Opinion on doe

@Ridgetop. Ok, you have to drop some names. I live in No. CA so who bought your herd of LaManchas? And who is/was the herd in Napa that you bought your buck from? Inquiring minds need to know...

Did you ever show in Red Bluff at the fairgrounds?

No, not that far north. Rex and Barbara Backus of Quixote LaManchas bred our beautiful buck Noguchi. that was the year she named all her bucks after artists. It has been about 12 years ago or so. My boy, Carl, who owned the LaManchas is 29 now and sold when he was 19 and in college. During the first months he realized he couldn't do all his studies and the ranch work as well so sold his herd to someone who came to LA Fair. She lived in Inyokern and had been the original owner of Shadow Hills dairy goat name. (We live in Shadow Hills, CA, but no relation to her herd name.) She had gotten out of showing but with a friend was getting back in and wanted to open a dairy I think. I don't remember her name and a few years ago I removed all the goat files so can't look her up. I figured if my husband and I wanted to get back into goats, we would just go to the Hoys. Carl had some lovely animals and we mostly showed in southern California. When he sold, half of our kids were Quixote and half were Lucky Star sired. Broke our hearts to sell, but we had 100 be then and the work load was intense and the hay bill monstrous.
First, we had Toggs (my daughter's first goats), then Nubians for milk (adequate show animals but production milkers) and my daughters 4-H goats until she graduated. My oldest son sold his Toggs (he hated milking) and got into sheep - club lamb production and registered show Hamps. He sold everything when he graduated. My youngest 2 boys had Dorset sheep and club lambs, then back into dairy goats. Carl had LaManchas, Andy had Nubians. They helped each other with the work and showing and weren't competing against each other in the breed ring. They sold the sheep flock, then they added Boers which were ok and they did pretty well with them, but we never got as attached to them as to the dairy animals. There is something about a dairy goat that you bring up on a bottle and milk twice a day that just lets you both know you love each other!
Now my husband and I have sheep to do the fire clearance on our 5 acres. We live on top of a ridge and the slope ranges from 50 to 65 degrees where we have to clear. My husband wanted goats again, but sheep actually do a much better job of the "scorched earth" type brush clearance I like. We are in a bad fire area with no hydrants near us. I opted for Dorset sheep (Carl originally had a nice little flock of them and they are pretty docile which I like). They are not 4-H sheep, not halter broke, just nice breeding animals that produce wool, and mainly meat. We sell our lambs privately.

Is that what you wanted to know? This is kind of new to me and I tend to write too much.

You did fine

I was wondering if the herd in Napa was Quixote. I have a couple of goats with that line in them but they are both really petite and people that I have talked to that have had LMs for a long time say that the Quixote line was always large goats. I guess the offspring that I got from them must have inherited a dainty gene somewhere. One of the does just freshened yesterday and the kids are tiny so unless they grow out really well I guess the dainty gene is going to follow me. I would like to sell both of the does I have to someone that wants to raise minis, they would be good for that. I really like BIG goats.

I can't even imagine 100 goats. I have about 50 right now but most of those are kids and need to leave. I am building a dairy and my goal is no more than 30 milkers. Of course I have a few does that I don't milk that will just retire here and I have a few does that just need to leave. That is my hardest problem...what to do with an unproductive doe; one that either has itty bitty teats, small orifices, or just a low producer. No place in a dairy string for them and really not a home milker either. But I feel so guilty sending a doe to auction

Our Quixote buck was a nice big buck. He threw slightly smaller kids, but they grew out. Magnet was the same size but threw huge kids. We used Noguchi on first fresheners since the birth size was easier on them. Magnet we used on the mature does. If they just have some Quixote bloodlines but didn't come from Barbara, I would guess that they got the small gene somewhere else.
When it comes to selling off some of your stock, you need to steel yourself but it is hard! My husband would complain about the amount of goats we had so I would finally cull out those that were not the best and take them to the auction. When he came home and noticed they were missing, he would complain that I had sold them! Remember there is only so much money for hay and grain. You have a plan to build your dairy, so you have to stick to it! Poor teats for milking - take her to the auction. Unbalanced udder - take her to the auction. Low producer - take her to the auction.
Make sure that you are keeping good records and weighing your milk. Some goats freshen big then trickle down, while others seem to freshen slowly into their lactation. It is the overall lactation yield you want to measure when deciding to keep a milker. This means a year round milking schedule and a minimum 10 months lactation. Also, practice "challenge milking". The general rule is to feed grain lb for lb to the milk, i.e. 4 lbs of milk = feed 4 lbs grain. So when her lactation is at its height, slowly cut the grain until the mik yield drops. Then bring the grain up just to where the milk yield is highest. You will find that you can cut your grain costs while keeping peak production.
Over the years we found that in our area we had an ethnic market for young buck kids. At first we disbudded them and castrated them. When we learned that ethnic buyers want uncastrated buck kids so we stopped banding them and made more $$ per kid. Since we were selling at 2 months old we really didn't need to disbud, but did it anyway since we did all the doe kids. Also, you ill find that ethnic holidays are the times when you will get more $$ for your buck kids so breed for a 2 months old kid before Easter and make sure you get them to the auction about 3 weeks before then. A lot of people like to feed the kids themselves for a while beforehand. At first we bred for everyone to freshen in January but eventually milked year round when we went on test. You will want to stagger your breedings so you will have milk available for sale all year. Since goats are seasonal breeders (especially the Alpine breeds) you will also want to watch for does and bucks that will breed out of season. Nubians have a longer rut and breeding cycle. You will want to keep bucks that stay fertile longer. Another trick is to keep a young buck for use in the summer since they tend to stay more fertile in the heat.
By the way, some of our special goats never left - it just happens no matter how hard you try to be all business! We were more surprised than anyone to count the goats when they went into the trailer and find that we had 100! At least half were doe kids - that year in particular it seemed we had triplet does out of all our best does.
Good luck on your dairy plans. We had planned at one time to have a goat dairy, but in California you have to be Grade A licensed to sell milk. The cost of set up was prohibitive so we abandoned the plan. We loved our goats though and sometimes I wish we still were milking all of them. I must be crazy right?!

