We will have 4 consignments to the srmga annual production sale. We are still making our final selections from a great bunch of goats. We hope to make the trip to New Plymouth, ID an annual event.

This year has been our best year yet, we brought in some great does and a new buck, and we've sold a lot of our does off this year.  We are down on does, but we are happy with what we've got. The new does we brought in this year are going to up our game, we are excited about the new genetic that we have.  And as excited as we are, we can not wait until the kids are on the ground to look them over.
We've had such a great year for kids too. We have improved the quality of our kids tremendously this last year. We still had some good commercial and percentage kids, but we had a good number of good full blood kids too, and they all found good homes to go to. We also had one kid that stood out above the rest, Extra Power (XP) was set to go to a new home in Wyoming, but after a few months staying here, we've decided its time to prepare ourselves for losing Colossus. We will be retaining XP to replace Colossus.
This year also marked our first year for a lot of new things. We AI'd some does, another few weeks and we will know if that has worked. If we did not get it to work, we are not stopping. I will try anything 2 or 3 times, because we all know I mess up. We also attended some shows out of state, had some fun, and did pretty good. Met some new people, crazy people, but who isn't? LOL
The girls had a great year too. However, they said they did not want to go back to the Utah State Fair...It was too long, and they made us stay too late Sunday night. But they aren't giving up the show ring.....watch out Uintah Basin Junior Livestock Show, the girls have their kids early this year!

and I still haven't gotten everything done that needs to be done.  The barn is full, . . . . that's about it.  I haven't filled my grain back up (I emptied that yesterday), my corrals haven't been cleaned all the way (got that about halfway at kidding time but you can't tell now!), and I haven't even mowed down my weeds. I never have gotten around to fixing the fence in the upper pasture, so I haven't even let the goats out to eat that this year... maybe next weekend....

I keep hearing this over and over, 'That's too much to pay for a goat.' $3.00 a pound on the hoof? Goat prices are on the rise, and they have been steady at $3.00 for a year.


www.producersandcargile.com

We kick off our kidding season on Saturday. First up will be Holly, a 97% purebred. I love the width an bone on this doe, she's bred to Colossus again so we are hoping for another great set of kids. I'm especially excited to see what her doe from last year produces with our strategic power grandson. I feel like we will have a great bunch of kids hitting the ground this year.

Two more weeks and the next two should follow, hopefully with twins this year. With these first three does kidding we should have something to go the the vernal show with. We will be keeping two kids from these first three kiddings for the girls but will have a few for sale that would be able to go to the vernal show for someone else.

Emily and Erica spent the weekend washing goats, clipping hair, trimming feet, feeding the goats, of course napping, and talking everyone's ears off.  I'm sure there were a few people that learned something from the girls.

We have 7 bucks that are ready to go. The youngest of the bunch is 8 weeks. They are all growing good.

We've had 18 does kid, with 33 kids.  We lost a few due to kidding complications, and a few to moms sitting on them while delivering another kid, 10 losses so far.  We still have 9 more that should kid between now and August 1.  So far we have been pretty happy with what we have gotten from Grouse and Colossus.

Losing livestock is devastating in profits for farmers.  The way we were going last year, lost 11 kids, 2 lambs, 1 ewe, and 1 doe, it looks like we started right where we left off last spring.  It is heartbreaking watching the babies arrive and then not have a chance to make it.  The first set of triplets was born 11 days early, so not being as ready as we should have been.....we lost two right of the bat, and the third is fighting for her life.  Her first day went okay, took her home and her mom wanted her back.  A night out in the barn, and she's worse than she was the first hour of her life.  We are trying to get her warmed back up and eating again,

Well, I went and bought some marking harnesses this fall. And I'll tell you what....I love them!  I can tell when the does are bred, and by who.  It makes my life so much easier and it takes the guessing out of due dates.  I've got most of my does bred the first week the bucks were in with the does.  So we are going to