What's New!?!

Hello Everyone!

The KGBA Board has had an exciting and busy start to the year, and we are hard at work trying to make the KGBA Association better than ever! We have some fresh new faces on the Board, and some exciting changes right around the corner. Some of the things that you should be seeing soon are:

A NEWSLETTER - After stalling last year, our newsletter is back on track, and coming soon to a mailbox near you (well, your mailbox, actually...). A special thanks to Jeanette Woods and Laura Kennett for working so hard to create past newsletters - I know you both did a ton of work, and they were awesome!

HERD EVALUATIONS - Tom Considine will be on the road this summer, and has graciously offered to come to farms within a certain radius of his show route for no additional traveling fee. We will be posting his route soon!

WEBSITE - We are updating the website with a fresh face and lots of new information. Please check back regularly, as this will be an ongoing project.

CALENDAR - We hope to put out a calendar this year, including photos submitted by members of all your beautiful Kinder goats. More details coming soon!

Please check back often to the Communique and the website - We would love ideas, suggestions and pictures!!!  We can always use more photos of registered Kinder goats for the website, newsletters and future promotional materials. If you want to donate pictures that you have taken of your own registered Kinders, please send photos to: sue@jabeck.com **

We look forward to hearing from all of you, and to sharing a great new year of growth, goats and good times!

Warm Regards,
Sue Beck
KGBA President



**By sending photos, you are agreeing to have them posted on the website with no compensation other than bragging rights. Depending on how many we receive, your photos may or may not be used, but we'll also be posting pics to the communique in mini "breed brags," so watch for them there, too!

Don't Wait - Register Your Goats!

As springs nears, the number of registration applications for new kids increases dramatically. It is extremely exciting to see how many new Kinder kids are being born, the increase in new herds, and the increased interest in our membership. This is a great time of growth for the Kinder Association and our little goats, and we couldn't be happier about it. But as you breed, buy and sell your Kinders, please remember how important it is to make sure that all of your paperwork is current and cmplete.

On occasion, we run into issues with applications, and those problems are inevitably compounded if the goats in question have been sold or bred. PLEASE REGISTER YOUR GOATS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! It is not good practice to offer your bucks for buck service if they have not yet been registered, nor is it a good idea to sell kids as "registered" or "registerable" if their parents do not yet have papers. It is our responsibility as reputable breeders to supply buyers with all the information and documentation necessary to register their new goats. This includes ensuring that our own bucks and does are registered BEFORE we breed them, and certainly before selling their offspring, so that all paperwork can be completely quickly and without problems.

If you are buying new goats, the best way to protect yourself from problems is to require either:

A. The goats you are buying are registered, and you receive the registration(s) and signed transfer at the time of purchase.
B. Both parents are registered, and you receive copies of their registrations, a signed transfer, and a completed registration application for your new kid at the time of purchase.

If you purchase or breed to goats with "pending" registrations, the KGBA can not guarantee that your goats will actually be registrable with the association, so please protect yourselves - make sure that all paperwork is in order before you buy or breed!

The KGBA Board of Directors welcome any and all questions related to buying, selling, and breeding Kinders, and are happy to help you in any way we can. Please feel free to contact us at any time... we're happy to help!

Meat yields on the dual purpose Kinder Goat

The Kinder is a dual purpose goat used for both milk and meat.  The meat aspect has been neglected by many breeders.  Our beloved Kinders have become more dairy in type sacrificing meat production for milk production.  While for many milk is all they want, a breeder needs to keep in mind the fact that usually about half the kids are bucks.  Not all bucks should be kept as bucks.  On average only 1 out of 10 is truly buck quality.  What do you do with the rest of those darling little fellows.  True, you can wether them and sell them as pets or brush clearers but that market saturates fast. 

In our area there are a couple of meat goat buyers.  They pay by the pound and their price depends on the type of goat.  Dairy kids bring less per pound that meat kids.  I have worked on my marketing with the meat goat buyer I use and he knows that my kids pack meat.  I am now getting the same price per pound for my Kinder boys as he pays for the Boer kids. 

If you are planning on slaughtering any kids this year please keep records and let me know what the live weight, carcass weight and actual meat weight wrapped is.

The chart below will show some of the yields that come from well bred Kinder kids.

Kinder goat carcass yields
	Live wt. lbs	hanging wt lbs	boneless meat lbs
Doe SH	120	59	33
Doe SH	140	71	41
Doe SH	134	62	32
Wether SH	61.5	30	18
Doe SH	135	67	39
Doe SH	138	68	39
GJ Wether	82	41	23
GJ Buck 17 mos	170	90	45
GJ Doe 18 mos	99	47	30
GJ doe 9 mos	95	43	26
GJ Crytorchid 6 mos	92	51	35
GJ Buck 7 mos	89	49	32
GJ Wether 7 mos	80	44	30
GJ Buck 7 mos	70	39	23

For more information on Kinders as meat goats look in the blog archives in 2012 October Kinders as Meat goats.

Jean Jajan

Selling Kinder® Products

On September 25^th of last year, the KGBA board made an announcement regarding the sales of products labeled with the Kinder® name. In the announcement, we asked that people considering selling such products apply for a license to do so through our association. Upon further consideration, we have decided NOT to ask our members for a licensing agreement when selling Kinder labeled products.

As your board, one of our top goals and responsibilities is to promote and propagate the Kinder goat breed. In order to do this, we count on our members’ help. After all, our best marketing tools are our goats, our members, and the products that they create together!

We want to make it as easy as possible for members to advertise, register and sell their goats. We also want to make it as easy as possible to benefit from owning Kinder goats. Hopefully, removing licensing requirements from members’ Kinder® products will do this.

Please feel free to contact any board members with questions or comments regarding this change. We hope that the decision will encourage even more of our members to help show the world why Kinders really are the greatest goats on Earth!