Breeding Philosophy
Goats are naturally fertile and we plan to continue in that pursuit. We have split our herd into two “groups” and kid every 4 months, an 8 month rotation per group. Our goal is to keep a goat that will breed back with twins every 8 months along with being able to handle a primarily pasture based diet. While this is a fairly uncommon production cycle we believe it is one of the key attributes of goats and that it should be utilized to its fullest potential.
Along with fecundity, we are utilizing 100% New Zealand Kiko’s to increase our parasite resilience and we believe an 8 month production cycle for New Zealand’s is an easy yet necessary part to continuing the refinement of the Kiko breed. Our main herdsire “Buster” comes from a herd that breeds at different times of the year and also has multiple bucks performance tested at West Virginia University every year.
Breeds
We focus mainly on incorporating two breeds into our program, Boers and Kikos. The further into goat farming we get the more and more we are expending our Kiko genetics, especially the 100% New Zealands. Although we focus on Kiko and Boer breeds, we have some Savannah and Spanish genetics in our herd as well. We don’t care what color the hide is or where they came from. We base all our replacement stock on whether or not they perform based on records and metrics we set for ourselves.