DeLuna Acres, LLC

Another clean herd test year !!!! Pleased to post these results.

September marks the end of our farm’s 7th year in existence and keeping with tradition, we capture the highs and lows experienced in this yearly anniversary posting. Overall this was a much better year than last due to the impact COVID placed on all of us. The good news is that our dairy business has really taken off with demand often exceeding supply. Our two retail stores, Cliff’s Market and McIntyre Farms consume a large supply of our milk and cheese with the rest going to our loyal, recurring farm customers. Unlike in years past, we did not have to dispose of any milk thanks to the continuous demand !!! The bad news was kids sales which has been a low point for the majority of goat breeders this year. Anticipating a bad year, we intentionally scaled back on breedings to limit the number of kids born and made the decision to milk a number of our older does through rather than breeding them. This gave us the added benefit of having a recurring milk supply throughout the winter months when goat milk is hard to find. This year we will do the same and increase the number of does milking through to maintain a sufficient milk supply for our customer base.

Our herd continues to mature from the bottle babies that jump-started us back in 2016 to a herd size of ~45 today. In addition to the goats, the farm still has the 4 llamas that provide excellent predator control, Scarlett and Bella, the farm’s standard poodles, Estelle, the barn cat that keeps the mouse population in check,  APPI our 9 yo Appaloosa Gelding and the 2 newest (horse) additions, Tophat, a 13 yo Paint Quarter Horse and Blaze, a 9 yo Norwegian Fjord. Lots of mouths to feed and care for !!!

This coming year we will breed 20 does and milk through 11-12 does. We will again leverage our existing 5 herd sires in addition to our newest herd sire, Kastdemur’s Roatan. We plan to AI 5 does with some really exciting semen recently acquired. And we plan to collect all our bucks this year, making their semen available to other breeders. We’ve had a number of requests for buck semen the past 2 years and never found the time to collect them.

2023 was another great year in the show ring.  We scaled back a bit on shows attended due to the National Show being held this year in Oregon that committed us to a week long stay. We still were able to participate in 5 shows  garnering  22 class wins, 7 Grand Champions, 6 Reserve Grand Champions, 3 Best in Breed and 2 Best in Show placings. 

For the first year since we started the farm, hiring and retaining good farm help has not been an issue. Having a stable workforce is such a blessing and allows us to accomplish other tasks that help to grow the farm. May this trend continue in the coming years.

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.  Onward to another prosperous year !!!

Another clean herd year on CAE, Brucellosis and TB !!!

Our 2023 Breeding List is now available and can be found on the home page of this site under the “Breeding Program” tab.

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.  

The 2021 ADGA Elite Doe List has been released and these girls from our herd once again are on it for the second year in a row: Tempo HT Jasper and Sweet Deseret’s SFM Heckofa. Does designated Elite are in the top 5% of their breed nationally, an incredible accomplishment !!

September marks our farm’s 5th anniversary and keeping with tradition, we always capture the highs and lows experienced in our yearly anniversary posting. While 2020 was an extremely strange year, 2021 showed remarkable recovery. Shows were no longer cancelled due to COVID and a limited number of LA Appraisals were conducted across the country, sadly we were not fortunate to have a scheduled appraisal, missing our second year in a row. Appraisals provide critical data we use in our breeding program and herd growth, maybe next year.

Our herd continues to mature from a few bottle babies that jump-started us back in 2016 to a herd size of ~35 today. This past year was our largest breeding program to-date, producing 53 kids and the second year in a row we didn’t have a “buck dominant” year – 22 doe kids, 31 buck kids born. We were able to retain 11 doe kids for our herd expansion and are really excited at their development, to-date. Another exciting addition is our new herd sire we acquired from Cindy Silva at Rockin-CB,  Rockin-CB KMM Naga. Naga’s pedigree is staggering starting with his dam, SGCH Rockin-CB RZ Haiku, the 2021 National Grand Champion and his sire, *B Kastdemur’s Modern Man from the 2019 National Reserve Grand Champion, SGCH Kastdemur’s Vintage. We cannot wait to leverage Naga in our breeding program.

In 2021 we focused heavily showing our juniors vs. milkers to help gauge their development and we were not disappointed with the results. We participated in 6 sanctioned shows including the Syringa (Boise), Cache Valley (Logan, UT), BDGA (Hamilton, MT), Montana State Fair (Great Falls), Union County Fair (LaGrande, OR) and the Twin Falls Fair (Filer, ID). Our results included 30 class wins, 9 Grand Champions, 9 Reserve Grand Champions, and 3 Best in Show. 

Sadly the accomplishments did not come without setbacks. In June we lost 2 of our best senior does, Lucky*Star’s TD Kadara and Huricane-PM Golden Sai, both to a rapid and consuming case of mastitis. Kadara’s year started off with a bang when she milked 15# on her first milk test. Similar to Kadara, Sai, a first freshener had an outstanding junior show season and we anticipated strong show results as a senior, sadly that was not to be. We are fortunate that both does provided us with a doe kid we’ve retained to carry on the genetics. Kadara blessed us with DeLuna Mirabel who managed to secure her championship dry leg at the Syringa show and Sai blessed us with DeLuna Naimah who had a Grand Championship placing at the Twin Falls Fair. We are hopeful these girls will carry on their dam’s legacies.

Next month kicks off our annual breeding program with 23 does slated for breeding, 8 of those being first fresheners. It will be another crazy March and April as kids begin to arrive and inhale milk from lambar buckets as quickly as they’re filled. Fortunately we get a few down months in the winter to rest and re-charge before the crazy season starts up again.

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.  Onward to year #6.

Now available for review: http://box5217.temp.domains/~delunaac/sales/lamancha-breeding-list/

Entire herd tested clean again this year !!! Attached are test results from the Idaho State Lab along with the Inhibition % for each tested animal.