines just don't cross well even though both parents were champions.

We followed that heavy culling practice with our dairy goats, selling anything that did not have a good udder, constant testing and immediate eradication of any animal that didn't pass. We never kept our own breedings for stud bucks - we found it was better to bring in new bucks that gave us improvement. That was harder to convince kids to do since you only get one breeding a year, by the time the does freshened you loved them, and a lost year is gone forever. But by the time we sold out our dairy herd DS2 was one of the top exhibitors, high milk yields on test, and healthy animals. It pays off.

If I were going to buy KatahdIns I know where I would enquire for breeding stock!

 

[Mike CHS]

Every time I get a chance, I let our mentors know how much I appreciate them.

Most of the folks on BYH have animals of some kind but occasionally our charges give us a chance to tell a bit of a story. The lamb that I just posted was a few minutes older in this next picture but it shows how the lamb can go from birth to nursing in under 40 minutes.

 

[Mike CHS]

We went down to get the stock trailer ready to hook up to the tractor and saw that it had one tire flat. Got that replaced at COOP and got it ready to load up. That spot is directly across from where the lambs like to hang out so Teresa took a quick picture.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Holy Cannoli - that's a bunch of cuteness all together in one place!

 

[Ridgetop]

They already look so big!

 

[Mike CHS]

No pictures this time as we had a lot going on but we have a big ewe lamb single and twin ewe lamb. We have three more to lamb and this season will be over.