After unsuccessfully breeding War Dancer to several does recently, we took him to the vet last week to have his sperm tested. The results was he had an infection in his testicles, was now sterile and it could not be corrected. He was an exceptional breeding buck because of the structure of his kids; the ability to clean up the teats on does; produce traditional color from traditional does; produce color if the doe had a strong red gene. This is  devastating news to a small breeder like us that normally only  keeps only 2 breeding bucks. It is especially difficult when it comes at a time we had just sold Reloaded Ammo and the majority of the new buck kids had already been sold or have been spoken for. We are now in a crunch to decide how we will approach building back our breeding program for the next season in order to meet our breeding strategy and meet the needs of our customers. That is a delicate balance to stay true to what we believe we want to raise and continue to satisfy customers.

Our breeding strategy has always been to develop Boers that will provide the genetics to produce top quality meat goats since the Boer is a meat goat. If they can be show quality animals, that is fine but we will not breed for features that can not be financially justified related to the ability to produce lots of meat in a short time, be hardy and does that can produce for a long time.

War Dancer at 18 months old

"She's an Angel" at 3 weeks old.
This is the last War Dancer kid and certainly a keeper according to her quality and for sentimental reasons

• Show quality
• Lots of Ennoblements in the pedigree
• Offspring from one of the latest "must have" animals in the industry
• Has a unique color

We have produced genetics that produced show quality animals even though we don't show any more. (see congratulations). We have produced Ennobled animals. (see Ennobled). We do bring in specific genetics that have proven to produce the type of Boers we prefer. (see New breeding schedule). We do like reds and paints. (see New Colored Does).

We will not go back into showing our animals to try and get ennobled points. It is much too expensive, too much politics and would drive the prices up we would have to charge to cover the expenses. Consider the costs some of the big named breeders have in order to provide those ennobled genetics with major wins at the big shows.

• $20 per animal per show for entry fees and there are tons of shows available now.
• Transportation to the shows across multiple states
• Motels and meals while traveling
• Equipment for showing
• Purchase of high dollar animals to flush
• Flush costs
  • recip does could cost $200- $250 each and it is recommended to have 10 recip does for every doe being flushed.
  • cost of keeping recip does
  • cost of breeding fee for flushing with big named buck. Could be $1,000
  • cost of person to do the flush
  • cost of flushes that do not work.
• Production sale expenses
  • advertising
  • generally provide a free meal to potential buyers
  • transportation to production sale facilities
  • Facilities for holding production sales. Normally will have to have it for 3 days, one for setup, one for sale day and one day for moving out animals and equipment
  • Auctioneer fee
  • Services for online viewing and bidding such as DVAuction.
• Fee for person to do the commentary on each goat during the sale.

These are dramatic expenses that we no longer have to have and therefore can offer our animals at a much lower price and still make a profit.

One option we will likely consider is the one we used in Purchasing Reloaded Ammo, with his highly desirable genetics, breed with him for one season and then quickly offer him for sale. This gets us some of the same genetics that are in the best production sales but we did not have any of their expenses. (see Buck for Short Term )

Raising Boer goats certainly has its pros and cons. For the pros, everyone seems to fall in love with the Boer goats, their personality, their beauty, and the high interest the industry has in them. The cons are the frustration when something happens to them and how sad it can make a person after you have started considering them a part of your family. We have had the sad times before and I am sure we will see more in the future but we certainly believe it is more than worth it every time we see some of our new kids being born. Every one of them seem to look like potential future grand champions. So this will be a great time for us to re-evaluate our breeding herd, what is going on in the rest of the industry, make some adjustments and look forward to a better tomorrow.