Recent Happenings At Reuel Dairy Goats

July 2011: Summer has finally arrived in the Inland Northwest. You wouldn't know it to look outside today since it is in the upper 60's and cloudy this morning but the first cutting hay is in the barn so it must be summer. As usual we are all caught up in the joys, frustrations and work that summer brings.  We started kidding on February 20 this year and delivered our last kids on June 13. It was a good kidding season with the delivery of 52 kids. We had some rough times like the loss of Nissa, a very promising 3 year old, and her kid and the birth of one kid that had a deformed jaw. We lost a couple kids but had a very nice batch of healthy and active youngsters. There is a running narration of our kidding adventures in the section entitled “Kidding Log”. We plan on doing that again this year and hope you find it amusing and educational.

 June arrived with unprecedented cold wet weather and return of the spring show in Spokane. We were delighted to have the opportunity to show the girls this close to home and promptly entered a nice show string. The does did very well and we are looking forward to attending next spring’s show! The show committee did an awesome job and we are well aware of the work that putting on a show like this entails. Thanks for a great job, guys! The girl's show records are posted on the Senior Doe pages.  We scratched our kids this year and came home as the show was running very long and we had things to tend to at home.  Linear Appraisal was scheduled for June 22 at 8:00AM .  We looked forward to the session and spent a lot of time preparing breakfast for the expected crowd. We served breakfast to 30 and lunch as well. It was a fun and educational day.  You can find a detailed description of the day on our Linear Appraisal page and scores there and on the doe pages. Late in June, Kastdemur's Expressway returned from his 2 year visit to the Heino's in CA. Press seems happy to be home but that will probably change when winter comes as he really is a woose when it comes to snow and cold.  He is happy and healthy and looking forward to breeding season. His son Micah has taken his place in CA on lease.

July has been filled with the usual summer barbecues, gardening, hay stacking, and management chores that fill our time. Our kids are growing beautifully, the does are producing well but are looking forward to getting some second cutting hay as soon as it is ready. The second cutting won't be available until, mid august this year but the 1/2 inch of rain we received yesterday will go a long way in assuring that there should be a wonderful crop of second cutting available.

In August there is a local community fair that has a Sanctioned show.  We are planning to attend so the whole herd will again be clipped and  feet trimmed for the big day. Fall will find us at Spokane Interstate Fair & Central Washington State Fair. We are so grateful to the Hendrix family for their help in getting the foot trimming and clipping done on the girls this year as my back has been making it impossible to do the whole herd by myself any more.

On a much sadder note we said good bye to two much loved and appreciated members of our farm family. Miriam and Ruth left us this year and are greatly missed. We are so glad to have Micah, a Miriam son and  Rosette, a Ruth daughter, to continue their moms' legacy.

We sold out all our kids and milkers early this year and want to thank all who have invested in a Reuel animal. We trust that they will do us proud and be an outstanding addition to your herd. We enjoyed meeting with a lot of new faces and hope that we can keep in touch over the years. Our breeding plans will be posted and as soon as they are we will begin accepting kid reservations. In addition there is a "help page" to clarify the breeding plan information. Please refer to it if you have any questions.

We are very pleased at the Appraisal scores for our Micah and Conner does and are looking forward to watching them mature. Both of these bucks and Sirocco have had remarkably consistent offspring and we are very happy to have Press return home as we want to breed some of them to him. 

 Trampus has celebrated his third birthday and he is one BIG dog. He is a love without an aggressive bone in his body! He has matured quite a bit over the past year.  His one desire in life is to be helpful and he insists on bringing our socks up to the living room every morning... We often have very damp socks :-/ He will go and get our shoes when asked and will retrieve my wrist brace on command. Sometimes it takes him awhile to find it. :-) He licks out the calf buckets and then brings the empty buckets to me so I can wash them. He will herd any wandering goats to the milk room on command and is very entertaining. He sleeps with us and sometimes gets booted to the floor when he insists on hogging the bed.