Bucklings, The New Way to Network

So we have had two of our does give birth so far, in the beginning of March, Blush, our two year old Nubian gave birth to twin bucklings.  This past Tuesday our Clover gave birth to a large Saanan buckling.  We are happy that both of the births came without incident and that we were lucky enough to have Nicole right there during both births so she can help the mommy's out.  All that aside... come...on... couldn't we get at least one little doe!!!? 

Alot of dairy goat farmers call bucklings a useless animal and it is not uncommon to drown the little guys before they have a chance to even make their first baby goat baa sound.  I have found that these three little guys, athough not useful in dairy production, have helped us in a way no doe of ours could do.  They have given us a contact to some families that really love animals.  Some of the families who get these little guys are using them to naturally clear fields and some families are opting to have their buckling registered and using our bloodline as their own stud service.  For whatever the reason for buying the boys from us, we get to learn about, and from, their new owners.

Last night Nicole and I spent a good amount of time with really friendly and positive people.  They saw our ad on Craigslist for the sale of our Saanan buckling, emailed us, and gave us their phone number to contact them.  They arrived at our house around 8 last night and we didn't get back into our house until almost 10. 

Right off the bat we found that they were from Michigan (we are taking over Georgia) so if nothing else we already had something in common to talk about.  But the talk of Michigan was short lived, we started talking about how we got to the point we are now, why we are doing this and where we are trying to go.  We have found so many like-minded people that, if nothing else, appreciate and adapt some our methods to be part of their own. 

Now beyond our rant of feed, pasture grazing, our rotational pastures of our chickens, the free range ducks (that would rather stay near the house than the pond), all of our raised vegetable gardens, our bees (and the organic ways to treat them), the soon to arrive turkeys, our cows, and the future pigs (come to think of it, we talk alot); we got to listen to how and why they got their goats, the neat tradition they have every year making and preserving apple cider, their hay bailing business and their overall values of starting and maintaining their new small farm venture. 

When they decided they should leave, we ended up with someone we can call if ever we need to bounce ideas off of, and we made sure that if they needed help with anything that they are more than welcome to call, stop by or contact us anytime they wanted.

We, by no means, know all the answers but we have tried and failed enough times in different aspects of this farm and we are more than willing to share what we did, how we screwed up, and help others, hopefully costing them alot less in expenses (and time) than it cost us.

This is our little Saanan that was sold last night

The above two nubians were our very first bucklings, notice the little diapers we had on them so they could stay in our house.