Our friends at Broken Top Farm in Oregon have a fantastic program called Kid Commit - various herds have agreed to furnish doe kids of various breeds.  Youth select a herd/breed in their area and apply for a kid from that herd.  Once they are chosen and have selected their doe kid, there is a set of criteria that they must follow.  We offered either a Sable or an Experimental kid for 2025 and sent a Sable doe kid up North.  Her new owner has done a fantastic job with her and sends us frequent updates - we are SO excited to see what is in store for them next year!  We believe whole heartedly in supporting our dairy goat youth and in helping them to accomplish their goals!!  Be sure to check out the Kid Commit Program | Broken Top Goats and to thank program founders and donors!

This year was filled with ups and downs and at times really made us wonder if we wanted to keep going!  We had a rough kidding season and lost two does to kidding complications - a first for us in twenty plus years of raising goats.  We lost both Faith and her two-year old daughter Flurry.  Losing Faith was really a sucker punch and I still shed tears when I think about her -she did bless us with an adorable doe kid and she isn't too spoiled - yet!We did very well at the May show in Boise - Cherry Butte AOA Fantasia was Jr. Champion in 3 rings and Pearl, our Lamancha Sable 2-year old was Champion Recorded Grade in one ring and Reserve in another.

The year has really gotten away from us!  I can't even say that we accomplished much!  Overnight we hit soaring 100 degree plus days and saw a few days clear up at 108-109!  Couple that with thick, ash filled smoke from an almost 200,000 acre, lightening caused fire back behind our Butte and we took refuge in the house most of the summer!

So hard to believe that it is already April!  We are waiting for our last doe to kid and our cow to calve - today would be a really nice day for it too as the April showers are headed our way!So far four does have given us 10 kids - 6 bucks and four does.  We have luckily had a pretty easy kidding season and the kids are really growing.  We had an oops breeding and have a yearling FF - we had thought she was fence bred by her sire but both doe kids are polled so that would point to our new junior herdsire Abu.  We will be pulling hair for DNA verification to be sure.Working on some farm projects as well as doing some work IN the house while we wait for the barnyard to dry enough for the annual scraping of the waste hay pile.  

Though our temperatures have dropped and we have added some tank heaters and more hay to the animals' diets, we are, thus far, having a mild winter.  Many times though that all changes shortly after the first of the year so . . . We hope that your holidays are all that you would like them to be.  As our children get older it is less about parades and gifts and the like and more about just enjoying being together and of course anticipating kidding and show season!

Greetings one and all!  Seems we will be having a wet, and at the moment, foggy day.  Once the fog burns off, we will enjoy  the last of mother nature's golden splendor.  This year we have been so blessed - from new friends, to show wins, healthy family and animals, etc.  and hope that all of you are feeling blessed as well.We have wrapped up breeding - our new junior herdsire was not quite ready to work this fall so we only exposed four does to the senior boy - we will be taking verbal reservations for Sable and Sable/Lamancha crosses after the first of the year with kids arriving beginning late March and into April.Have a great day and as the saying goes - "gobble til ya wobble" and if the Black Friday  rush is your game - have fun and be safe!

As you can see we have been busy this fall revamping our website and we wanted to share this beautiful photo that our neighbor Kathy D. took of the butte from the end of our road this spring.  We enjoyed beautiful weather up through Halloween - now the rain is coming and going and the butte will soon be snowcapped.Breeding season got off to kind of a late start here.  Our new Sable junior herdsire still has a bit to learn so we used our older boy again this fall on the mature does - he sure has produced some nice, nice kids, so we didn't hesitate.We didn't get as many projects accomplished as we had hoped but there is always next year right?  Speaking of next year - it will be our 20th anniversary and we have our thinking caps on to come up with some fun things to do to celebrate - so stay tuned!!

2023 has just left us breathless!  Sable breeders really pulled it together to keep our breed eligible for future ADGA National Shows!  As Nationals returned to the western states, I made the trip to Redmond, Oregon with one senior doe and four junior does.  I met up and spent the week with good friends Kim and Danny Moore of Thunder Ridge Nubians.  Sables and Lamanchas kicked off the National show with junior doe shows.  The three doe kids showed well placing top ten in their class.  The senior yearling was second in her class and I was absolutely thrilled to be standing in the Championship lineup!  My heart may or may not have skipped a beat when Cherry Butte NHG Fashionista was named the 2023 ADGA Reserve National Champion Junior Sable Doe!  The most thrilling part of the win was doing it with a doe that we bred and raised, fit and walked around the ring.  She is back to enjoying herself - wandering from field to filed, frolicing in the dirt and picking on her little sisters - oh - and she just spent a few days with our junior herdsire - an AI grandson of two-time National Champion Grande Ronde AC Chocolate Chip - stay tuned . . .