Our sires get their stars!

We are super excited to announce our boys have their *B designations. Our newest buckling whom we will use next year is Rakkasan Ranch Apaches Revenge *B

Rubicon's dam, 2*M Bramblestone Pal Ruby was the 2016 Western Idaho Fair Grand Champion and Best Of Breed. Rubicon's Sire is our signature Herd Sire, Apache. 

RESULTS: Final Shows of the season!

Linear Appraisal:

We really enjoyed Linear Appraisal. This was our first year doing it, and it was very educational. Basically, the goats were measured and appraised on a number scale using various categories of the goats body and traits the goat carries. It has helped us determine which buck to use and which doe, to bring out the traits we most want in our herd. Our does and bucks did very well at LA this year, especially considering their age! Their overall scores are as follows:

                                                    General Appearance- Dairy Strength- Body- Mammary- Final score

4*M Bramblestone PAL Pearl Tea         V                             E                  V            E                88

Bramblestone PAL Ruby                        V                             V                  E            V                87

Sans Genes Princess Buttercup              +                             V                  +             +                83

Rakkasan Ranch Apache                        V                             V                  E         N/A               88

Bramblestone Tahoma Quinn                V                             V                  V         N/A                86

Western Idaho Fair:

This was an exciting show for our senior does! Our Ruby won her first championship leg as a 4 year old. She got Grand Champion Senior Doe, then went into the Championship Challenge and won Best Of Breed! Pearl won Reserve Grand Champion, Best Udder of Breed, and was the star milker of the One day milking competition with a total of 12 points and 4 pounds of milk! 

Twin Falls Fair:

Rakkasan Ranch celebrated Pearl receiving her 3rd Championship leg! This qualifies her as a Permanent Champion and will give her a Champion designation to her name. Pearl also received Best of Breed in the Championship Challenge, and won Best Udder of Breed, and Best Udder of Show! This is not an easy award to get, because Nigerian Dwarfs have to compete against all other large breed goats to win the Best Udder of Show.  All the goats did well and were proud of the Rakkasan Ranch goat girls. 

Colorado Dairy Goat Association Fall Festival:

The Fall Festival was a great show! Pearl received her 4th Championship leg, which is given to the Reserve Grand Champion, because once a goat gets three they are considered a Permanent Champion.  The good news is Ruby got Reserve Grand Champion! So now Ruby has her 2nd Championship leg!  Black Pearl, Pearls Daughter, received Grand Champion Junior Doe, earning her first championship leg!The judge commented that Black Pearl looked just like a miniature version of an adult doe, with a long neck and angular body. 

Ruby and Pearl in the Championship line up.

Black Pearl winning Grand Champion Junior Doe

Utah State Fair:

The Utah State Fair was our final show for the year. We had a hard time understanding what the judge expected from the goats. We came to the conclusion he was most concerned with the goat's pasterns. He judged a lot on how they looked when they walked and how light they were on their feet. It is respectable for a judge to favor certain parts of a goat, but we thought it was interesting he gave most of his scoring to this category. We agreed we will not travel to a show where he will be judging again. :) He had his opinions, and we have ours. We believe that a show should be judged similarly to linear appraisal scoring. We did get another Grand Champion Junior Doe for Black Pearl, but since she already has her restricted leg, it went to the Reserve Grand Champion Junior Doe. We met some great breeders, made new friends, and had a good time at the Fair! 

Autumn on the Ranch:

We are excited to be settled at home and start the breeding season. Before we begin, we give our girls BoSe and Copper Bolus to ensure their bodies are healthy and have all the vitamins needed to carry their kids successfully. We are still in the planning phase of our new barn and hope to get the framing up before Halloween. It will have 10 stalls, with 4 different pastures for the does, a milking parlor, and hay storage above. The bucks have their own barn, which is so nice and keeps their seasonal smells to a minimum. We also have 3 heifer cows going to the butcher so our freezer will be full of delicious grass-fed beef. Our turkeys are also almost ready for butcher, along with 10 more roosters. Im confident we will have enough meat to provide for us for quite some time. We will start freezing milk soon, to supplement us during the 2 month break we give our milking girls before they have babies.  Now is the time we take inventory, update our medicine cabinet, buy our haystacks and feed, and prepare our schedules for early spring kids!

ADGA Union County Fair Results

LaGrande, OR

The Union County Fair was a great 2 ring ADGA sanctioned show. It was laid back, and different from any other show we had ever been to. I would recommend it to anyone in the Northwest. The show was held in the grass under tents, and we just hung around the tents with the amazing weather. The first ring was pretty awesome. The judge, Patricia Walker, gave our girls these scores:
Pita: 5th in Class
Ruby: 3rd in class
Pearl: 1st in Class, Reserve Grand Champion, Best Udder in Breed

The second ring judge was Dan Green and after judging the girls he said Pearl's udder was the best he had ever seen. That was a huge compliment to our Pearl. Here are his scores:
Pita: 1st in Class
Ruby: 2nd in Class
Pearl: 1st in Class, GRAND CHAMPION!!!!, Best Udder of Breed, and she won the Champion Challenge!  (Pearl only needs one more Grand Champion leg to finish her as a Permanent Champion.)

