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.