Next round of pregnancy tests came back today - an even split between the does open and does pregnant. I try to look at the on the bright side every time a doe comes back open. Maybe it is good because we can use a better buck, maybe it is good because we can have kids in a different age bracket. Reality is that I hate does coming back open. So instead of looking on the bright side of the open does – I am choosing to look at the conception rates we have And boy am I excited about those!!!!!
First one of our Alpine-Lamancha crosses are on its way. On the down side, we had hoped 2 of them were due at the beginning of February. Instead of more senior kids (yay!) we will have more junior kids (sigh). The best way I can look at it is that 1 more Brazil daughter is 1 more than we would have had before.
Speaking of Brazil kids, the next positive test we got was Alaska. Of all our Lamancha kids this year – she is definitely one of the prettiest, and she is bred to Brazil. In fact she is the only 2010 kids bred to Brazil. These are kids to really be excited about so I really am glad that she settled with immediate kids. Unfortunately, Ysis’ daughter Artemis – also bred Lamancha for my (starlet lace) first Lamancha kids – came back open. This wasn’t too surprising since we thought we might have seen a heat 3 weeks later and rebred her as such. Still it would have been nice if that second heat was a false heat instead of a real one. Once again, I have to remind myself that Artemis is on the smaller side and really she could use some more growing time. Plus the buck that we bred her to (Arabica) is on site – we can always rebred her again until she settles. Even if she didn’t settled she really would do fine as a dry yearling – selfishly I really want Lamancha kids but I also understand that with goats patience is part of the lifestyle.
I have left the best news for last– the doe I MOST wanted to bred settled!!!! We bred Zinfandel AI – no wait that isn’t exactly right – I bred Zinfandel AI. My first successfully settled doe by AI!!!! I can’t believe it! Sure things could all still go wrong but you know how excited I am!!! (Perhaps you can tell by the exclamation points). Now I feel like I can try this again next year. My ideal cross is with Azalea and some really pretty genetics I have in the tank. Maybe next year it will happen!!
The only other interesting thing to talk about is our Togg girls. I posted last week that they both came back open. We brought both of them into heat this weekend and looked at AI’ing both of them. When we tried to pass an AI gun on Lanney it worked no problem. Maybe she just wasn’t have good heats because she showed the best heat we have seen on her all year. We chose to use some of our nicer (more expensive) semen on her because she was so strongly in heat. Hopefully we will end up with some really nice kids from this cross. Maybe next year we will even have a new Togg herd sire… wouldn’t that be nice!!
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