Herd Evolution:
Our base herd when we started in the meat goat industry in 2000 consisted of a few mainly commercial 1/2 and 3/4 Boer-Nubian doelings and some really old mix dairy goats. We learned a lot with these dairy animals and very quickly found out that all of their feed went into their utters to produce milk. Within a few years of breeding with good quality commercial Boer bucks our herd started to transform into pretty good looking meat goats. All of these original dairy animals were culled out over the next few years as we could afford to replace them with the higher percentage Boer-Nubian offspring. We then decided to introduced some Kiko genetics. Our Kiko bloodline came from Les Elevages Franc-Nord. The buck was a black blue eyed purebred commercial Kiko sired by Starbuck. Although we could see the hybrid advantages of the Kiko breeding we also felt that a strong Boer cross was still in need to provide the muscling on the animals.
At that point we decided to buy a papered Purebred Boer buck and started to register up our better stock from 1/2, 3/4, 7/8 and then purebred Boer with the best bucks we could afford at the time. Today all of our does left from those old genetic lines have been bred up to purebreds and we still have a couple of 88% Boer/nubians both that have classified Excellent. Since then we also purchased in a few top quality Traditional Boers to add to the herd genetics.
The advantages that we have seen from selective breeding up from crossbred Nubian and Kiko to high percentage and purebred Boer are that we were able to keep the very best from each bred and generation of genetics.
When we started to raise meat goats in the beginning some complete lines of goats were culled out to improve the herd. It is always difficult to cull animals that are productive and prolific but to continue to improve our herds genetics and work towards consistency, while keeping the hybrid vigor we had to have, and continue to have a breeding objective.
Learning to pick out animals with less desirable genetic traits without discrimination as to who they are, or who their mother was, or just because we like them, as well as keeping good records, allows us to continue to improve and breed better quality stock with each kidding season.
Today we are proud to say that we will continue to cull aggressively to improve our herd and the stock we sell to other breeders. There is, and always will be, room for improvement in every herd when working on breeding for both conformation and strong healthy productive genetics.