You may think we are crazy, but we went ahead and bought another goat! Yes, Yes I hear you, but you already have several goats of various ages, colors and genetics, why do you need another one?! Or if you are like us, you think that the more goats the merrier!
The answer is simple as to why we bought another goat, we needed another buck. Even though we had a scary experience with Turbo, our little keeper buckling, we knew he would need a companion and if we were going to keep one buck , why not keep two? Additionally, I needed a buck that was unrelated to Turbo’s mother that also had good genetics to improve our herd. Once we made the decision I commenced my search from far and wide and settled on a beautiful chocolate buck with blue eyes. It was not his blue eyes but his outstanding genetics and milking lines with a very strong front end assembly that made the decision for me. The only problem was this buck was located about 4.5 hours away from our farm in Michigan, so we put into motion operation Branson retrieval.
Thankfully, my in-laws live in Cleveland which is only about three hours from Ira, Michigan where Branson was. So last Friday we loaded up our trusty SUV with a tarp, a cage, a collar and lead rope, my goat emergency kit and a water dish and headed out on an adventure. We spent the night with my in-laws and had a wonderful visit, getting up at the crack of dawn to go out for a nice breakfast and hit the road. Branson’s previous owners had asked we not arrive before noon, and we wanted to be home before dark to do evening chores at home, so we were shooting to arrive exactly at noon. After driving through all of Ohio and a good chunk of Michigan we arrived at Swallow Hill Farm where Branson was born. We met with his owner and got a run down of all of his vaccination records, registration and took a look at his parents. Then I got into the pen to check Branson out.
I had poured over pictures and videos of him, but meeting him in person I was quite pleased with him! I checked him for extra teats and made sure both of his testicles had descended. Thankfully, everything was in place as it should have been and we loaded Branson into the car for the long ride home. Thankfully, since he was only born in February his buck smell was not overwhelming in the car. He traveled calmly after a few minutes of crying and decided he was on a grand adventure.
We arrived home just before 8 PM and took Branson to his new home where we have been quarantining him. We try to be very careful with the health of all of our animals, doing annual testing for CAE, CL and Jones. We also tarp all of our pens and spray them with disinfectant when we go to shows. So even though Branson came with negative test results, we wanted to be 100% sure he was not introducing our herd to anything.
We are looking forward to showing him in July at a buck show and to see what kind of kids he throws next spring! Stay tuned for our next adventure!
Happy Goating!
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