This is our seventh year of raising goats. Right from the start I knew I wanted ADGA registered Nigerian Dwarf goats, because I had my heart set on small goats that would make us lots of delicious milk. Year after year since then we have bought and sold many does, and kids.

Today I’m going to take a walk down memory lane of the does we’ve brough in to our farm from outside herds.

First of all were Annabel and DeeDee. I loved Annabel because of her wonderful personality and beautiful gold and white coat. But she was no milker so off she went.

We had already brought in “Sleepytime Goats Mocha” and “Sleepytime Goats Butterscotch”, by the time Annabel left. These two are the foundation for my herd to this day, showing me how much milk a Nigerian Dwarf can actually produce. We kept daughters out of them, while also bringing in a couple other does.

Having purchased a nice buckling locally from Swiftwind Farm, we went to them again in search of a milky doeling to bring in. Nellie was the sweetest and did her best, but never produced much milk for us. Her new owner did tell me years later that Nellie was one of her better milkers, so I think she was just slower to mature.

At this point about 1.5 years into our goating journey, I was still perusing local FB pages for “goats for sale”. I spotted a flashy pair of ND milkers for sale. Pearl and Jewel were purchased on a whim, but sadly also were not great milkers. Looking back, I think Pearl had a lot of potential, and I believe she would have done well on the alfalfa diet my goats are on these days. I really liked Pearl, but to tell the truth, I don’t even remember when or how we sold her. It was about a year after we got her I think. Jewel also found a different farm to live.

Soon after Pearl and Jewel I spotted some promising looking doelings from a small herd in Colorado. Baumgartner Acres Maebree, Baumgartner Acres Willow, and Baumgartner Acres Iris showed me what a really pretty goat looked like. They had some Flat Rock’s lines, similar to what my buck Rumpletstiltskin had. There’s a certain look about that sire line that I really like. But they were also not making enough milk for our needs. Maebree was really a stellar little doe though and I still have a daughter of hers, also not my best milker, but stunning in general appearance. They lacked in mammary capacity, although they were correct and dairy.

Eventually I thought it would be great to try full size goats and bought 2 experimental alpine/nubian doelings. I’ll tell you that they came from a lovely farm and were absoultely beautiful to my eyes anyway. Princess and Gabby. Gabby freshened with gangrene mastitis and although I pulled her through with a lot of babying and prayer, she went to the meat man after raising her one kid. Princess was a great favorite, but she was just too big. She is a family milker for our good friends and we still get to see her sometimes 🙂

By this time I was giving myself pep talks about “never buying another doe” etc. Nevertheless I succumbed once again to a facebook post and found my beautiful “Honey” and her silly sister Bellamy. “1024 Farms BS Fullmooon” aka Honey turned out to be solid little brood doe with a gorgeous udder but not as much milk production as we wanted. I’ve freshened 3 different daughters from Honey out of 3 sires and each one was an improvement on her dam while keeping her good qualities. Bellamy was very pretty, but had only singles for two years and no will to milk. Off she went to a friend, and Honey stayed an extra year to give me one more set of kids. Honey is living a wonderful spoiled retired life at Grace Gate Farm.

Enter one of the silliest things I did so far in the story. We purchased back 4 does that I had sold as kids. My reason for doing so was that when I saw them listed I could see that the owners had all the wrong registered names with all the wrong does! ALWAYS label your group of kids if selling that many at once! I also really had a yen to have Butterscotch’s daughter Daisy back. I just loved her as a kid. Since we were in severe drought at the time we actually took the other three to the sale barn almost right away and kept Daisy. Daisy was a strong milker and gave me a gorgeous daughter. She didn’t score well in LA and was soon sold again.

Now it’s time for some really great news in the whole learning journey. I had followed another Nebraska herd, Wildwood Acrs, for almost as long as we had had goats, and I really started to notice them. On a whim I reserved a buckling out of one of their does and then if I remember correctly I chickened out and canceled the reservation, and then regretted it terribly after the kid was actually born. I was crying over this buckling I was sure I needed, telling Gabe that we had to buy him. This is not normal behaviour for me. I don’t think it’s very dignified to use tears to get my husband to agree with me.

We spent what I considered at the time a shocking amount of money on this gorgeous gold buckling, Farm Wildwood Gallant Lynx, and brought him home. The day we got him was at a show so we also saw Wildwood Acres little herd, and got to see all of his relatives. I was assured that we had made a good choice.

