Dusty Boot Ranch

Another day working on our wildlife management plan! For all of 2024, we left the east pasture ungrazed. One thing that accomplished was to allow the growth of some young trees to the point that we can identify them. Toward the end of the year, we identified four individual saplings of desirable species (native, not invasive chinaberry) located throughout the area. Today we installed protective cages around them so that we can begin to let the goats back into this pasture and close off the next pasture for 2025 and repeat the process.

It's been a whirlwind few days -- kidding season started last Friday and ended yesterday. Talk about efficient! We'll be monitoring all of these as they grow and updating for potential buyers. Captions with each picture indicate the dams and the gender of each kid.

The sire of all this year's kids is SEV Powder Keg's D'Artagnan. We're looking to get good growth from his kids. D'Artagnan's sire, DDF Powder Keg, was number six out of over 100 bucks for average daily gain at the Langston buck test in 2019. D'Artagnan was a fast grower himself, weighing in at about 39 lbs at two months.

Here's a solid 2022 update! We've decided to focus on our Kiko goat herd, and are no longer raising cows or rabbits. As we've sold our other livestock we've also taken some time to build our herd, retaining quality doelings from our herdsire, DHS Spotacus. Over the years we had Spots we loved what we saw, which was a zero-maintenance goat who consistently sired healthy, fast-growing kids. Spots has now moved to a new herd nearby and we've purchased a new herdsire, SEV Powder Keg's D'Artagnan. Exciting things are coming! Here are a few photos of this year's kids, our last crop from DHS Spotacus, as well as our yearling does.

2022 kids are finally arriving and they're cute as can be! Here are our first three sets of twins.