Good Morning! It's February!

Hello everyone!

I am Jan Hodges and I am blogging this month about my Kinder goat adventure. I live in central New Mexico, about 30 miles south of Albuquerque.

I discovered kinder goats in the 90s, I moved out of the city to two acres in the country in 1993, and a neighbor had a goat for awhile. I liked her. Goats seemed to me to be by far the most interesting livestock. I was working, though, and it didn't take much research to figure out that I couldn't manage an 11 hour workday (including a pretty long commute) and also take decent care of goats. I'm pretty lazy, really.

In 2000 I rescued a great dane, Duke, who had terrible airborne allergies, which started a long hunt for relief for them. I tried shots, but he got tired of that and we couldn't do it without his cooperation. I tried raw honey, but that requires a huge dose, it was too much sugar, and expensive. I found local milk that wasn't processed much. There was a dairy that sold it, but they got bought out and that milk disappeared. So the only way to get milk for him was to have my own. But it was still too early. I got milk from my vet, who has a herd of dairy goats, for a few years. Duke's troubles with allergies completely disappeared for the rest of his life.

I got my two nubian doe kids a year before I retired, but milking them and working was going to be beyond me. I retired (finally, the first day I possibly could), bred one of them to my lovely Silver, and had my first kinders, both were male. I decided I didn't want the characteristics of the other doe in my kinder herd, and don't have her anymore.

In the spring of 2007 a friend went with me on a road trip to Missouri, where I got two doe kids from Sue Huston. They are my lovely Madame and Triscuit. I feel like I was very lucky to get them, and it was great to meet Sue.

I'm going to stop now and post this and try to figure out how to post pictures.

Have a wonderful rest of the day!

Jan