Yesterday, our herd took a big step forward. We brought home Ozark Apache from Arcadia Valley Farms. This buck has put quite a few kids in the premium Kiko goat sales and we are proud to have him join our farm. When we looked over our kids for the year 2014, we noticed that both the best doeling and the best buckling had had the same sire- Apache.
I was quite pleased, and surprised, to find out that he was available for sale. We scooped him right up and we can’t wait to get some more of his kids on the ground. Unfortunately, we will have to wait, our does are all bred now. It will be a long wait until 2016, but we are confident that the wait will be worth it.
On our farm, we felt very pleased to have one of the last Iron Horse and Tasman Toia sons (Mufasa) for our main herd sire. This year we had the chance to add a son from Heslington Sesame and Rosemary Bear. He was the product of last year’s embryo flush by Dick Rutherford and Chris Patrick. He weighed out at 57.8 pounds at weaning. In addition to rapid growth, rare genetics, he also has fantastic color (even though we aren’t supposed to care about this, it doesn’t hurt that he is easy on the eyes).
All this to say that we were quite happy with our young herd sires and had our breeding plan for this year all worked out. Then, out of the blue we got a call from a Kiko breeder that we had never met that got us really excited. Ms Ann Rogers got our name from another breeder and heard that we appreciated to older genetic lines. She had a Sunboy 117 (Loverboy) son that she was looking to place. Apparently he had lived up to his sire’s reputation (he was known to produce does that are excellent mothers). She had so many of his daughters that she had kept that she didn’t have many does left to breed him to that weren’t his daughters. So we were able to add a Loverboy son to our herd! We are certainly happy to have him on our farm. We even had a few does left that we were able to breed to him this year.
This year PRG had the chance to participate in embryo with some of the best Kiko breeders in the US. Dick Rutherford (Bear Creek Kikos), Chris Patrick (Ragin’ River Kikos) and Brent Ballinger (Mill Creek Farm) all participated, and we were invited to join them! We brought one of our Loverboy does (Mulan) along with our recipients from Richard Howard in Powder Springs GA.
For those of you new to breeding livestock, let me explain a little about this technique. First, you choose which of your does from which you would like most to have more kids. This might be to increase certain traits or bloodlines in you herd, or perhaps for more valuable breeding stock. Next you select does as recipients which have strong mothering traits (probably want to stick with at least 50% kikos here), and are healthy stock that have kidded at least once. Your animals are then taken to a farm where these procedures are performed (for us, we went to Erin Garnick’s Farm in Crittenden, Ky). It takes several weeks for them to get acclimated before any procedures are done. Then the donor doe and recipients are prepared with hormones, which synchronizes their estrus cycles. If this doesn’t happen, you’re done before you get started. Your donor does is then programmed to supraovulate (release multiple eggs in one cycle) using follicle-stimulating hormone. About one week later, the embryos are flushed out on the donor’s uterus and implanted in the recipient does.
Interestingly, Mulan is herself a product of artificial insemination. She’s a Loverboy (Sunboy 117) daughter out of Lady Blackbird (from Goat Hill Kikos). After much thought and a lot of advice from our partners, we selected TAY Onyx semen to flush to our Loverboy daughter. This cross is known to produce great kids and so we went with a proven winner. Our donor produced 16 enbryos which were implanted on eight recipients. So far we have five does that are confirmed pregnant from the flush. We had hoped for a higher rate of pregnancy, but then, this is our first flush. We’re looking for a kidding date around February 13, 2015. Happy Valentine’s Day to us! And maybe to you, too, if you’d like to add one of these kids to your herd. Keep us in mind and come take a peek next spring!
Also, I got a surprise during this flush. I was looking forward to helping Dr. Peter Lynch in anyway I could, but I didn’t realize how much work he had for me. I got to handle the anesthesia for all the donors and recipients. This felt familiar, since I do anesthesia everyday, but typically on humans. It really tickled me to get to take care of all those goats. You can imagine how much fun my colleagues had when I told them I had been intubating goats!
