People that do not show goats have no idea of the vast amount of work that goes into showing dairy goats. Our preparation for the 2019 show season began in September 2018 when we started looking for bucks to breed our doe Ivy to. As the winter progressed, I got extremely anxious to start show season, so when I saw a triple ring Sr. & Jr. Doe plus a triple ring buck show and a Nigerian specialty less than three hours from home I got very excited! The MODGA show was slated to take place on May 4th at the Mt. Gilead fairgrounds and the Udderly Wicked team was going to attend.
We pulled our horse trailer out of the mines where we store it during the winter on good Friday and spent the majority of the following day cleaning it from top to bottom and restocking it with all of the animal and human show essentials. Then we had to deal with fixing our awning on our trailer. The last camping outing of the season in 2018 our awning broke and we simply latched it back to the trailer and resolved to buy a new one and replace it spring of 2019. My husband diligently searched for a replacement awning and had it delivered the week before the show. The only problem was this left only one day to remove the old one and replace it with a new one. A task none of us had undertook before! It was not helpful that the Saturday we had to replace the awning was extremely windy!
Rob and I were able to remove the awning without incident, but putting the new one on proved to be more challenging. It took three people to install the new awning, my husband pulling, my step son pushing and me on top of the horse trailer ensuring the awning was feeding into the channel straight! It took a ton of patience and one small hole in our new awning, but we were able to get the new awning on and saved ourselves several hundred dollars!!
The week of the show we had a beautiful 80 degree day where I washed all of the goats and did a dairy clip on them to prepare for the show. Friday May 3rd arrived quickly and I was very anxious and excited. I checked my show list multiple times to ensure I had everything and by 3 PM on Friday we were on our way! We arrived at the showgrounds without incident and began to unload. Once we got the goats all settled in we went to find camping for ourselves. We found a beautiful secluded spot, unhooked and began to set up camp only to find out that the electric at the pole was not functioning! We had to reattach the trailer and move to a spot much closer to the barn and show arena, but also muddier!
Show day was here and we were up and adam by 6 AM. We had breakfast, got dressed in our whites and headed to the barn to feed the goats and get ready for the day. We showed from 8 AM until 8 PM that night and even skipped out on two rings of the buck show because we were so exhausted! We didn't get home and in bed until 1:30 AM.
Overall, our first show of the season was a success with Zoey winning the two year old milker class in ring 2 with 20 other does in it. We look forward to more shows this season and we will keep you updated!
Happy Goating!