Pearl with her Grand Champion Ribbon

Pearl winning Champion Challenge

Ruby looks great, and is so easy to show.

Ruby's Udder ready for the show.

Pearl in Best Udder competition.

Pita moved up from 2nd to 1st!

Udder view after the show.

June Update

June was busy for us! We purchased three does and a buckling to add to our herd. Not just any does though... We were SO fortunate to be able to bring Pearl and Ruby's moms to our farm! Bramblestone Farm was kind enough to sell them to us, and it has been a very unique experience to watch the girls reunite with their mothers. There is something very special about animal familial bonds, and goats are social animals with beautiful family ties. We feel blessed to see them reunited and happy together. 

SG *M AR Wildwind Farm R Bit 'O' Honey *D (Ruby's dam)
(This is after milking, and the only photo not blurred)

3*M AR Old Mountain Farm Hot Tea 3*D (Pearl's dam)
(Dry, she took a year off)

We also bought Princess Buttercup, aka P.I.T.A. Can you guess what the acronym stands for? Well, she isn't all that bad, and she has a great attachment. She also milked over 4 lbs on her last test and she is only 2, so she will earn her milking star this year! We are happy to add her to Rakkasan Ranch. 

Sans Gene Princess Buttercup

Our buckling also came from Bramblestone Farm and I will update his info once we get pictures of the handsome little guy.

We also went to two shows in June. Rakkasan Ranch Kiowa Queen (Ruby's kid) earned her first championship leg as Grand Champion Junior Doe at the Logan, Utah show. The following week, 4*M Bramblestone Pal Pearl Tea won Best Udder of Show in Kennewick, WA at the Wine Country classic. 

Pearl with her trophy

The udder that won the show!

Kiowa with her first leg Grand Champion.

Syringa 2016

2016 Syringa Dairy Goat Show and Specialty Show, Boise, ID

We had a great time at Syringa! This was a 4 ring show, with the first ring being the Specialty show! Pearl, our Senior doe, took Reserve Grand Champion in the Specialty Show, out of 79 does! Tahoma also took Reserve Grand Champion in the Specialty Show! This was great news to us, because Tahoma and Pearl have 4 doelings who did very well also, with Granny's Pearl taking Reserve Grand Champion Junior Doe! Apache, our other heard sire, took Reserve Grand Champion in one ring. (Many of the show photos didn't come out right, so here are before, during and after show photos. :))

Apache, Reserve Grand Champion Buck

Apache, the judge favored his width, strength, and stature.

Tahoma, Reserve Grand Champion Buck
The judge liked his chiseled appearance, and dairy character. 

Pearl in the Specialty show ring

Pearl after winning Reserve Grand Champion Doe in the Specialty Show

Granny's Pearl, Reserve Grand Champion Junior Doe
There were 29 Doelings in her class alone.

4*M Bramblestone Pal Pearl Tea, second Freshener

Goat kids having fun!!

This is the best part of having Nigerian Dwarf Goats...

Black Pearl and Minnie Pearl 

Ain't Granny's Pearl is a great bouncer

Early Spring, a busy time of year!

Spring on a small farm is a busy time of year, and ours is no exception! We have baby chickens hatching, and our dairy goats are delivering kids and milking season has begun. This year we are preparing to produce cheese and butter with our milk.  We are starting with simple cheeses such as ricotta and mozzarella. Next will be brie and chèvre, and then more aged cheeses as we get more comfortable with the process.

We will have chicks for sale after Valentines Day, all the way through May. Large Orpingtons, which are an amazing fryer chicken, pretty much the size of a small turkey, and are beautiful as a backyard chicken.We will have mostly blue and black chicks for sale but we have 5 different colored roosters. We still haven't decided what colors we are going to focus on.

Blue Orpington Rooster

 Orpingtons are very sweet and the roosters are surprisingly gentle considering their size. These birds are huge! The hens are heavy layers which is great for our egg selling business!

Buckeye Rooster

 We also have buckeye chicks! These rare birds are considered threatened by the Livestock Conservancy. Breeding them back to larger population is our goal. They are a great multipurpose bird. Large enough for eating, a rooster's average weight is 8 lbs. Buckeye hens also lay very well, ours lay about every 26 hours. These birds are extremely cold hardy, originating from Ohio.  We took our Buckeyes to the Boise state fair and they all placed very well in the American breed class.