Close the Gate!
Bye, Freya!
Today we said good bye to Freya! She is off to new adventures in the 4H world and we wish her and her new boy all the luck in the world! I think she will do great things for him and seemed pretty smitten with him as soon as she saw him. It was SO cute. <3
We also officially retired Vera. Though she is currently still on our property, as soon as my mother is settled in her new home Vera will follow her and rejoin her new Mini Horse herd. I am so relieved to be able to have a "retirement home" waiting for the few of my girls that are just that special.
Now... off to pick up more hay... a never ending task, it seems.
April Already!?
Woah! It's already the end of April and we haven't said a thing since December!
Our kidding season is officially over. Six does kidded and resulted in twelve healthy babies and one stillborn buckling. Of the twelve healthy kids only four are does! UGH! Here's hoping we get more X chromosomes next year!
For the rest of 2023 we will be moving my mother down to PA from NH in mid-May. Then we'll be looking at some sort of close to us shows to get to with as many goats as we can physically show. This means we might just need some extra hands! It's a great way to meet new people, learn new things and spend a day hanging out with some of the weirdest livestock people ever! LOL Showing a goat takes absolutely no experience or special talents - although it IS something you can get really good at and make a mediocre doe look like perfection!
We'll also be bringing back a Nigerian Dwarf buckling from our dear friend Liza at BusyB Goat Farm in Vermont. BusyB Goat Farm Argo Navis will be breeding all of our babies every fall so they kid out at a year old for the first time. This is a calculated gamble on our part to hopefully boost our breeding program and get where we're going just a little bit quicker. Each doe will be assessed individually, regardless. That said, we will have registerable Mini Alpines available each spring. They will make great pets, decent meat goats, and can be shown with the MDGA just like the ADGA and AGS.
Happy Holidays!
Baby, it's cold outside! Jeepers it's chilly out... Putting the goats to bed for tonight meant giving the six does a full bale of hay, giving them hot water and hoping they snuggle! They'll be fine, really. Animals tend to handle this kind of weather a lot better than humans do. Today it was 0 most of the day and the wind brought it down to -10 for most of the day and then it absolutely plummeted around 4:30 to -25 and isn't supposed to come back up much at all until Christmas day.
Cat, my horse, is wearing her heaviest blanket and hanging out in a big pile of hay in front of a large run-in shed as a windbreak. She's a very tough girl, though. I think she will be okay, and I know she was grateful for a heavy blanket! She wasn't even shivering when I checked on her, though so that is a great sign. Now that everyone is tucked in for the weekend...
Merry Christmas or Happy whatever you celebrate! Enjoy your family, friends and food! Don't forget to take a family photo to cherish. <3 Enjoy, everyone.
Welcome....
Welcome to our new and streamlined blog page! In order to simplify everything we decided to "abandon" our WordPress blog and just post here. I'm mostly certain that you can still subscribe for notifications on new posts just the same as on WordPress. The old posts will stay up and be accessible forever and we'll still hang onto the whole account. Updates will only be here, though. So stay tuned! If you'd like to get notified of a new post, please send us an email to be added to the list!
Office@TopolinoFarm.org
The first thing we need to do is make some cuts for 2023! Our barn is small; a small barn means a small herd. Small herds mean some really hard cuts!
4MFVT Sunny Ruby Freya is our first hard cut. Freya is a lovely doe. She scored super well during Linear Appraisal and should probably go to a couple shows in 2023. She has great depth and width throughout and shows Excellent dairy strength. If you'd like to see her full score; Linear Appraisal Score. Freya does well putting milk in the pail but could definitely do more to pull her weight. Our testing this year didn't go quite as planned so we had to stop before getting to our 8th and final test. We also sold some of Freya's friends mid summer and did a lot of moving around in the barn, so it's entirely possible that Freya will do better after settling into a new herd. We also had to switch feed quite a few times due to availability. More stability would help her put more effort into production. Freya's 2022 CDCB Data
Freya is a wonderful mother. She even helped her FF daughter raise her own kid! Very cute. Her kids thrive under her mothering. We are asking $600 for Freya as a doe in milk. She will be available as soon as she kids in March/April 2023. Please see Animals For Sale for the list of rebates offered on all American and French Alpines.
