Last Updated February 2024
About Our Farm
We have several interests on this farm, dairy goats being one of the main ones, but we also raise exhibition Silkies and Polish. We have had our flock of Silkies for about 12 years now, and enjoy breeding them to the standard of perfection and seeing improvements in every generation. That is also how we manage our goats, and we use the performance programs that the American Dairy Goat Association offers to help us improve out herd.
Linear Appraisal
Linear Appraisal is a classification system that scores animals on a linear scale. We treasure the information we get from LA sessions as the scores aren't subjective like show titles can be. In a show, you are showing your animals against all the other animals that showed up that day. With appraisal, your animal is being scored on a set of standards that all goats across the US are scored on. You can then take your scores and learn what the weaknesses and strengths are in each animal, to make more informed breeding choices.
DHIR
DHIR is also known as milk test and our herd participates in this program as well. Like a lot of people, we went on test chasing stars (milk stars, that is) but quickly saw the value in the data we were receiving every month when our test results came back. The accolades of having a high producing doe on test are wonderful of course, but the biggest prize in being able to see very quickly how management changes affect your herd's performance, as well as have an early heads up on udder health by watching the SCC counts. The worst part about going on DHIR is the paperwork to get started. After you are set up the testing part is easy.
DNA
The 3rd part of the performance programs is the DNA testing. We DNA all of our bucks and are slowly working on getting all our does done as well. We not only test DNA, but also for the G6S mutation and for Alpha S1 Casein. It is costly to do all 3 tests, but we feel it is worth it to reassure our customers that our animals do not carry G6S and also to match the right goat with the right person. This will depend on whether they want goats because someone has a milk allergy or if they are wanting milk that will produce a high cheese yield. Most of our animals carry a high casein which is better for cheese making, but we have a few girls with the lower casein which is better for people with lactose intolerances.
Other animals in our family include 1 riding horse and 2 minis, 3 livestock guardian dogs, assorted laying hens, turkeys, ducks and guineas.