Sunday, July 3, 2011

Tough Decisions

Well, today wasn't the best day of the week for sure. Delbert and I made the decision to sell most of our unregistered stock. That meant all the Boer goats left. We also decided to sell Samson as he wasn't up to our standards for our dairy goats. Two of the goats that we took to the auction were in the group of the first goats we ever bought. Molly is an older Boer goat and Squirt came to us as a baby. It was really hard to see her go. One thing I did learn, I can't take goats to auction. Any future goats will be sold outright, or given away. I just can't do that to my kids!
So, we went from 46 goats down to 21. Three bucks (adga), 11 registered does, 4 unregistered does, and 3 unregistered doe kids. This will allow us to focus more on producing quality adga registered dairy goats. It was a tough decision, but I believe it was the right one. Hopefully I can get some good pics up soon!

Saturday, May 28, 2011

In The Beginning

I frequent quite a few blogs and farm websites of people I admire and aspire my farm to be like them. I am always curious as to how these people started out and how they got to where they are today. Some day maybe, I can only hope it’s in God’s plans, some one will wonder that about us and H Diamond Farms.  I thought it only fitting to make our first blog post of how this all got started. Where we’ve come from, where we’re going, and why we are doing this. So, if you are curious, sit back and enjoy. :)
In early 2009, I came to realize that store milk and I did not get along. I just resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to drink random milk products or do without. One day the joke was made, “we should just get a goat”. Ya, right…. The more we thought about it, the more it didn’t seen so stupid. In typical Rachel fashion, I started my research. I found goat’s milk is great for people who can’t have cow milk. I found someone local (no small feat, lol) who had a milk goat and bribed them out of some to try. It didn’t bother me! It was so good and tasty, and I could drink it. Well, the search was on. We ended up with 3 Boer cross does and 2 kids on each of them. Well, that didn’t really help out the milk situation, lol. We went to Texas and taxed a couple Boer kids for two Nubian does and a Saanen buckling. Those goats made up the original HDF herd. I still have 4 of them today. Over the next year or so, we added a few more goats. We were so pleased with the temperament that our Saanen buck (Samson) had and threw to his kids, we decided to get more of them. We also realized how much we did not like the Nubian breed, so sold off most if the Nubians, save two.
Fast forward to late 2010 and you will find our plans and goals changing again. With our love for Saanens and a lack of them anywhere near us, we decided to pursue raising ADGA registered stock. It took until March of 2011 to make that plan a reality, and here we are. We have decided to raise the Saanens along with ADGA Sables, and a small commercial herd of Boer and Boer crosses. We are still adding in goats to complete our foundation stock. We have added 4 more Sable does for a total of five. Most of which you will find trace back to Klisse’s herd. We have 2 Sable bucks to breed then with as well. We really hope to be able to take a nice group of Sables to the ADGA convention next year. As for the Saanens, we have added two does out of the des Ruhigestelle herd, and few more from Mega-Milkers. We are planning to get a buck fro the Tres Amigo herd in a week as well.  We are truly looking forward to what this venture had in store for us. We invite you all to follow along on this journey. And as always, please stop by, our email us. We love sharing our goats, farm, and limited knowledge with you.