Hank Arrives, Ready for Hanky Panky

Foreground, sporting red collar: the seven-month-old Nubian x Boer cross buckling we purchased.

After the onslaught of bucklings this past kidding season, we felt it necessary to procure a meat - dairy cross buck. His genes will allow us to breed for strong milkers with meaty frames. Culled bucklings will go to market to be butchered.

We found Neal Hill Meat Goats in White County where the proprietor has been breeding over the past six years for large-capacity udders ("Many of their teats reach to below their knees!") and meaty frames. Driving the hour to reach the farm was a delightful adventure. Starting just shortly after sunrise, we battled heavy dew on the windshield coupled with low-slanting sunbeams designed to momentarily blind unwary drivers. The road wandered through bucolic countryside settings, hillsides dotted with green pastures, heavy low morning fog patches over wetlands and lakes, a green metal bridge crossing a broad expanse of river and morning sunlight positioned just so as to illuminate the brightest reds and russet colors of autumn.

This is the meat/dairy goat dam of the young buck we purchased.

The portion of the herd that we saw included the buckling we were purchasing along with both his dam and sire. All of the goats were heavily muscled or "meaty," much more so than any of the goats to date on P&CW Farm.

This is the sire of the goat we brought home.

The sire was a fine example of a meat goat buck. Heavily muscled and full of himself, he trotted out to greet the does when his owner flushed him out of a hen house.

With both parents in the 200 lb. range, and the young buck demonstrating a healthy libido, we were happy to bring him back to our herd. Instead of ferrying out dairy does off to another farm for breeding, as we had planned to do previously, now we can manage the animals on our farm. This reduces stress on the animals and lowers the risk of introducing diseases to otherwise healthy herds.

Although I understand that asking the dairy does to deliver Boer-cross kids (with the large heads common to the Boer breed) will require careful monitoring and nourishment designed to ease potentially-troublesome deliveries, we are ready to assume the responsibility for putting our does at greater risk of birthing complications.

The new arrival, a fine young black buck, has been named Hank. We're hoping he'll be engaging in  some hanky panky very soon.