Goats, Goats, & Foal Update

It’s not all about horses around here. My daughter (Kristel) and I joined the goat business together and we have a website and everything. Some of the more difficult endeavors is drawing blood from the jugular vein (on 15 Nubian goats) in order to assure ourselves (and our customers) that we have a clean herd (testing for CAE, CL, and Johne’s). It’s okay if you don’t know what the letters stand for. It’s goat stuff.

Anyway, it had to be in the 80s the other day when we dragged each goat into the barn, clipped a portion on her (or his for the two bucks we tested), wiped down with alcohol and Justan (grandson) held their heads. Kristel slid the needle in and out poured 3mL of blood.

Now, my turn. I am the admin asst. I make sure the blood gets put into the vacumn tubes, time the room temperature then pop them into the fridge. Then we sent off the 15 samples to Fort Worth for testing. Whoosh! It only took us (LOL) 3 hours. Here are some happy goats, and they are glad it’s all over with. They may all look brown or black but all but one have beautiful “moon spots,” and they are all very pregnant!

Here’s our “work in progress” website: https://moonlitacresnubians.com/

My goats are: Echo, Betty, and Mimi, but I hope they all have at least one girl so I can double my herd size.

And lest you think I’m ignoring the foals, Trissy and Knightley are 5 months old and are being weaned. I have a couple of pictures, but I need to take some videos.

I like Knightley best. He is so friendly. All he wants is a rub . . . all day long. His first time with the farrier (kicking myself for not videotaping it), he was so perfect! Trissy was good too, for a “princess” filly. Yes, she is entitled. She is Kristi’s filly and she vies for attention. Kristel has pretty much decided to keep Knightley (instead of selling him). He is the most chill colt we’ve ever seen. Way more chill than Kody. Both of these foals are ten times as gentle as Taffy and Kody (and those foals were pretty chill too). But this is amazing.

And . . . bonus . . . we are pretty sure Knightley will end up as a silver buckskin. She measured Knightley to predict his adult height: just a little over 14hh. (Kody was going to be 16hh). Trissy will be just barely 14hh. Two perfect “ponies”! A pony is anything under 4.2 hh. Both are registered American Paint.