The Season began earlier than anticipated on Breezee Creek Farm.
For the 2013-2014 Season, we had “staggered” our breeding’s so we could have fresh milk year ’round, but it ended up not working very well for us. So, we decided for this next season we’d start breeding Does around Thanksgiving, and get them all bred as close together as possible so we could have kids born end of April-early May and just get it all done with at once.
But of course, SOMEBODY had to change the plans!
Our Buck, WRRanch Sir Alfred, came into full rut in JULY! Which of course got our other buck, W4’s Sir Royal Roan, very bucky (“Oooh, competition???”). We had a couple times the bucks found ways of getting out of their pen, fortunately the times they BOTH got out no one was in heat. But, the bucks being in rut of course ’caused our does to start cycling early this year.
Last year, our Doe Durango’s Little Red (a grade, but with superior form and milking capabilities), was taken to our friends at Daystar’s Farm for breeding with one of their bucks. Not once, but TWICE. And Guess what? With those two trips, she still didn’t take! So she was dry this last year.
But, one day in September (two MONTHS before we planned to start breeding), Sir Royal Roan got out of his pen, and went spooning with Little red out in the pasture. And she just happened to be in heat! She took, first breeding this year, with a buck we didn’t plan on using her with! But its not a bad buck for her to be with, he’ll correct things we wanted changed for her kids.
So, we have a doe due February 28, 2015.
November came, and we got Cap N Bells Black Maizie and her cousin Breezee creek’s Prettie’s Princess both bred to Sir Royal Roan. They took first breeding, yay!
We were on the fence a bit about breeding our girl, Breezee Creek’s Miracle of Miracles (MiMi), simply because she didn’t seem quite as wide as the other does. So we chose to wait a bit.
We talked more about who else to breed or hold over for the year, and decided to go ahead and breed Cap N Bells Black Ravon to Daystar’s Prince of Egypt for blue eyed, June kids. So basically we decided to go ahead and try staggering breeding’s again. Ravon was bred to Prince’s Sire, Daystar’s Sir Festus, last year and had 2 beautiful blue eyed kids! But Prince has better breed character than his Sire, so we opted to try him this year and see what we get (not to mention, Prince has very unique coloring, check him out by clicking here!).
And then, we kept watching MiMi, and finally decided to breed her as she had gotten more wide and stocky.
So, summary is, we’ll have 1 doe due end of February, 2 does due Mid April, and 2 Does due early-mid of June. So, every 2 months we’ll have a batch of kids!
We have things we LOVE about each doe and buck, and have been very careful in our pairings this year. Red was our TOP milking doe as a First Freshener in 2013, with a high & wide, tightly attached udder; Ravon is an endurance milker with lovely breed character and the sweetest temperament; Maizie has lots of width, depth, and length of barrel, very stocky (and a daughter of Ravon); Princess has amazing breed character, length of body and ears, and a very quiet, friendly personality; MiMi is quiet, but very curious, she loves new people and food, she has lovely breed character and comes from very nice lines including Saada (Saada El-Levitica show up in her dams pedigree, check out THAT udder!).
In the next few weeks we’ll know for sure if Ravon and MiMi have “taken.”
We won’t be using our boy WRRanch Sir Alfred because he makes very large kids and most our does this year are first fresheners, but he’ll be back in the breeding program for next year to continue his work of bringing quality into our farm!