Wow, you are a wealth of information and thank you for the idea on the grain. I would like to go on milk test next year but I want a meter and not mess with weighing between each goat; that would be a challenge. Right now I have no idea how much each doe gives or for how long. I am letting them raise their kids too as I just don't have time this year to bottle raise since I am working on the construction. All my does are tested for CAE so I am ok with this but next year it will be all bottle time. A lot changes next year.

I am building a Grade A dairy in a two trailers. One trailer was already licensed as a milk bottling plant and we are converting one of the rooms he used as an office to a place to make cheese. The other trailer will house the milking parlor and the milk house. We are building it all ourselves and hope to have it ready for the first inspection by July. The inspector has been very helpful and receptive to this so I hope and pray it all works out.

I was originally planning on only making cheese but when I found this trailer things changed a little and now I will do fluid milk and cheese and will add yogurt and kiefer later. I wasn't planning on having goats in milk year round and now that has changed too. I did however buy a Nigi buck so he can breed my girls anytime they are ready. If I am not keeping all the kids I thought I would test the market for mini Alpines and see what happens. I am buying or borrowing a LaMancha buck though as I would like more LM does and I like to keep my ears segregated. I have a pretty nice Alpine buck too and he will stay here for at least another year, he is only a year old right now. I threw quite a few girls this year too so an added plus.

I have one Togg and her milk is pretty bad early in her lactation, but boy does she milk. Fortunately when I mix her milk with the rest you don't notice the taste. As far as getting rid of does it is just hard for me, really hard. Even if they are good milkers there comes a time when you need to retire them and I don't want to run a goat retirement home in addition to a dairy. Someone suggested that I sell does at the age of 5 as family milkers...might make sense to keep a young herd but I don't want a herd of yearlings either. It is a tight rope walk I think. I want to raise my own kids though, that is the fun part and gives me more control over disease.

I could go on, but I think I hijacked this thread

Babsbag: Congratulations for doing your homework before getting too far into it. Congrats on the doelings too. Dairy people are only interested in females. When kids were born the first thing we checked as soon as they were on the ground was sex. Celebrations when it was a doe, sadness when it was "junk". They were all cute, but the money is in the does. You are right about retiring some of the milkers at an older age but a good doe will milk well until she is about 10. Once you are on test it will be easier for you to keep track of the annual yield which is the most important. The test results you get back will also show you the amount of butterfat in your milk which weighs less than milk solids. Milk test is super important for any dairy herd and I am so excited you are going to do it. It is a lot of work, but it will be so beneficial for your dairy and cheesemaking business.
You could scope out the 4-Hers in your area as a sale resource for your nice milkers that are not quite up to the yield you will need. You didn't mention showing your goats which would be an additional resource for sales. It is a fine line between commercial dairy and cheesemaking and having the time to show as well. If you have children they can do the showing at youth fairs to start and then move into open. They also can do a lot of the kid raising for you.
I love your conversion plans - you are much further along than I realized. Dairy business is very labor intensive. Use bucket feeders for the kids next year. You can make them yourself out of 5 gallon plastic buckets. You will want all the milk for your business and kids will take up to a quart until they are weaned. You can raise the doe kids on half replacer/half goat milk if your own milk makes you more than the cost of replacer. Dump the buck kids at a month old or younger after they have had colostrum.
Don't forget to get a small pasteurizer to heat treat your colostrum so you can keep some in the freezer in case of disaster. I used to heat treat my colostrum and feed it the first day then freeze the rest. Since it takes 2-3 hours to heat treat it saves a lot of time and trouble if you have it already treated and frozen. That way you can do the heat treating at your convenience. I add blue food coloring to my pasteurized milk and heat treated colostrum so it is easy to see which is which. Even though we tested every year for CAE we still heat treated colostrum and fed pasteurized milk. It can save you if a goat becomes positive. I had that happen to a doe after she went to a breeder who advertised that she tested for CAE! She may have done, but she was obviously keeping positive animals!
I am so excited for you. I will keep watching your posts about the progress of your dairy. If you start a new thread let me know so I can read about it. I am still figuring out this website and can't always find prior threads I liked - I am not very good at this yet LOL - just an old farm lady! Good luck!