Dairy Goat Conference

Saturday, the 4H Goat Club the girls belong to attended our local goat conference which attracted speakers from all over the county on the topics of dairy and Boer goats. The club ran a concession stand in order to raise money for County Fair supplies and seemed to be pretty successful. A total of four session blocks were offered, and our family attended a goat ice cream making class, fecal count class, skins issues class, youth showing and market goat raising class, as well as others. We learned a lot and took a home a handout packet/booklet just about an inch thick ... plenty of information to reference to down the line.

Kari & Maddie

Hey! This is Megan again. Here are some pics of my goats, Kari & Maddie. Maddie is Kari's daughter, born March 22nd, 2007. Kari was born on April 28th 2005. Kari and Maddie are Miniature Toggenburgs. Kari and Maddie's real names are "Hay Munchers Fudge Bayou Kari" and "ACF Blue Mocha Madison".

This is Kari... (above)

And this is Maddie... (above)

Goats

Hi! I'm Megan and I am writing about our goats. We currently have nine goats: Kari, Maddie (Kari's daughter), Windy, Wroxy, Vega, Tuck, Rose, Tori, and Abby... and of course, many more coming! We started out with just two little Pygmy goats: Abby and Willie. Then we got Kari, a Miniature Toggenburg, that resulted in having to sell Willie because he was being mean to poor, little bottle-baby Kari. Then came Vega, an 75% Oberhasli 25% Alpine doe. Nicole then got two Boer goats to sell in the county fair auction... Rose and Kip. They did not get sold, so we sold dear Kip, and we kept Rose as a breeding doe, who soon became a two-years-in-a-row champion at the county fair. The next year, Nicole got two more market goats, Kippy and "Blue-Tag". Unfortunately, Blue-Tag died, and Kippy was sold in the auction that year. Since my little sister, Hailey, had issues with selling Kippy, we bought a 75% Alpine 25% Oberhasli doe, Windy. Soon following Windy, we got a breeding Boer doe, Victoria (Tori). After that, Rose, Kari, and Vega gave birth to a total of eight kids. Kari gave birth to a doe named Maddie and two boys named Fox and Bunny. Rose gave birth to three boys, which sadly, two of them were born still born. The other kid is named Spud. And Vega gave birth to a cute, fuzzy, little girl named Ella, and a cute, fuzzy, little boy named Tuck. Eventually, Fox, Bunny, Ella, and Spud were all sold. Fox and Bunny were sold to our neighbors, Spud was sold as a buck, and Ella was sold to the owner of the sire. When county fair came up, (which may I say, our goats did VERY well there) I bought a Miniature Nubian, Wroxy. We have four goats that are going to have babies this year, Kari, Windy, Wroxy, and Vega. We are all very excited for more little kids to play with! Check out the pictures of our goats this our blog!

Video of Nicole and Gus daubing at OHSET

OHSET - Day Two

Well, Sunday brought another great day for Nicole and her horse Gus at OHSET. She broke the Tri River Valley district record for steer daubing, just set last year, with a 1.23 second daub. Take a look at the video to see her and Gus daub that steer! As well, her team penning team took first place at the meet being the only team to pen cows for all three of their "goes".

OHSET

OHSET stands for Oregon High School Equestrian Teams. Our oldest daughter, Nicole, participated in her first meet of the season today at a "somewhat local" county fairgrounds. She competed in gaming events and bettered almost every one of her times from last year. By the way, "somewhat local" refers to an hour's drive to get there. She has a blast running the gaming events with her friends she has met during the past three years participating in OHSET. This year her gaming events included the two-man birangle, barrel racing, individual flag race, figure 8 stake race, keyhole race, and Canadian team flag race. We'll be there tomorrow as well for the cattle events: steer daubing, roping, and team penning. GO NICOLE!!!