Which leads to further doe purchases, “Farm Wildwood Essie” and Farm Wildwood Cascade”. Essie and Cascade came the same year we bought Lynx. Essie is a paternal sister to Lynx. Both does freshened beautifully, and scored well in LA that year. We quickly realized that Essie was our pick of the two, and was on track to become a foundation doe along with our “Sleepytime Goats Butterscotch”. Cascade is now at a young, growing herd in Kansas.

That fall we once again had the chance to bring in two doelings from 1024 Farms. These were actually generously gifted to us by their owner. Twin doelings, Super Nova and Swiss Miss. We no longer own Supernova, but Swiss Miss is a lovely young doe who shows a lot of promise. She was the first swiss marked goat we ever had on our farm. 🙂

Getting bored yet? There’s more to come! In the summer of 2025 we quickly realized that our customers’ demand for fresh goat milk was more than we could produce, so I purchased a little 2nd freshening doe from a neighbor friend. That little doe had the biggest will to milk I had ever seen, save possibly my doe Butterscotch. Domino somehow wormed herself in to my affections, and that is why when she came down with a severe case of mastitis when we tried to dry her up, I did all I could to rescue her. Our neighbors brought us some high powered antibiotics and praise God she pulled through! She lost half of her udder but bounced back amazingly well. After completely healing up she acted like nothing had ever happend. We did sell her to a family looking for a little home milker. I really think she will proabably try to make just as much milk with one side of her udder as she did with both, knowing her will to milk. I don’t really regret this doe purchase at all because the lessons we learned dealing with her will to milk and gangrene mastitis were really valuable I believe.

Fall of 2025 brought in a few more, and mostly likely our last does purchased for our farm. A few does became available and thanks to one of my goat friends I was able to bring Eggnog, Autumn, and one other doe companion home to our farm. These three haven’t freshened here yet, although Eggnog freshened at my friend’s farm with a really pretty mammary system. We also were able to bring back a doe that we sold as a kid. A “Sleepytime Mocha” daughter, “Plum Bush Mocha Latte”. Latte is a beautiful doe. One of those that had a known what I was doing 5 years ago, would have kept for my own from the start.

Wow! Were you counting? That’s 27 does brought in to our herd, counting the ones that we sold as kids and repurchased.

I have regrets about many of those purchases. Looking back, it would have made a lot more sense to be happy with my first few does, and work with what I had. Essie, Honey and Swiss Miss stand out so far as the three doe purchases after my orginals, that I would really be sad if I had passed up on them.

A common theme that held true throughout all of our buying of does, is that almost all of the does/doelings that actually turned out to be strong milkers were from herds or herdnames that milk their goats regularly.

Those first two years, I would always ask the seller if their does were from good milk production. Usually yes, of course they were. The problem with this is that while a doeling can come from “good milk lines”, the only way to know if they really have the potential to milk is if the herd actively milks their goats and cares about milk production themselves.

Another consideration that I didn’t think too much about in the first couple years of goat farming was disease management. We did try to purchase from closed or clean herds, but there is alwasy a risk of transmitted disease. Thankfully we have never had any diseases in all the years we have had goats. Starting in 2024 we now do annual disease testing. My mind will start to rest a lot easier on this as we get additional years of testing under our belts.

If I’m not mistaken, this story is a common one for newbies to this ADGA Nigerian Dwarf goat world. While my weakness has always been to look for that next hidden diamond of a doeling that I happened to purchase, some are more drawn to the buck purchasing side of things. We’ve never been very enamored with buck buying thankfully. But either way, there just comes a time when you start to realize that you are never going to be able to purchase that perfect animal and it’s time to buckle down and raise them yourself.

In the last two years, I’ve freshened does in my own herd name that look like they will turn out to be better than any does I’ve ever purchased. Both conformationally and in milk test. This is thanks to that wept over buckling purchase, and just plain old hard work and culling until we cried.

I always come back to the question, Why are we doing this? and Is this really important? As a Christian, I always want to bring everything we do here back into that eternal perspective. The purchases that I acted on a whim without much consideration, usually ended up being a bust. The times that I researched, prayed and waited, (maybe cried) usually seemed to have God’s hand in it and stood the test of time.

But no matter the decision, or situation, God has a way of teaching us lessons, redeeming the silly, yucky, or hard parts, and showing His care even in the mundane of farming and normal life. Every time I’ve thought maybe it was time to just close out the whole goat thing, we get a sweet card, or gift, or affirmation from our goat people, or soap customer or friend. God seems to think this is a great way for us to be raising our family, and I want to lean in to that in the coming seasons. The biggest lesson I’ve been trying to learn is contentment with the the things I already have, and a committment to pray and wait and think before chasing the next hidden diamond. Chances are it’s already right here in our own barnyard!