Show season starts out in May and the promise of summer and all of the fun activities await, and here we are at the end of August and I am looking back at the past four months wondering where the time went?! We have been to a goat show or camping adventure every single weekend since the first weekend in May, now that our showing season is done, I am not going to know what to do with myself.... I joke.... We have plenty of projects here slated for the fall. Mainly, putting a run in shed up in the buck pasture and running water and electric from the barn to the buck house, run in sheds and automatic watering devices out in the field, so that should keep us busy until the snow flies.
But enough talk about the late spring and summer that has since passed. We attended our last ADGA sanctioned show back the first weekend in August and it could not have gone better. We were very excited to go to the LHDGA show for a number of reasons, one it is run by an awesome group of friendly people, and two our friends in which we sold a doe kid to last year were planning to bring her and exhibit her! We were anxious to see them and Willow and to see how Willow stacked up against the competition!
The show day started off with a slight tinge of disappointment. I had a crazy day with work the day prior and was not able to pull my kids until 5 PM the day before the show. I usually pull them around 2-3 PM, because you can always take milk out, but not put it back in. So when I went to check on Tanky my 2 year old her udder was not nearly as impressive as it usually is, but we continued on, because it is what it is! I was still excited because this was my first time showing at a Nigerian Specialty and I was interested to see how it went!
The show started well, with both Zoey and Tanky winning their classes. I asked Rob to help me show Zoey in her age class in the champion line up as I showed Tanky. To both of our shocks Zoey was named Grand Champion Nigerian Dwarf! This made her second leg of her championship. We went into the second ring hopeful, and even more excited as this was the Nigerian Specialty ring, again both does won their classes and Zoey went on to win Grand Champion again finishing her official championship! We also went on to win the Dam and Daughter class as well! The prizes from the show and the Nigerian Specialty were amazing! We were so excited to add another finished champion to our barn! It is a pretty special thing to be able to say, but every single one of our does in our barn have won at least one leg towards their championship, including our retired girls that either never freshened or only freshened once!
We moved to the Jr classes, where Maggie and Trudy won their classes. Then we moved to the grand and reserve champion lineup and Maggie was chosen as Grand Champion Jr. Nigerian! I was absolutely blown away!!! We moved to the second ring and showed only Trudy since Maggie earned her dry leg already in the previous ring. To our shock and surprise Trudy won her class and was placed as Reserve Champion Jr Nigerian at only three months old!!! We went on to win the produce of sire and get of dam class in the Jr ring as well!
Then the absolute icing on the cake was at the very end of the show when I took Maggie into the JR best in show line up, this was against some gorgeous full size girls, with the Lamancha and Sannen being my bet for best in show, I was absolutely floored when the judge picked me and Maggie! The tiniest goat out in the arena! We won Best in Show!! I was absolutely so thankful to be able to end our show season on the best note possible! We are already looking forward to breeding season and our 2022 show season! Stay tuned next week for our Dayton Fair 2021 blog! Happy Goating!